I was going to get this up before the Super Bowl, but it turns out that the issue was further crystalized by the game itself. As happens approximately 50% of the time with this annual spectacle, the game was a yawn, and much of the news coming out of the contest involved the NFL’s deliberate transformation of what was once considered a unifying family cultural event, like Fourth of July fireworks, into a partisan, progressive statement about how America sucks, with expensive TV ads extolling capitalism and patriotism at the same time. That’s message whiplash, and ethically irresponsible.
As the New York Times explained, without criticism, the NFL took a hard turn Left when it put Barack Obama pal Jay-Z, the rap star and impresario, in charge of the Super Bowl halftime show after the 2018 Super Bowl had triggered anger from fans over players “taking a knee” during the National Anthem. The Times, spinning as usual, says that the kneeling was intended to “draw attention to police brutality and social justice issues.”
As Ethics Alarms pointed out at the time, none of the kneelers, including its cynical originator, over-the-hill quarterback Colin Kaepernick, ever explained coherently what they were kneeling about. What “police brutality”? Oh, you know, Mike Brown, whom Black Lives Matters still says was “murdered” on its website. What social justice issues? Oh, you know: it’s time for white people to be discriminated against to make up for slavery. The left-turn was a greed-induced mass virtue signal to blacks, clueless young fans, and Democrats. (It helped that President Trump vociferously attacked Kaepernick and Co., so the kneeling appealed to the Trump Deranged too. (See Dissonance Scale, Cognitive)
Ethics Alarms 
We probably should be happy for something taken over by progressive propaganda to inevitably wither away and fail – as all successful ventures broken by progressivism inevitably do because progressives don’t create anything successful or lasting but only tear down and parasitically leach off the successes of others.
But we should also slightly mourn the destruction – because there is something inherently good in seeing teams vie against each other in grueling circumstances. I say that knowing that CTE aspect of the game is worthy enough of it ending.
But don’t think that the progressive brain trust will also mourn the passing of the latest crop their locust-like selves move on from. They’ll be happy that anything extoling rough hard work gets dismantled.
As Ethics Alarms pointed out at the time, none of the kneelers, including its cynical originator, over-the-hill quarterback Colin Kaepernick, ever explained coherently what they were kneeling about. What “police brutality”? Oh, you know, Mike Brown, whom Black Lives Matters says was “murdered” on its website. What social justice issues? Oh, you know: it’s time for white people to be discriminated against to make up for slavery. The left turn was a greed-induced mass virtue signal to blacks, clueless young fans, and Democrats. (It helped that President Trump vociferously attacked Kaepernick and Co., so the kneeling appealed to the Trump Deranged too. (See Dissonance Scale, Cognitive)
Simply put the “activism” does not have to do necessarily with “social justice” and social justice is psychological code for DEMOGRAPHIC REPLACEMENT. Once this is seen, the entire picture changes.
The “message” of Don Señor Bad Bunny and his ultra-vulgar spectacle is understood simply by seeing it for exactly what it is. It is undermining cultural porn-slop the purpose of which is to pervert not merely the mind, but something deeper. Once it is allowed, without critical restraint and opposition into the political body it works like an acid the purpose of which is subversion. This is not art in any elevating sense of the word, but it definitely is enactment of arrival on the scene — and it can have nothing but bad effect.
Learn Spanish to understand what is said?! He does not speak Spanish. It is an extreme low-level mumbling that I cannot even think how to translate. Spanish is an extremely sophisticated language both intellectually capable and artfully beautiful. Reggaeton dialect is as ugly, even more ugly, than rap-English.
I sympathize for what comes next in the declining social and spiritual world of America. The tide of opposition to the acutely vulgar in the ethic of conservative opposition cannot complete with the tsunami of popular revolt.
Who did this?!?! Who allowed thus?!?!
Si, Si, Si! Verdad!
I could not distinguish a single word that came out of his mouth.
Your aunt would pass out if she could.
I remember an interview with Thomas Sowell where he explained why low-class and vulgar became the ‘authentic’ black culture. He said in the 1950’s and 60’s there was debate about what was ‘authentic’ black culture. A black professor insisted that the culture of black professionals; physicians, teachers, bankers, etc should be the standard for black culture. They should shape the ideals of how black Americans should aspire to act and behave. White leftist academics insisted that no, it should be the poorly educated semi-criminal culture that was the ‘true’ black American culture. Guess who won that debate? In similar fashion the W.E.B. DuBois v. Booker T. Washington debates decided that black Americans should be funneled into manual labor instead of higher education.
