Because It’s Inappropriate, That’s Why

In 2019, the NFL turned its Super Bowl halftime shows over to Jay-Z and his production company, Roc Nation, and something irritatingly predictable has happened ever since.

You saw a good example of it Sunday night, when Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny put on a show that has torn the country right down the middle and has set Americans at each other’s throats. More on that in a minute — but what should be remembered is that the Bad Bunny spectacle of this year was nothing compared to the one four years ago, in which an all-star cast of hip-hop superstars headed by Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, and 50 Cent put on a paean to gangster rap complete with a glorification of the inmates in the Los Angeles County jail.

Everybody loves Snoop Dogg, so the outrage was muted, but the NFL is supposed to be an aspirational alternative to prison for lots of underprivileged people. It’s supposed to encourage folks to focus, work hard, apply their talents with discipline and effort, and make something of their lives, and the inmates in that jail generally have done none of those things — and yet the NFL was celebrating street criminals. At halftime of the Super Bowl.

And that jailbird symphony was highly acclaimed. It begat the mess on Sunday.

As artistic expression, it must be said, Bad Bunny’s show wasn’t bad. The music was reggaeton, which is generally pretty fun stuff. It’s high-energy, it’s pretty listenable, though the fact that Bad Bunny will hardly utter a word of English on stage makes for a bit of a WTF factor, and the short play encompassing the halftime show — which was something like a day in the life of Puerto Rico — was nothing if not creative. (RELATED: The Counterattack on Bad Bunny Half-Time)

There was a wedding. There were people chopping sugar cane. Poor folks shopping at a bodega with  “We Accept EBT” in neon in the window. And — and if you know a little about Puerto Rico and its problems, this was amusing — a satirical takedown of the putrid performance of the island’s power grid, complete with line workers dangling from power poles and a transformer explosion. (RELATED: Everyone Watches a Different Super Bowl)

If this had been a video promoting tourism in Puerto Rico, or if it were a Netflix special, you’d say it was kinda cool.

Now, the fact that it was in Spanish, as I noted above, cast this whole enterprise in a strange light.

The NFL’s audience doesn’t speak much Spanish. It’s an English-speaking league. There are no NFL teams in cities where the majority of people speak Spanish. Houston, Miami, and L.A. have large Spanish-speaking populations, yes, but they’re American cities where the schooling and the business and the government work and the culture are all done, chiefly if not exclusively, in English. The Latin citizens in those places, many of whom are big football fans, speak English.

But Bad Bunny didn’t. He threw out a few words of English here and there, but the act was in Spanish. Except for the short cameo in which we were subjected to the satanic Lady Gaga. Thanks a lot for that.

And the Spanish-language spectacular masked the fact that Bad Bunny’s lyrics were utterly filthy and pornographic, and sexually objectifying in a way that feminists generally would abhor.

One of the more hilarious things on Sunday night was to watch woke leftists explode in ecstasy on Facebook and X over the halftime show without having the first clue what they were applauding. Bad Bunny cleaned up the lyrics to the songs he performed Sunday night… a little, but generally speaking, if those had been in English, there would have been a problem. (RELATED: NFL Tries Male Cheerleaders. That’s the Left’s Plan to Win Back Men?)

And the show ended with a recitation of all of the countries in the Western Hemisphere, with the U.S. and Canada named last, and an assertion that “we are all America.”

Which was a very unmistakable in-your-face to the mainland U.S.A. It was, as some have called it, a humiliation ritual. A Latin-supremacist message. After presenting Latin life, in the person of the mini-Puerto Rico set assembled on the Levi’s Stadium field, as poor and crappy.

And the thing is, if that’s Bad Bunny’s act, then fine. He’s Puerto Rican, and he wants to push Puerto Rican culture, no problem.

But that culture has nothing to do with the NFL. So far as I know, the NFL has never played a game in Puerto Rico. If there is organized football on that island — American football, I mean, not futbol where you can’t use your hands — it isn’t on a particularly high level. So how is it appropriate to push Latin American culture — exclusionary Latin American culture, at that — on the one remaining American (as in United States of America) cultural event celebrating our own history and heritage? Nothing is more uniquely USA American than the Super Bowl, and yet it has to be taken over by others who don’t speak the language.

