The Americans: Bad Bunny, “Too Political,” and the Violence the Super Bowl Can’t Hide
Part 1
The Super Bowl and the Myth of a “Normal” America
In a normal world, the only relevant Americans at the annual Super Bowl – an American-style football game between the two most dominant teams in the sport – are the athletes, some of whom past Super Bowls have revealed as among the greatest of all time; the performers, whose selection to perform at the game and especially headline its Half-time show is sometimes regarded as the pinnacle of an artist’s professional reach; and the spectators, in the arena and their homes alike, witnessing multiple feats of human excellence.
But we’re not living in a normal world — we’re living in one that rationalises or outright encourages governments to commit and mask crimes against their own people. This reality has led to enough injury against U.S. Americans that their most famous sporting event of the year is also a spectacle of racially-charged animosity, itself manufactured by a government in pursuit of tyranny.
Bad Bunny, American Identity, and Manufactured Controversy
The Half-time performer of 2026 is Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, who has become the subject of artificial debates on American identity as opponents to his selection as headliner have largely split into two camps. One claims he is “not American,” while the other calls him “too political”.
It’s not always clear if painting Bad Bunny as a foreigner to the United States stems from Aryanism against him on a racial basis or ignorance that Bad Bunny, who hails from Puerto Rico, isn’t just a U.S. citizen, but one homegrown by birth, because Puerto Rico is a part of the United States. While mainstream media capitalized on heightened curiosity about Half-time performers’ citizenship status and catalogued past performances by non-Americans, most outlets failed to explore why detractors might exclusively isolate Bad Bunny on debunked foreign origins; why some Americans might crave an American performer during a time of national fracture; why some Americans might not accept Bad Bunny – as American as they come – as a “true” American; and lastly, why some ignorance of Puerto Ricans as U.S. citizens may be justified.
Puerto Rico and “Taxation Without Representation”
Indeed, the U.S. government operates an ill-known apartheid, in which Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth but denied the full rights that accompany U.S. citizenship, including that of voting in national elections. Although some Puerto Rican leaders advocate for full independence while others advocate for statehood, Puerto Rico’s current status is one of purgatory – in which residents pay most kinds of federal taxes, contributing billions per year to the tax pool, but aren’t granted autonomy in federal representation.
Many Americans might already recognize this as the phrase, “taxation without representation,” often described in elementary schools as a causal driver of establishment of the modern-day United States as a sovereign democracy. Given the rapid decline of that democracy, perhaps a brief historical review, along with a discussion of expanding democratic rights to U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico, may be timely.
“Too Political”: Racism, ICE, and Selective Outrage
Regardless, the distinction between racism and ignorance as a basis of concern that Bad Bunny is “not American” tends to collapse, hence a second complaint with more plausible deniability: if he performs at the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny, who has decried the behavior of a United States government agency known as ICE – which stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will be “too political.”
However, Bad Bunny is hardly alone in his scorn: that agency has drawn opposition from almost ⅔ of the American populace, according to latest polling, ostensibly due to its unprecedented showing of masked government agents raiding the U.S. interior amid accusations and video footage of cruelty and deadly force against civilians. Although casting disapproval, even vocal, of the aforementioned as political at all, let alone “too political,” is an unconvincing leap, what’s notable about trepidation towards Bad Bunny for this reason – who has so far been only as subversive as refraining from hosting concerts in the continental U.S. due to fear of ICE raids, while reminding audiences that Hispanics are “not savages” and wearing a decorative “ICE OUT” pin – is a seemingly absent level of concern about Green Day, a notoriously political rock band from California, who is opening the Super Bowl.
Green Day and the Double Standard of “Political” Speech
Indeed, Bad Bunny’s references to so-called “political” subject matter pale in comparison to those by Green Day. For example, one of Green Day’s most prominent pieces is the song “American Idiot,” released early amid the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq. Nearly a decade before the grounds of that war were widely accepted as false, Green Day accused the U.S. government of manufacturing consent by inflicting the country with a “mindfuck,” condemned the so-called “redneck agenda,” and aligned themselves with "the faggot America.” How’s that for politics?