My pet theory is that the leftist coastal elites are racist and aristocratic. They really feel that minorities are mentally inferior to whites, but they need them for near-slave labor and for votes to maintain power. They really fear poor and middle class whites, who could easily take the place of their idiot children if we actually allowed a meritocracy to rule. So, the elites need to eliminate the educational opportunities and reduce their share of the voting pool of poor and middle class whites. I mean, I could be wrong, but it does seem to explain the observed behavior of society for the last 30 years.
There seems to be skullduggery afoot.
You aren’t far from the truth.
Booker was right- in his time.
Today it is clear the trades pay more than most white-collar jobs.
Alizia,
I agree with what you wrote. I saw part of the hafltime show and, frankly, I didn’t get it. Any of it. And, I consider myself to have a cultural IQ above room temperature. I suspect the ratings numbers are gonna be enlightening.
What was this Bad Bunny guy trying to do? Tell the story of Latin American cultural heights before that dirty, diseased ridden Italian and his ships sailed for the Spanish Crown, stumbled upon a whole new set of lands, and systematically raped, pillaged, and plundered his way across the New World? Was it some sort of celebration of egalitaian societies living peacefully and harmoniously with the land until West European ghaslty ideas of land ownership and territorialism came along and stole it from the indigenous populations (ignoring that whole human sacrifice to Chok Mul thingy)?
I am not sure how you sell “inclusion and mutual respect” by inviting a known Puerto Rican separatist* anti-US rapper to perform at the Super Bowl who says he planned to sing the entire show in Spanish, literally and figuratively flipping the international symbol of contempt at the host culture, viewers, and country, but that’s just me. Frankly, Pit Bull is more popular and would have been more enteraining. But, he is Cuban and hates the Castro Brothers so we can’t have that . . . Even Lady Gaga couldn’t save the NFL from itself.
As for Bun Bun’s music, I simply find his gutteral mumblings ridiculous and unlistenable (is that a word?) Reggaeton makes my skin crawl just as much as poorly articulated singing in English does. I liked some of the early hip hop and rap because it was (to me, anyway) the heavy metal and/or hard rock version of blues and soul. Then, it got boring and vulgar and I lost interest.
What message was the NFL trying to send? Was it, “Hey, Latinos! We’re down with your heritage and pop culture so we’re bringing in this cool Puerto Rican dude by the name of . . . (Rog, what’s this guy’s name again . . . ?) Bad Bun Bee Tuna? Yeah! That guy! It’s gonna be so cool! Come share some tacos al carbón, guac, and Tecate! ¡Pa’rriba la partria!”
Apparently, the Bud Light fiasco was lost on the NFL and the Super Bowl planners. Here’s a suggestion: If you’re gonna alienate 90% of your market with some stunt like this, you better be prepared for the blowback.
jvb
*PS: Bun Boy should check out his country’s history. It is a corrupt and inept political system that lives solely off of the US largesse. Were it not for tons of Dollars flooding the country, it would fail in about 120 hours. Every time a referendum is proposed to become a US state, it fails by some huge margin. D.C. should say, “Cool. You don’t want us and our backing? Great. We’re gone. Have a nice life.”
Me too. Puerto Rican independence? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out! Ever heard of Haiti?
What was this Bad Bunny guy trying to do?
One could perhaps say “many things” but I can report you what many Latinos (here and in the Spanish speaking press in USA) are saying and feeling. They are elated that, finally! Latino culture has “made it”, has pushed in through the door, has power and is recognized. They also point out that America’s White Christian monoculture is under a certain demographic threat from a wider constituency (all the nations of America latina). They say “We were shown prejudice and we were ridiculed but no more”.
Sad that this grotesque and ugly slobber is the vehicle. Such is life …
Bad Bunny is “answering” with resistance and ressentiment the clear perception, as with TPUSA, that the English-speaking monoculture will now have to give way.
My referral to Demography is Destiny does not seem very popular, because it could be, and perhaps does, dovetail with racial ideas, but in a larger sense it might really be more class and culture. I do not see myself as racist but absolutely as a cultural superiorist. Yet the two stances share some ground, I guess.
