A Very Bad Bunny Super Bowl

There is something that goes on in American culture that is highly irritating to me.

If you notice everyone celebrating something that is politically Left-leaning in nature, people tell you that you’re crazy for pointing it out or being upset about it.

I’m not particularly upset by halftime shows at the Super Bowl, because in the grand scheme of life, who cares? It is not a big deal.

But the reason that some people are concerned or upset today about this year’s halftime show is because of what happened at the end of the performance.

I am not a Bad Bunny fan. I don’t know whether he’s a good bunny, a bad bunny, or the worst bunny. I have no gradation, no scale upon which to judge the badness of his bunnyness.

I do not know his music. I didn’t understand a word he was saying. As a person who does not traffic or listen to his music, I had no idea what he was saying during the halftime show.

I will admit that it felt to me like being in a car crash, and there was a person walking toward me, telling me that I needed to get out my insurance card in a language I did not understand.

The Pros

The show was beautifully produced. The couple getting married and mid-show, the kids falling asleep on the chairs was very, very charming. I have no problem with a lot of Spanish being in the show, because that’s what a lot of people in the United States speak; that’s totally cool. A lot of people in the United States speak a lot of second languages. I remember a few years ago Shakira and J. Lo did the halftime show, and I believe they did a song in Spanish. There are tens of millions of Latino Americans who contribute in unbelievable ways to our common project as Americans.

The Cons

First: No English at all, so people who don’t speak Spanish couldn’t understand what was going on. He could have been saying anything, and I would have had no idea what he was saying.

Second: To pretend that Bad Bunny is an apolitical figure is silly.

Bad Bunny is not an apolitical figure. He has never pretended to be an apolitical figure. When he showed himself on the Grammys and gave a Grammy to a little kid who looked precisely like an ICE detainee, don’t tell me that wasn’t on purpose. Of course it was.

But the major problem for me came at the very end of the halftime show. Bad Bunny walked through and announced every single country in the Western Hemisphere, starting geographically with Argentina and finishing with Canada. As he did, a bunch of people followed him carrying flags from various other countries that were not the United States.

Here is the problem: One of the truly amazing virtues of America is that you can both assimilate to the values of the United States and still keep the flavor of your old culture. One of the great things about America over the course of the last couple of hundred years is that many cultures merged into the gigantic stream that is the United States, which is why every American has eaten Mexican food, Italian food, and Chinese food.

And that’s wonderful. That’s great. The fact that you have weddings where you have people dancing salsa, and you have weddings where you have people dancing the hora, is wonderful.

I don’t think a whole lot of Americans object to that.

The salient question is this: Are you showing gratitude for America being unique? That’s why people focused on that part of the show.

Where was Bad Bunny’s gratitude?

There have been other shows where he’s refused to stand up for the national anthem. He is rich and famous because of the United States. He is living in splendor because of the United States. He’s one of the greatest recipients of American largesse ever.

If you’re born in Puerto Rico, you’re American. If you’re born in America, that is the greatest privilege that you can receive.

So, it is my opinion that you should show some gratitude for America being unique. It seems to me that American flags should have been all over the place in the middle of this demonstration.

This is something the political Left does that is totally wrong.

It’s astonishing to me. The political Left has the opportunity to grab the upper hand culturally with a lot of people and simultaneously celebrate the country. He could have done this entire show almost identically, with American flags everywhere, saying America means that you can have salsa dancing at your wedding, but that’s what’s amazing about America. You can do all that and still be an American who loves football and still be an American.

Football is a uniquely American sport. You can still be an American who is doing all the American things, and you can also enjoy these cultural variants.

This United Nations routine was not a celebration of America or a celebration of cultures that coexist peacefully in America.

His attempt to say we are all Americans by making some sort of pedantic geographic point that the Americas encompass the continents of North America and South America was silly. No one sees it that way.

When people say American, they believe that you are talking about the United States — as they should. Football is an American event. It is not the world’s biggest event. It is America’s biggest event. Not many people in Japan watch the Super Bowl.

This was not the World Cup. This performance at the World Cup or the Olympics would have made perfect sense because those are international events with a bunch of different countries.

What I am concerned about is the innate argument that is being made, that the greatness of America somehow must be subsumed under the rubric of “All countries are awesome, and America is somehow equivalent in some way to other countries.”

We are not. America is exceptional. It’s unique.

And ignoring that message is un-American.