Days after the ‘big game,’ one that broke the hearts of bettors everywhere, people are still talking about ‘it.’ The ‘it,’ is not the game. It’s what occurred 48 days before the actual game. But first, a little background.
The nation’s political right, led by none other than the President, lost its mind because the NFL chose the world’s biggest musical act—Puerto Rican rapper, singer and music producer, Bad Bunny—to perform for the country’s biggestsporting event.
The President, never shy about sharing an off-color or thoughtless comment, immediately labeled the Puerto Rican-American superstar a “terrible choice,” for the big show. Other right-leaning opinions about Bad Bunny (aka Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio) included “anti-American,” “shameful,” and worst of all, a “massive Trump hater.”
Offering that last take was Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem who threatened to station ICE agents “all over the Super Bowl.”
The right’s tasteless reaction to Bad Bunny, both commercially and artistically, makes little sense. The 31-year-old Puerto Rican is musical gold in America and around the world.
Along with his GRAMMY win for Album of the Year, “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS,” he also won for Best Global Music Performance and Best Musica Urbana album. He was also nominated in three other categories. His winning album is also the first Spanish-language album in Grammy history to win.
Bad Bunny’s acceptance speech—in English and Spanish—was both gracious and political, addressing the racism that has percolated since he was announced as the Super Bowl’s halftime performer.
“Thank you, mom, for giving birth to me in Puerto Rico…I want to dedicate this award to all the people who had to leave their homeland to follow their dreams.” He also referenced his island home Puerto Rico as a place “much bigger than 100 X 35 miles.”
It was not just that Bad Bunny performs in Spanish that earned him the ire of the right and caused it to offer up a barely watched, second-tier acts halftime show, it is also his politics.
He endorsed Kamala Harris, spoken in support of LGBQT rights, criticized Trump’s anti-immigration policies and has refused to perform in any U.S. venues fearing some fans could be arrested by ICE.
The tsunami of hate aimed toward Bad Bunny and his selection for America’s biggest sporting event of the year, has come from all corners of the political right. It is a reflection of the hatred spewing over the nation in the form of a president hell bent on targeting ‘other’ Americans and millions of undocumented immigrants that he simply wants out of the country.
As America woke up last Friday morning, it was greeted by what may be President Trump’s most vile social media post ever, outdistancing his worst by a light year.
A nation practically inured to his often craven and boorish Truth Social postings, was shocked by his depiction of former President Obama and his wife, Michelle, as cartoon monkeys. His spokesperson denied any racial intent to his racist primate trope, one nearly as old as the nation itself
But the Truth Social post and the outcry against the Puerto Rican musical icon reflect a metastasizing cancer on the country now playing out in Minneapolis where a Trump militia targeting immigrants and those merely suspected of being immigrant has been roaming the streets for now going on two months.
While 3,000 fully armed and outfitted ICE troops, many with only 47 days of training, carry the imprimatur of the President, they also have the endorsement of a Supreme Court Justice.
It was last year when Justice Kavanaugh called without cause ICE stops, “common sense.” He said it was OK to detain people based on “apparent ethnicity,” or where they “gather,” a reference to Home Depot parking lots where immigrant day laborers can often be found looking for work. But ICE has taken it to a whole different level.
These ‘shake’n’bake’ ICE troops, so called for their lack of training and law enforcement experience, have created havoc, fear and worse wherever the President has ordered them.
In Los Angeles and Chicago, both places with burgeoning Latino and immigrant Latino populations, ICE has indiscriminately carried out sweeps of day laborers, restaurants, construction sites and agriculture fields.
In Chicago, ICE carried out a commando-like mission on an apartment complex, complete with Black Hawk helicopter and agents repelling down on ropes. It has also shot people, wounding at least one U.S. citizen, a Latina Montessori teacher. But it is Minneapolis where a benchmark for darkness and depravity has been set.
While ICE was ostensibly dispatched to Minnesota to arrest Somali immigrants suspected of a huge social services fraud scheme, the target quickly moved.
ICE began rounding up Latinos and immigrant Latinos using any means necessary. Immigrants or suspected immigrants, including American citizens, were dragged out of their cars, arrested in their workplaces, parents were taken from school pick-up lines where they waited for their kids. An unknown number of those arrested have been ‘disappeared,’ taken to prison camps scattered across the country.
Protests have also turned deadly with two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, shot as they joined protests. Good was shot by an agent as she tried to maneuver her car away from an ICE protest. Pretti was shot ten times as he was being pummeled by as many as five agents.
“Those killings are heartbreaking,” said Colorado Attorney General and candidate for governor, Phil Weiser. Worse, he said, was the government “lying about it and defaming good people,” calling it un-American. Weiser was referring to Noem’s “domestic terrorists” description of the pair.
Weiser said his office is already preparing in the event ICE comes to Colorado as it has other cities. “We have set up an office, a complaint system, so we’re ready to get feedback, concerns about what federal agents are doing.” “We know we have to be ready.” Colorado, he promised, will prosecute ICE agents for breaking the law.
But what has happened in Minnesota and has already happened in cities including Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis and New Orleans is already happening in Colorado said, Alex Sanchez, President and CEO of Voces Unidos.
“We have seen people pulled out of vehicles, seen everyday people shot with rubber bullets, pepper sprayed and beat down on the street,” he said. “We’re not talking about hypotheticals.” Sanchez organization speaks for Latino immigrants in fifteen mostly western slope counties. To date, Sanchez said, Voces Unidos has tracked more than 100 individual cases of ICE-related violence on immigrants in Colorado.
Now that the game is history and ICE continues to occupy, detain and deport, it seems as though it never really was about music, after all.
And, by the way, the Seattle Seahawks are the new Superbowl Champions beating the New England Patriots 29-13.