I can with absolute certainty that my wife, a Mexican national from Veracruz, Mexico, naturalized in 1992, was mortified by what she described as degeneracy and denigration of her proud Mexican heritage. She said that Bad Bunny does not, in any way, shape, or form, represent or reflect her culture, strong Catholic faith and upbringing, and work ethic, and watching men and women girating like animals heat in the form of some strange dance was not shocking but insutling.
jvb
An intelligent review from a Cuban American: Bad Bunny Super Bowl show sparks anti-American backlash | Fox News
There’s still one major pipeline of football players gushing into the pool of NFL talent: poor black kids. Before integration, football was staffed by poor Italian and Polish and Slavic kids from western Pennsylvania. Playing football beat the hell out of getting black lung in a coal mine. Now, football is the legal way for poor black kids to strike it rich if they’re too short or too bulky to play basketball and can’t hit a baseball.
Regarding Bad Bunny’s bizarre halftime show. The sound was terrible. Was he speaking Spanish? Hard to tell. I couldn’t make out anything coming out of his mouth. Subtitles would have been helpful. And it really was Havana Social Club style Afro-Cuban stuff done really poorly. And this was supposed to introduce Americans to Latin American culture? What about Xavier Cugat, Harry Belafonte, Desi Arnaz, Santana, Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estephan, Havana Social Club, Flaco Jemenez, Shakira, just to name a few. And when did Latin American culture involve guys grabbing their crotches and women twerking? Isn’t that cultural appropriation from black culture? And isn’t Lady Gaga Italian American? Where’s the authenticity?
And sugar cane? Ninety-five percent of the sugar cane grown in the Florida Everglades is harvested mechanically. Very little sugar cane is grown in Puerto Rico. But we need to be introduced to the fact Puerto Ricans are good with a machete?
“Subtitles would have been helpful.”
Subtitles would have rendered the football game rated R.
Caramba!
Yes, the crutch grabbing and twerking is just creepy. That’s what multi-culturalism had brought us to? The NFL should be embarrassed.
Multiculturalism has always been aimed to bring everyone down, not up.
The influencers passed over literally every other cultures’ high-arts opportunities to pull out the most depraved options to extol. Then told us we were racist and anti-diversity when we rightly turned our noses.
“But we need to be introduced to the fact Puerto Ricans are good with a machete?”
Thank goodness it wasn’t a Haitian pop-star.
You make a very good point, Michael. The show had nothing to do with football. It’s simply a pop music concert, the point of which is to get as many pop music fans as possible to watch. It has nothing to do with football or a national event. It’s simply a pop music show. The NFL gets all the football fans to watch the game by showing a football game. They get non-football fans to watch by hosting a pop music concert. Why show Kid Rock when all his fans are already watching the football? Why not double your viewership by going after a totally different demographic. They keep saying how Senor Bunny is the most downloaded artist on Spotify. Choice made! I don’t think they needed to pay Jay Zee to make that decision. An intern could have done that research in two minutes.
But boy, that whole thing was tacky and poorly produced.
I have to say, I got a kick out of the vignette of the guys up on power poles. Were they up there stealing power and causing shorts?
My Haitian machete comment was a dig at their 19th century overthrow of their French plantation elite.
All the Cubans I grew up around had, and were handy with, machetes.
No doubt.
No doubt.
So were the Haitian revolutionaries.
“And when did Latin American culture involve guys grabbing their crotches and women twerking?”
The X-chromosomal Units were grabbing their…um…junk, too.
“And sugar cane?“
Cane was to Caribbo-Hispanics what Cotton was to Southern slavery; the parallel which exists will only register/resonate with the oppressed, the terminally woke/guilt inundated, and the savvy handlers who play them with spectacular aplomb.
“(Both) sugar cane and cotton were used to establish profitable, labor-intensive industries, drawing parallels between the historical exploitation in those industries.”
PWS
Why celebrate having been oppressed? But wait, isn’t Senor Bunny more Spanish than African? Does he descend from Spanish plantation owners or African slaves? The Cubans I know are ferociously Spanish and not “of color.” I’d say they are very racist. Cuba was completely segregated.
“Why celebrate having been oppressed?”
To commodify White Lefty guilt.
PWS
Though I am the most contemptable type of male in ‘merican culture, I hope at my neighborhood Dollar General that my middle age large mature black woman with great nails and presence never stops calling me “honey”.
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show sign language interpreter is making history
They didn’t put up subtitles but they had a sign language translator? Who was historic because she was Puerto Rican?