Given the dubious nature of emphasizing someone like Bad Bunny over a group like Green Day as “too political,” an obvious question arises about what makes someone “too political.” Is it actually being political, or is it being the target of another’s politics? In other words, is Bad Bunny “too political” because he’s voiced opposition to ICE, or is it because he looks like he should be one of ICE’s victims? More simply put, is Bad Bunny the problem, or is he a problem because ICE is supposed to treat him like one?
Labeling as Censorship and Erasure
The issue can’t be any of Bad Bunny’s positions or the casting of “too political” would hit Green Day tenfold. The issue is that Bad Bunny is a tan-skinned Puerto Rican while the latter are pale-skinned Californians, in a national landscape where Hispanics, along with other (actual or apparent) immigrants of certain ancestral origins and their human rights defenders, are ostensibly being iced out of open existence.
Framing individuals, communities, and organizations as “too political” has become a reflexive as well as deliberate tactic in the United States to promote multi-faceted censorship and slowly induce that erasure. Simply speaking from the margins about one’s personal experiences, or participating in mainstream conversations about structural violence and governmental oppression, has resulted in being labelled as “too political,” particularly by those closely aligned with President Trump and Vice President Vance’s dystopian vision for the country. This label then bleeds into use by those outside of the core MAGA coalition, for reasons ranging from a desire to build real alignment with power to merely amassing social capital by association.
Culture, Power, and the Shifting Meaning of “Political”
Being “too political”, in this context, isn’t about the degree of someone’s connection to politics, but about what language they speak and if what they speak supports the regime. With the support of Vice President Vance, the MAGA activist organization Turning Point USA has programmed its own show, branded as a celebration of "American faith, family, and freedom," as a viewing alternative to the supposedly political Half-time show, although this replacement show isn't just political – it's an attack on established cultural norms.
To headline, Turning Point USA selected the musician Kid Rock, a leading boycotter of the U.S.-based beer brand Bud Light when it prominently hired a transgender influencer two years ago. He more recently performed at the 2024 Republican National Convention that nominated Donald Trump and J.D. Vance to office. Lastly, Kid Rock, who is now 55, has sexually referenced minors in his lyrics since the age of thirty, singing he likes them "underage" which "some say that’s statutory" but he says "it's mandatory."
Any reasonable person would find the tacit endorsement of Kid Rock's cultural discrimination and allusions to sex with minors as core American values beyond political – a total upheaval of basic norms, some of which are even codified into law. Yet, there's a presumed contrast between the implied apoliticality of Turning Point USA's hyper-political replacement show and the Super Bowl, since Bad Bunny's "too political" dissent – from a government whose members have been accused even by judges of breaking civil, criminal, and constitutional laws – supposedly warranted a viewing alternative in the first place.
This highlights a cultural pattern in which undue politicality is projected onto predetermined identities, on an apolitical basis, and withheld from others, despite being saturated with politicality. As a result, the very meaning of “political” shifts to encompass anything outside the dominant group’s realm of approval.
The Cost of Being “Too Political”
Although someone like Bad Bunny, a Super Bowl Half-time performer, isn’t likely to be excluded from mainstream entertainment spaces anytime soon, his caricaturization as “too political” does affect other Benitos who don’t have global fame. The artificial labeling of someone as “too political” necessarily forces anyone at risk for that labelling to censor or shrink themselves, lest they lose whatever leverage they might otherwise scavenge on the margins.
But self-censorship and self-shrinkage, although a short-term survival tactic, has the potential for long-range backfire: it normalizes one’s very existence as an aberration of normative values, priming the population at-large for external – and irreversible – tactics to censor, shrink, and ultimately erase.
Media Responsibility and Manufactured Fatigue
While it’s understandable that some might yearn for a “refuge” from politics, and hoped that refuge would be the Super Bowl, players, performers, and staffers in the NFL have announced or implied personal beliefs for years. Bad Bunny hasn’t made the Super Bowl more political than it has ever been, and neither has Green Day for that matter.
