The Media Research Center’s hatred of Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl continued in a Feb. 9 CNSNews.com propaganda piece by Craig Bannister:
A TMZ poll conducted following Sunday’s Super Bowl reveals football fans much preferred an alternative halftime show provided by Turning Point USA on social media, compared to the game’s broadcast halftime performance by a notorious, polarizing, anti-American, anti-law enforcement singer with a penchant for explicit lyrics.
The game’s halftime musical break on NBC and streamed on Peacock pitted singer Bad Bunny performing (almost entirely in Spanish) against TPUSA’s halftime show, headlined by singer Kid Rock (who sang in English).
In terms of viewer approval, it wasn’t much of a contest, according to the TMZ online poll.
Online polls are easily gamed and highly biased, but Bannister doesn’t mention that part.
Bannister served up another propaganda piece that day:
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell loves singer Bad Bunny, the league declared on social media Sunday following the notorious Latino singer’s divisive halftime performance in Spanish disenfranchising English-speaking fans during Sunday’s Super Bowl.
“Commish [heart emoji] Benito,” the NFL captioned a video it posted on X.com of Goodell and Benito Bad Bunny hugging and smiling.
While Bad Bunny is known for kissing other men, the two stopped at hugs during their on-camera embrace on Sunday.
Likewise, Bad Bunny is also infamous for wearing women’s clothes, such as dresses and skirts. It had been rumored that he would do so again on Sunday, but both he and Goodell restrained themselves from flouting sartorial convention on-camera at the Super Bowl that night.
Despite having published Bannister’s articles, Jorge Bonilla accused others of propaganda in a Feb. 10 post:
I cannot recall any Super Bowl halftime show ever needing a next-day explainer, but CBS News apparently thinks you need one after the Bad Bunny spectacle during Super Bowl LX. And, as fate would have it, CBS’s self-styled “Bad Bunny correspondent”, Lilia Luciano, handled the segment which quickly descended into outright propaganda.
Watch as Luciano regurgitates Bad Bunny’s fake ICE raids story, and confirms our suspicions regarding Bad Bunny’s “God Bless América:”
[…]The segment, prior to this moment, was equal parts explainer and worshipful review. Luciano went through the visuals, gushed over Ricky Martin, and cast Lady Gaga as the show’s diversity token. Then began the propaganda.
[…]Luciano then hails what she calls a “teaching moment.” What is Bad Bunny teaching us, you might ask? That the “America” in “God Bless America” really meant “The Americas”, from Argentina to Alaska and points in-between. If we are all América, then what need is there for borders?
The segment closed out with additional explainers and with a reference to the Puerto Rican community as a “diaspora”, a characterization many reject because it is insulting to actual diasporas. Looking back, we absolutely called how the show would be critically acclaimed.
Tim Graham devoted his Feb. 10 podcast to similarly complaining:
The Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, fresh from trashing ICE at the Grammy Awards, organized a highly divisive Super Bowl spectacle that put his leftist Latino identity politics front and center. The ardent adoration it drew from leftists and Democrats underlined its political intent.
MRC Director of Media Analysis Geoff Dickens and news analyst Jorge Bonilla assessed the controversy, or in this case, liberal journalists selling the Kool-Aid that this was all about “love,” that it was unifying. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell tried to sell this as a message of unity, which was clearly false.
Don’t miss Jorge’s breakdown of the halftime show on FoxNews.com. We consider him the conservative movement’s expert on all things Bad Bunny and Puerto Rico.
Does Bonilla’s and Graham’s predictable denouncement of Bad Bunny’s performance similarly push the idea that he’s being politicized? It would seem so.
Curtis Houck devoted a post to whining about the show:
Despite not having had the broadcast rights to Super Bowl LX, Monday’s CBS Morningsspent a heaping 14 minutes and 35 seconds fawning over Bad Bunny’s halftime performance as “a heartfelt message of togetherness and love,” “dope,” filled with “electricity,” “spectacular,” and full of “unity…and we are one America” and smeared those who disliked it as opposing those character traits and “one of the most unifying performances” in Super Bowl history.
From the get-go, featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers boated he “didn’t understand the words, but I understood the message, the vibe, the feeling, the electricity.”
Co-host Nate Burleson touted Bad Bunny in his report on the Super Bowl itself amid soundbites from the halftime show: “[N]obody brought the house down like Bad Bunny…In a Super Bowl first, the global superstar sang almost exclusively in Spanish…He closed the show with a heartfelt message of togetherness and love…holding a football emblazoned with ‘together, we are America.’”
Houck then whined that it was pointed out that President Trump hated the show as much as he did:
They then pivoted to President Trump’s disgust with the show, painting it as the skunk at the garden party and thus dismayed with the idea anyone would reasonably disagree with them. White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe joined the fray[.] […]
O’Keefe also made a tongue-in-cheek jab at Trump before noting Bad Bunny’s tour didn’t include a stop inside a U.S. date “out of concern fans attending his concerts could be targeted by immigration agents”: “I am going to let the President in on a little secret, even those of us who speak Spanish sometimes don’t entirely understand what Bad Bunny is saying, but it’s about the music.”
There was yet another Bad Bunny segment in the second hour, kicked off by King saying Bad Bunny “look[ed] so confident, so cool.” Variety’s Jam Aswad replied it was “spectacular” and “top three, top five all-time” since “[o]n every level — performance, the musical performance, the production, eye candy, spectacle and some sly messaging as well.”
None of these posts quoted anyone who actually liked and enjoyed the show.