I’m not a Bad Bunny fan, and I probably don’t know more than 12 words of Spanish, but I’d rather watch him perform at every NFL halftime show for the next two football seasons before I tune in to alternative programming being offered in the guise of American patriotism.
In the two weeks since the Grammy-winning global superstar was announced as the Super Bowl LX halftime headliner, there has been a racist and jingoistic campaign to undermine his appearance.
The anti-Bunny brigade includes right-wing antagonists from President Trump to the organization founded by assassinated conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, which is offering its own Super Bowl halftime lineup.
Turning Point USA is countering the NFL’s program with what it is calling “The All-American Halftime Show,” celebrating “faith, family and freedom.”
Artists have yet to be announced, but a website asks visitors what music genres they would like to hear. The choices include Classic Rock, Country, Hip Hop, Pop and Worship.
Also included is a category that even the Grammys — of which Bad Bunny has won three — has yet to recognize: “Anything in English.”
“I never heard of him,” the president told Newsmax. “I don’t know who he is, I don’t know why they’re doing it, it’s like, crazy,”
Bad Bunny’s halftime appearance comes amid a fierce debate over immigration and the government’s forceful crackdown on undocumented migrants.
The artist has said he will not tour in the U.S. over concerns that his concerts would be targeted by federal immigration authorities seeking to deport his fans.
The Super Bowl will be his only U.S. performance to promote his latest album,
But the irony is that Bad Bunny, unlike Rihanna, Shakira, Coldplay, The Who, Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones, all of whom performed at the Super Bowl, is an American citizen.
Bad Bunny, 31, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, was born in Puerto Rico, which makes him as American as the Stars and Stripes and the U.S. Marine Corps Color Guard.
But tell that to the geographically challenged, migrant-hating conservatives who seem to think that people who call Puerto Rico home are from some foreign land. The island of Puerto Rico is U.S. territory, and while it has no congressional representation, neither does Washington, D.C.
What the Bunny boppers really hate is that he is getting the biggest stage in entertainment despite being a MAGA critic.
He supported former Vice President Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election, and said he was insulted after a comic at a Madison Square Garden Trump rally joked about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage.”
But the entertainer has jokes of his own. After delivering part of a “Saturday Night Live: monologue in Spanish, Bad Bunny declined to offer a translation.
“If you didn’t understand what I just said,” he told the crowd in English, “you have four months to learn.”
Not everyone was laughing.
“Bad Bunny says America has 4 months to learn Spanish before his perverse unwanted performance at the Super Bowl halftime,” U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said on social media. “It would be a good time to pass my bill to make English the official language of America.”
Meanwhile, Trump officials have promised that ICE agents will be at the Super Bowl, but they won’t be there for the game or the performance.
“There is nowhere you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else,” former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said on a conservative podcast. “We will find you and apprehend you and put you in a detention facility and deport you.”
Or even worse. They’ll make you watch a Jets game.