However, skepticism of Bad Bunny’s Americanness – based on his skin tone and Hispanic ancestry – and claims that he is “too political” – based on scant evidence of any politicality at all – speaks less to the use of the Super Bowl as a political forum and more to the growing predisposition within some corners of the electorate and political establishment in the United States to prelabel those with marginalized identities as “too political,” an antic which interplays dangerously with openly imagined narratives by the White House of a country whose demographics and norms become much different.
Some individuals’ surrender to the notion that Bad Bunny is “too political” may likely stem from true fatigue, rather than wilful, organic white supremacy. But the media’s job is to help dismantle that fatigue, not regurgitate the talking points and fuel the vapid debates that sustain it. Media must question the inappropriate labelling of Bad Bunny as “too political” – and since Green Day was spared this label, half their analytical work is already done. They must not circulate the term “too political” as if it’s just a description rather than a dog whistle. And they must not ignore the constant and mounting structural and personal harm afflicted by ICE on institutions and people within the United States, a causal, traumatic, and irrevocable factor of this very fatigue, where the Super Bowl takes place.
Part 2
The Super Bowl and Human Trafficking: A Global Pattern
High-profile sporting events throughout the world have been dubbed hotspots of human trafficking, and the NFL Super Bowl is no exception. And it’s not just sex trafficking – for example, the means by which Qatar was able to build infrastructure to host the 2022 World Cup garnered widespread allegations of forced labor by victims trafficked into the region. But in the context where human trafficking isn’t for purposes of labor, it’s otherwise for sex.
Does Sex Trafficking Increase During Major Sporting Events?
Although human rights and investigative organizations have not conclusively determined whether sex trafficking increases as a result of these events or if they simply offer law enforcement more opportunities to bring instances of human trafficking to light, the nature of such events promotes sex trafficking in numerous ways:
The transience of human footprints during major sporting events provides plausible deniability to actors both sides of supply and demand, whose time spent in the area of an event is easily justified by attending the event itself or related activities
Because elite sporting events attract high-profile spectators and are often bankrolled by high-profile investors who then convene in high-profile parties, there’s a spike in demand for commercial sex as a form of personal and collective entertainment
Similarly, supply-side spotters for potential trafficking victims, including minors, are able to flit into and out of the area of the major sporting event undetected, scouting and even recruiting or kidnapping potential victims
Epstein, the NFL, and Elite Networks of Exploitation
Although the Super Bowl is not unique as an ad-hoc hub of sex trafficking, recent revelations explicating or implying ties between certain owners of NFL teams and the pedophilic sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein depict how entrenched sex trafficking is not just on the streets, but in the most exclusive circles of a sporting event’s social environment. Although not every association between Epstein and an NFL figure is confirmed or connected to illegal behavior, all known thus far – in reporting by Front Office Sports – occurred after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for charges related to minors and prostitution.
The 2026 Super Bowl and Ownership Entanglements
Regarding the 2026 Super Bowl specifically, the two competing teams both have embroiled ownership. Paul Allen is the late owner of the Seattle Seahawks, who Jeffrey Epstein claims to have met at least once in emails with a third party (although no evidence proves any direct meetings, nor have any other known emails corroborated direct contact between Epstein and Allen, and Allen is not alive to speak for himself.)
Additionally are mentions of Robert Kraft, the living owner of the New England Patriots, between Epstein and one of his attorneys, Jack Goldberger, whom Epstein told he was urging Kraft to hire for defense against charges also related to prostitution (although not of a minor.) Whether this conversation between Kraft and Epstein took place is not corroborated, but Kraft did ultimately hire Goldberger, who had previously represented Epstein during his 2008 guilty plea for procuring a minor for prostitution.
