The Media Research Center’s hatred of Bad Bunny as the featured entertainer at the Super Bowl continued in a Feb. 3 post by Mark Finkelstein:
Today’s CNN This Morning rolled a clip of NFL Commish Roger Goodell making this absurd claim regarding the league’s choice of Bad Bunny as the lead performer for the Super Bowl halftime:
“This platform is used to unite people and to be able to bring people together with their creativity, with their talents, and to be able to use this moment to do that. And I think artists in the past have done that. I think Bad Bunny understands that.”
Riight! Because nothing says uniting and bringing people together like choosing Bad Bunny, who:
- Is a bitter opponent of the man 77 million Americans voted for.
- Has refused to perform in the US.
- Won’t record songs in English.
- Used his Grammy award spiel to declare “ICE Out.”
You might have thought that host Audie Cornish, a former NPR host that we’ve frequently called out for her liberal leanings, would have been all-in for the pick of Bad Bunny — and perhaps she is.
But Audie had the intellectual honesty to call Goodell out on his transparent BS.
But is it more or less transparent than Finkelstein’s BS?
Steve Malzberg spent a Feb. 7 post complaining that others criticized ICE the way he won’t:
Most Americans are aware of the controversies involving ICE, and the attacks aimed at their agents. If you are in the media, you have to know about the statements made against ICE by the man who will be featured in Sunday’s Super Bowl Half Time Show, Bad Bunny. Just last Sunday he accepted a Grammy, proclaiming, “Ice Out‘. Last year he said he didn’t tour in the U.S. because he feared ICE raids. But Friday on CNN’s The Lead With Jake Tapper, it was as if Bad Bunny has no problem with ICE.
Tapper played a campaign ad put out by Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Perry Johnson, who urged viewers to switch at halftime to TPUSA’s alternative show featuring Kid Rock, and asked former Trump campaign official Bryan Lanza what he thought about it, and he disparaged it as wasted millions, as a “gimmick.”
[…]Could Bunny’s verbal attacks on ICE have something to do with it? Tapper and his panel continued to ignore that, as Tapper then asked Democrat Strategist Chuck Rocha: “What do you make of this latest battle in the culture wars?” By not getting into the actual substance, Tapper makes it sound like it’s just white rappers in English vs. Latino rappers in Spanish.
Rocha replied: “It’s it’s ludicrous for a Latino that loves Bad Bunny. This ain’t even close. And I’m not trying to compare, but Bad Bunny has 87 million listeners a month on his social media. Kid Rock has five.” He added that the NFL is making a business decision, trying to draw in international audiences to the NFL. Rocha said “It’s just good business, and he’s a whole lot cooler.” Because he’s not a redneck?
Tapper announced: “We should also note the Super Bowl has not only featured American citizen entertainers.” But Bad Bunny is a Puerto Rican, and they are American citizens. Ooooops. As if that’s the problem? He cluelessly asked: “So, what’s with the outrage? Is it because Bad Bunny has been outspoken against Trump? Or what do you think it is?”
That doesn’t help. But Lanza lamely answered that in the “conservative echo chamber,” there are now good banks and bad banks (and don’t mention debanking), and “now it’s “bleeding into our music.”
Rather than serving up any sort of substantive critique, Malzberg turned to a fellow MRC employee to make his biased point:
Oh poor Jake. Does he not know of Bad Bunny ‘s 2020 hit Compositor Del Año where he called President Trump a mother-F****er? The same term he used for ICE Agents, along with sons of bitches, last year. Does he not know about his sexually explicit lyrics, as documented by our Jorge Bonilla? Or Jorge’s point that Bad Bunny endorsed a far-left candidate for governor of Puerto Rico who loves Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro?
Clearly, Jorge could have educated Tapper if he wanted an actual conservative critique, and fought back as Rocha claimed Bad Bunny is “about trying to hold every party accountable in Puerto Rico to do what’s right by their people.”
How in the name of journalism did all of this get left out of this segment? What was Tapper’s motivation for not once mentioning ICE?
Of course, Malzberg is no expert on Bad Bunny lyrics, given that they’re in a language foreign to him.
Tim Graham resorted to hyping a tweet from a fellow right-winger in a Feb. 8 post:
We could have predicted that a Super Bowl played in the home stadium of the San Francisco 49ers was going to lead some woke sports section to turn to their revolutionary hero Colin Kaepernick, the one who wore pigs-with-police hat socksbecause all cops are apparently pigs. It came from The Washington Post. The online headline:
What do we make of Colin Kaepernick now?
The Super Bowl is being played in his former home stadium, at a societal moment that echoes the issues he forced football fans to confront. So why is he out of mind?
As @AGHamilton tweeted for all of us: “Beyond parody to publish this take after a week of arguing that WaPo’s sports section provides irreplaceable and critical insights to readers.”
[…]Kaepernick hasn’t played in the NFL since 2016. The quarterback drafted just above him in the second round in 2011 is Andy Dalton, who’s still a backup for the Carolina Panthers, but few notice. Most players who played during Kaepernick’s years are retired and barely remembered now. For his part, Love later praised Kaepernick’s activism in the article.
Graham didn’t mention that he and rhe rest of the MRC have had Kaepernick Derangement Syndrome for years. Instead, he whined that “the Post printed 31,562 words … in just one year” over whether the Washington Redskins should change its name — which annoyed the MRC more than the act that the team hired a suspected abuser.