As American as — Bad Bunny
I didn’t know him from Yosemite Sam. But here’s the thing: The only reason I watched the Super Bowl was Bad Bunny.
I don’t dig his genre. I didn’t understand a word. And yet he was the only reason.
I didn’t care about either team playing after my beloved Broncos bit it in the AFC finals. The insufferable commercials have become parodies of excess.
So, why tune in?
So I could imagine all those racists grinding their teeth and flinging their nachos.
So I could imagine the self-parody of Turning Point USA “alternative halftime programming” advertised as “celebrating faith, family and freedom.”
“Faith”: Let us venerate the least religious — and most Bible-illiterate, and meanest — president in history, yet one who plays the religious right like a harpsichord.
“Family”: Again, we shall venerate the least family-devoted president in history — bedding multiple beauties with wife No. 3 at home, adjudicated for sexual assault and 34 felonies. Most famous quote: “Grab ‘em by the pussy.” In what chapter of the New Testament is that? Whatever, lead us in song, Kid Rock.
“Freedom”: Three cheers from the MAGA choir for immigration agents as they kill and obliterate God-given rights like habeas corpus and due process. That’s next to godliness if the detainee’s skin is brown.
Ooh, our president went nuclear denouncing the Super Bowl halftime show. Think of the harm to the nation, to his white-wool flock. Reported The Onion, “Terrified conservatives lose ability to speak English after exposure to Bad Bunny performance.”
You can see why the MAGA performers were frantic to protect pregnable ears.
Ah, Turning Point USA. Such mavens of virtue. I wonder how many Turn and Pointers tittered demurely or equivocated White House-style about the video their favorite president shared showing Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
Hey, free speech, right? But if a college professor in a red state uses the word “equity,” it’s off with that egg head.
The pulpit-pounding set has a phrase, “salad bar believers,” for Christians who don’t toe the strict line they have drawn for us all. You can’t treat gays, lesbians and trans people as God’s children and be a Christian, they say. You can’t support contraception and those who religiously provide it, like Planned Parenthood — the largest preventer of abortion in America. You can’t pick and choose when it comes to faith, they say. Yet they pick their way past all the affronts to humanity and human kindness by this administration. Consistency is a bitch.
Wait. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, Bad Bunny.
He’s not one of us, say the alternative programmers.
My son was the one to inform me that Bad Bunny, birth name Benito Ocasio — is indeed one of us — a U.S. citizen, born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory.
Puerto Rico doesn’t count, say the MAGA ignorami, there at the salad bar.
They are just following their role model, and we’re not talking Jesus Christ. After Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017, the former offered to “swap” it for Greenland, having called the people there “dirty” and “poor.”
Greenland is clean. It also offers racial purity.
MAGA’s hissy fit about Bad Bunny is one more example of why the Republican Party is so out of touch with the country.
Its president carries out a campaign of troops and vituperation against cities and states characterized by diversity.
It looks askance at any voice that doesn’t summon the ghost of Anita Bryant.
It is about building walls rather than building community.
“Mass deportation” makes its heart sing, as its methods disgust more and more Americans.
The know-nothings on the right no doubt fantasized about ICE nabbing Bad Bunny as he exited the Super Bowl stage and sending him “back to where he came from.”
“Deported back to the U.S.,” quipped my son.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