Yes, I know that Puerto Rico is part of the USA. You can put that tired line to bed. The end of that show made it clear Bad Bunny wasn’t just talking about Puerto Rico; he was pushing Bolivia and Cuba and Nicaragua on us as well.

Which is, of course, a metaphor for the Latin invasion of our borders that the American people elected Donald Trump to reverse. Now we’re told that the whole hemisphere is “America,” and therefore we aren’t allowed to have a border.

If the NFL thinks it’s so damned important to penetrate the Latin market, then how come it hasn’t started any football leagues in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America? You would think that’s the easiest way to develop an audience for NFL football — get people playing the game, and then falling in love with it, and they’d necessarily then want to watch it played at the highest levels. Instead, they spend a hell of a lot more time trying to get girls in the U.S. to play flag football and push that like it’s just as good as the men playing it.

Roger Goodell had better not say that having Bad Bunny play the Super Bowl is an outreach to Latin America. That’s bullshit, and everybody knows it. Do some real outreach and then get back to me. (RELATED: Roger Goodell’s Pagan NFL)

We’re seeing this kind of thing everywhere, and it’s terribly dishonest. I could have written this column a few days ago, and I almost did, when it came out that Lupita Nyong’o, the Kenyan-Mexican actress who’s been in a number of movies and TV shows, is cast as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey feature. I like Lupita fine, and I agree that she’s very pretty, and she certainly has acting talent. But casting her as Helen of Troy is absurd. She isn’t Greek.

Yes, I know that neither is Diane Kruger, who played Helen in Troy. Diane Kruger is German. And while I like her a lot as well, that was also lousy casting. The Trojans were Greeks; these stories are from Greek myths, and the cast of movies made about the Iliad and the Odyssey should be, or look, Greek. Or at least Mediterranean.

Out of respect to the Greeks, whose culture is being appropriated.

Kruger’s Helen is a fit for British adaptations of the original text from Homer, in which she was described as blonde with fair skin. By the standards of modern cultural priggishness, we should reject that just as loudly as the idea that Kenyan-Mexicans are Greeks.

And we have to have this debate because Christopher Nolan took it on the chin a few years back when he didn’t cast any black people in Dunkirk. So he gave ‘em Helen of Troy.

This isn’t about Lupita, just like it isn’t about Bad Bunny. It’s about the higher-ups making decisions about culture, and deliberately sabotaging and sanding down all of the edges and contours that make Western civilization what it is.

The Greeks have to surrender their myths for the world’s participation and consumption. The U.S. has to accede to having the Super Bowl swallowed by the open borders crowd. The Brits could well have a prime minister wearing a hijab by the end of the year. And the Spanish and French are literally importing foreigners in the millions for the purpose of voting. (RELATED: Spain’s Demographic Suicide: A Generational Error Europe Will Not Undo)

Is it a surprise that Japan just took the hardest turn to the right since the end of World War II? The Japanese aren’t stupid. They see the world for what it is, and they’ve decided they don’t want any part of it. And they’ll be armed to the teeth in no time flat — and almost certainly Japan’s birth rate will rebound along with their newfound national identity.

Turning Point USA saw the Bad Bunny spectacle coming and threw together a halftime show of their own starring Kid Rock. Between TPUSA’s YouTube channel and Charlie Kirk’s channel, that show was sitting at 24 million views in the first 15 hours it was available, and it was on other platforms as well.

The NFL’s cultural arsonist defenders are scoffing that the TPUSA show was a “bust.” They’re saying the Bad Bunny halftime show is a massive win because of the controversy it started, and the fact that it “won” the competition with Kid Rock et al validates this debacle.

I’m no marketing genius, to my eternal regret, but I do know this — controversy as a marketing tool is something that works when you’re building a brand. When you’re an outsider looking in. Getting the gig as the producer or performer of the NFL halftime show is literally as inside looking out as it’s possible to be. In that scenario, controversy is failure.

And those 24 million views for the TPUSA show are people who either openly rejected the NFL’s provocative choices, or at least showed themselves open to alternatives.

That’s an indication that a whole lot of people have had it with things that are not appropriate. Though it’s going to be a while before we know if the message is received.

READ MORE from Scott McKay:

Five Quick Things: The Wrath of the Savages

You Can’t Go on Destroying Wealth Forever, You Know. Ultimately, There Are Consequences.

The Med-Mal Floodgates Are Open Thanks to the Fox Varian Case, and Thank God for That