The Super Bowl. MAGA and the Half Time Show.

One of my mentors, who does not know she is my mentor, Faith Popcorn, wrote about the halftime show yesterday.

She talked about how Bad Bunny brought vibrant street life to millions of people who are disconnected from the everyday realities of neighborhoods that do not look like theirs. How he reminded us there are many Americas, and many Americans, each with its own rhythm, language, and value. She said she loved his motto, YHLQMDLG, yo hago lo que me da la gana. I do whatever I want. Very cool. Or should I say very hot.

Now here is the part I cannot stop thinking about.

When I think of the NFL, I do not think left wing liberal. I think MAGA. I think corporate cathedral. I think the billion dollar testosterone machine that can make a basic Thursday night game feel like the Super Bowl if the camera angles are right.

So when Bad Bunny took that stage, it was not just entertainment. It was a cultural stress test. And MAGA America felt it.

First, a lot of them did not experience it as celebration. They experienced it as displacement. Not, look at this incredible artistry. More, this is not my America. Spanish lyrics, urban street aesthetics, Caribbean rhythms, a confident Latin identity that did not pause to translate itself. For some viewers, that did not feel like an invitation. It felt like being edged out of the center seat.

Second, they treated it as political, even if it was not. Bad Bunny did not come out and deliver a speech. But in this moment, visibility itself is read as politics. Spanish on the NFL stage becomes wokeness. Brown bodies centered becomes DEI pandering. Joy that does not ask permission becomes cultural takeover. The content almost does not matter. The presence is the trigger.

Third, the masculinity factor. Bad Bunny’s version of masculinity is confident, sexual, stylish, not aggressive in the old approved ways. It is fluid, and it is unbothered, and it does not seem to care whether anyone is comfortable with it. That makes a certain worldview short circuit. Some people respond with mockery, some with hostility, some with that kind of tight little laugh that says, I do not know what to do with this so I am going to pretend it is stupid.

Fourth, the NFL betrayal narrative. This one is already loaded from the Kaepernick years. There is a whole strain of MAGA commentary that treats the league as something that used to belong to them, and is now being stolen by liberals. A Bad Bunny halftime show slots right into that story. The funny part is that the NFL has not gone left in any economic sense for one second. It is still aggressively capitalist, global, and designed to extract maximum dollars from every demographic on earth. But the grievance does not live in the money. It lives in the culture. It lives in who gets centered on the big stage.

Fifth, the backlash followed the same familiar script, because of course it did. Complaints about not understanding the lyrics, as if we have all been studying the finer points of every halftime show for decades. Claims that it was not for real Americans. Dismissals of it as niche, urban, foreign. The evergreen line, stick to football, as if football has ever been only football.

And here is the deeper part that makes me laugh and also makes me tired.

Yo hago lo que me da la gana is basically the most American motto imaginable. Radical individualism. Self definition. I do what I want. That idea gets applauded all day long in certain circles, until the person embodying it does not look, sound, or live the way they expect. Then suddenly the same freedom gets recast as threat.

So how was the show valued by MAGA America.

Largely, it was not valued as art. It was valued as evidence. Evidence that the culture is shifting. Evidence that they are no longer the default setting. Evidence that the country is bigger than their preferred narrative.

And that is why the response was not always pure rage. Sometimes it was unease. Sometimes it was disgust wrapped in jokes. Sometimes it was tuning out and calling it trash. Sometimes it was a quiet respect for the confidence, paired with a public performance of disapproval. But the dominant reaction was not appreciation. It was discomfort about who gets to take up space.

Which brings me back to the genie.

We keep worrying about them as a genie let out of the bottle. About what they will do next in government, what they will ban, what they will restrict, what they will roll back. But maybe the fact is, no matter what they do in government, they will never stop the celebration of life by individuals who cannot be silenced.

The music keeps playing. The streets keep dancing. The joy keeps showing up on stages that were never supposed to hold it.

And the bottle was never theirs to cork in the first place.

PS…

Do what you will with this information:

The owner of the Patriots, Robert Kraft, is in Epstein files, gave at least 1 million dollars to Trump’s Inauguration & sat with Trump at the Kennedy Center opening night of “Melania”.

The owner of the Seahawks, Jody Allen, has donated millions to charities involving education, arts and wildlife conservation and has never given to Trump. She’s also the chair of the “Allen Institute for Brain Science” providing free resources for scientists worldwide.