DEFCON 5 is the normal peacetime DEFCON. You probably wanted to use DEFCON 1.
$%^^%$#!$! Ever since “War Games” I’ve gotten that wrong. Thanks. Fixed.
I think pretty much every Super Bowl Halftime show since Tom Petty has been garbage. So…
One of the 25 million TVs tuned to the TP-USA alternative was ours. The music was solid (if a bit too heavy on the country-rock), we could understand it all, and only one song that I heard (a number by Lee Brice that directly addressed the “T” in LGTBQ) had anything overtly political or social.
The audio was abysmal and the lip-synching more than obvious.
Hmm…I thought the audio was alright, though my hearing isn’t any good (well, that’s what my wife says). And as a guy who has some “singing in public” in his background, I hate lip-synching more than anyone. But I see it everywhere now. Does anyone actually sing in a public venue anymore? Heck, it looked to me like the guy that did the National Anthem last night wasn’t really singing.
I mean, I have no doubt, if each year features a classic “Pro-America” alternative half-time show, it will get better. But this first one was pretty wonky. But it’s so obvious though it may always feel hokey and will probably always feel reactionary. In which case it probably helps lose the culture war instead of helps win it.
In the late ‘sixties, a snarky guy in my high school class threatened to parachute into the Orange Bowl and land on the stage of the “Up with People” concert, in the nude. While parking cars at a yacht club, he started filling the well-to-do members’ requests for cocaine and heroin. Business boomed. He died of a heroin overdose before we’d even turned twenty.
BANDS! How about a major university band that can spell things on the field…?? Texas A&M as a pretty good one, and big, too.
Rap is to music, as etch-a-sketch is to art.
I saw, live, about 3 minutes at the end of the first half. I watched the highlight on YouTube (<15 minutes) later that night. The Seattle defensive front was awesome. Both NE TDs came out of “hail Mary” throws as the sack was about to happen.
Ohio State’s marching band is frickin’ terrific.
jvb
It isn’t Texas A&M’s though.
I am beyond distraught that I somehow did not get the message that the most recent Super Bowl halftime show somehow was supposed to be a great national unifying event, as all the previous Super Bowl shows have been. My mistake, I guess. I also thought bad bunny was a moldy Easter treat from last year. Wrong again.
My heart goes out to those who voluntarily watched a show they didn’t like, and to those who harbored expectations about others willingness to please them, which turned out to be a misplaced expectation.
No accounting for taste nor art.
You seriously want to dispute the position that the Super Bowl has traditionally been a non-partisan, family oriented TV event around which US families of all races and creeds hold block parties and gatherings of friends and neighbors with children taking part? Gee, I guess I imagined the whole thing…
My heart goes out to those who voluntarily watched a show they didn’t like, and to those who harbored expectations about others willingness to please them, which turned out to be a misplaced expectation.
No accounting for taste nor art.
Yes there actually is an accounting but, certainly, there must be references to a established canon of values. Rule one: You do not broadcast such terrible vulgarity to an audience where children will hear such references, so casually expressed. (Find a way to get yourself a translation).
If you wish to live in a porn-drenched world and culture then, okay, that show was a good step in that direction. Do you have daughters or grand-daughters? Are they accomplished at twirking?
These things, these performances, are important cultural “texts” that must be examined — to understand the direction where things are going. And you are right, to do so is a bit masochistic.
I grew up and lived my adult life in a different family on a different block.
It is not the job of the NFL to create a national unifying event. The NFL is a business, and its job is to maximize profits. Looks like it has done that again.
The halftime show may have set a viewership record (pending a recount and federal investigation in Georgia).
Even so, viewership for the game probably is about 35-40 per cent of the US population. So, a national unifying event this year, or in the past? I don’t think so. Unless the standard is the same as for a Trump landslide.
The halftime show, as many have pointed out, may have hit a record BECAUSE it was divisive, and hoards of progressives who would rather die than watch a football game tuned in to support an anti-American, vulgar asshole stick his thumb in the eye of patriotic Americans. Your comment makes me wonder if you follow sports. Sports teams are cultural utilities; they mean a great deal emotionally and culturally to cities and fans. Professional athletes are paid heroes. That’s their job, even though a lot of them don’t get it. They are more than businesses, and have special obligations. There was a reason FDR asked baseball to keep going even when their best players were in the military. Just because you don’t understand this doesn’t make it less true.