“Is My Present in NYC?” Trafficking as Transaction
But perhaps the most revealing conversation between Epstein and an NFL figure, one that epitomizes the function of sex trafficking at major events, is one of direct contact with Stephen Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants. In various threads the two exchange remarks about the appearance and personalities of people Epstein had trafficked, although Tisch denied accepting “any of [Epstein’s] invitations” to Front Office Sports. It’s unclear if those “invitations” included the emails’ planned encounters, as one thread culminated in a simple question from Tisch: “is my present in NYC?” which Epstein affirmed.
For those who benefit from sex trafficking, whether by profiting on the supply side or exacting sexual fantasies on demand, their victims truly are a gift. But victims, who may be concealed from law enforcement by traffickers like Epstein and his accomplices despite operating somewhat openly, suffer one injustice after another, with multiple consequences to their health.
Unwanted Pregnancy as a Consequence of Trafficking
Numerous studies confirm that unwanted pregnancies are a primary such consequence, either as a means of coercion by traffickers or as a by-product of unprotected nonconsensual sex. In either case, though, victims have an interest in terminating the pregnancy, for many reasons that include ensuring a newborn does not enter the trafficking environment and protecting themselves against the fatal prospect of childbirth outside of a hospital.
Post-Roe America: Abortion Access as Intervention
Although most studies can still only speculate about the deleterious outcomes of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade (1973) and revoking abortion access as a federal right, current literature converges at access to abortion clinics as a frontline means of intervention for human trafficking victims in multiple ways:
If able to present at a medical provider for an abortion, even if the victim’s status as such remains concealed, the victim is able to terminate an unwanted pregnancy through standard professional means, rather than punishing and often fatal ones outside of a medical setting
Moreover, abortion treatments often mark the first or only instances victims appear in a medical setting, enabling medical providers to provide treatment for additional health conditions like HPV, STD/I’s, and bodily injuries acquired from being trafficked
Because medical providers are mandatory reporters, if abortion providers can either discern from evidence or victims’ own statements that trafficking has occurred, they can alert law enforcement to intervene
The NFL’s Anti-Abortion Advertising Decision
Given the vital role that abortion clinics play as a safety net for victims and the interplay of sporting events like the NFL’s Super Bowl with sex trafficking, one would expect that the Super Bowl committee itself would do all it can to mitigate the latter by buttressing the former. Instead, the NFL League Office this year declined to veto an advertisement that encouraged those with unwanted pregnancies to carry to term and relinquish the newborn for adoption, implicitly – but creatively – demonizing abortion in the process.
Producers of the ad include activist organizations for Republican Party causes, including so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” which are widely accused of spreading medical misinformation (including about contraceptives and STI’s), operating without proper licensure, and deceptive advertising. The leader of one of these organizations, Ryan Hanlon, has recently joined President Trump’s administration to lead the federal Children’s Bureau.
The False Choice Between Abortion and Adoption
In addition to unearthing this advertisement’s production profile, sociologist Gretchen Sisson also pointed out the misleading framing of a dichotomy between aborting one’s fetus and delivering a newborn for adoption, noting that those who abort early in a pregnancy view pregnancy itself as an obstacle, while those who abort later in a pregnancy – when parents who relinquish for adoption begin to consider such a prospect – due so for reasons outside their control, like medical emergencies.
Protest, Propaganda, and Inverted Reality
Perhaps the most sinister part of this advertisement is its subliminal messaging. While depicting its main subject – who appears to be an older high school or college student – as a trailblazer who seemingly decides to carry her pregnancy to term so someone else can adopt her newborn – right after receiving a positive pregnancy test – the advertisement also shows pro-choice and anti-choice protestors as aggressive, terrifying haranguers of the protagonist along her journey.
In reality, however, pro-choice protesters do not appear at medical settings to prevent people from giving birth; only anti-choice protestors appear to prevent people from getting abortions. Since Roe v. Wade (1973) was overturned, abortion clinics specifically have reported bomb threats, murder attempts, and harassment of patients in the clinic’s vicinity. If the person in the advertisement couldn’t carry to term, the pro-choice camp would support her right to survive that unwanted pregnancy; the anti-choice camp, if their own legislation that’s been passed into law is anything to go by, would want her dead or incarcerated.