Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hola, y bienvenidos al Ben Shapiro Show. Yeah, so I had to learn Spanish so I could understand the halftime show over at the Super Bowl. And I have a lot of thoughts.
Chapter 2: What are the main critiques of Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show?
I have a lot of thoughts. First, that Daily Wire Plus app, that's how you take the Daily Wire with you wherever you go. And right now, we are providing you with actual breaking news and journalism in brand new ways. We have a new podcast series out And of course, the App Store and Google Play to join the fun. Overall, honestly, like great production value.
I understand this halftime show is not aimed at me. I listen to classical music and there was the usual plethora of butts on the screen, which again has become common to all halftime shows, unfortunately. But overall, in terms of the production value, production value, incredible, incredible.
I was very much in favor of a couple actually getting married, like a straight couple getting married in the middle of the halftime show. And by the way, I did enjoy the... entire wedding production dance with Lady Gaga as the wedding singer and even the kid falling asleep on the chairs, which I've been told by some of my producers. Producer Savvy is of Latina extraction.
And also Fabby, the makeup lady, is Puerto Rican. And so they told me that this is like a common thing at Latino weddings. It is also a common thing at Jewish weddings where everybody goes too late and the kids are all sleeping on the chairs. Again, charming. I enjoyed that. The staging was immaculate. All of that is fine. So let's start with that. Here is sort of my generalized critique.
There is a thing that goes on in American culture that is highly irritating to me. And that thing is where everyone celebrates a thing that is left leaning in nature politically. And then if you notice the thing is happening, they tell you that you're crazy. And why are you focusing on it? And you are just over your skis. And why are you so upset? So let's start with this again.
I'm not particularly upset by halftime shows at the Super Bowl because who cares? In the grand scheme of life, is this a big deal? No, it is not a big deal. The reason that some people are concerned today or upset today is because, really, I think the end of the performance. So, let's start with this. Again, I am not a Bad Bunny fan.
To me, I don't know whether he's a good bunny, a bad bunny, or the worst bunny. I have no gradation. I have no scale upon which to judge his badness of bunniness. I do not know his music. I didn't understand a word he was saying. Frankly, it seemed to me, as a person who, again, does not traffic in this music and doesn't listen to this music, that when I was watching...
the aforementioned bad bunny walking through the screen, holding a football, gaining more yards than the New England Patriots the entire first half and kind of saying things to me in Spanish. And I had no idea what he was saying.
I will admit that it felt to me like perhaps I'd been in a car crash and there was a person walking at me telling me that I needed to get out my insurance card in a language I did not understand. So this was not geared toward me. But again, I told you the pros. The pros are that beautifully produced, the couple getting married mid-show, the kids falling asleep on the chairs.
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Chapter 3: How does Bad Bunny's performance reflect cultural and political themes?
All that was very, very charming. And I don't even have a problem with a lot of Spanish being in the show because guess what? A lot of people in the United States speak Spanish and that's totally cool. A lot of people in the United States speak a lot of second languages. There are some cons. And again, here's where you get into the gaslighting. One, one con, no English.
It is fine, obviously, to have a lot of Spanish and not even unprecedented. I remember a few years ago, Shakira and J-Lo did the halftime show, and I believe they did a song in Spanish. Cool. That's awesome. And of course, there are tens of millions of Latino Americans who contribute in unbelievable ways to our common project as Americans. One third of the American military is Latino.
But why no English, right? That's a decision. That's a decision that's being made. No English where people who don't speak Spanish don't understand what is going on. I mean, he could have been saying literally anything, and I would have had no idea what he was saying. And second of all, to pretend that Bad Bunny is an apolitical figure is, of course, very, very silly.
Bad Bunny is not an apolitical figure. He has never pretended to be an apolitical figure. So, for example, when he showed himself on the Grammys and then him giving a Grammy to a little kid who looked precisely like an ICE detainee, don't tell me that this wasn't on purpose. Of course it was on purpose. Don't be silly.
Don't be silly now.
And here comes Bad Bunny to give the Grammy to the little kid who's supposed to look pretty clearly like the ICE detainee. I mean, so much so that everybody... He was not, by the way. And then he starts with this stuff again. Again, not my jam. Not my jam.
The entire, I keep coming back to the production value because just as a person who enjoys a good show, the production value, incredibly high. Building like an entire sugar cane field out in the middle of the Super Bowl. All those sugar canes, by the way, were people inside the sugar cane. So it was like the March of the Ents when they were setting that thing up.
People just kind of wandering into the middle of the field. There are some weird moments. Obviously, one of his songs is about the failure of electricity in Puerto Rico. And so it's people falling off of telephone lines, which if you have no frame of reference, which I really did not until I actually looked it up, I have no idea what's going on.
And then when I found out, I feel like that's a very weird way to sort of tout your home culture is, and also our electricity fails a lot. If I were to do one for Jewish culture, I'd be like, also, Ashkenazic food is totally tasteless. That'd be kind of a strange flex. We'll get to more on the Super Bowl halftime show and all the rest of our cultural questions in just one moment.
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Chapter 4: What are the pros and cons of having a halftime show in Spanish?
And there are a bunch of countries in the Western Hemisphere that are actually not predominantly Latino. So what he's doing there, this kind of United Nations routine, is not a celebration of America or a celebration of cultures that coexist peacefully in America or a celebration of Latino culture in America. It is a celebration. of apparently everyone being American. And this is what he says.
He says, we're all Americans. Well, you're an American if you're in America's borders and your loyalty is to America. You're not American if you are Peruvian and you live in Peru and you spent your entire life in Peru.
And his attempt to say we are all Americans by making some sort of pedantic geographic point that the Americas encompass, like the continents of North America and South America, that's silly. And no one sees it that way. And the reality is we are all from the Americas, but we are not all Americans. When people say American, they believe that you are talking about the United States as they should.
And football is an American event. It is actually not the world's biggest event. It is America's biggest event, but ain't nobody in Japan watching the Super Bowl. This was not the World Cup. This performance at the World Cup would have made perfect sense. It would have, because that's an international event with a bunch of different, at the Olympics, this would have made perfect sense.
Doing it at the halftime show and then basically saying that America is one of many. Saying that what is happening on the stage is not a representation of the greatness of America in being able to capture many different cultures and draw from many different cultures to merge in our assimilative American values. Not doing that, but instead doing these sort of
Country separatism and then saying we are all Americans while flying the flags of countries that are not American. Like, again, that last part was, I think, to tell. And that was the part I think that people are really reacting to on a sort of gut level. Now, none of this is to say that for the third time, there aren't parts of the show that were kind of enjoyable.
Again, I'll bring up the sort of wedding part of it, which I thought was which I thought was kind of charming. Here are some of the wedding stuff that was happening.
This is an actual wedding that happened on the stage.
Like, cool, nice. And yeah, exactly, a dude marrying a woman. And then they drew a side and suddenly the whitest lady I've ever seen, Lady Gaga, who's Italian, she starts singing a salsa version of one of her songs, Die With a Smile. And then you had all the salsa dancing. And again, I think the Super Bowl needs to take it down a couple of notches in terms of the fleshly pursuits.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of Bad Bunny's political statements during the show?
They say in a history making halftime show performance performed almost entirely in Spanish. So as soon as you say a history making halftime show, you're already saying there is something uniquely important about this halftime show. So don't pretend that this is. You know, Bon Jovi playing a halftime show a few years ago.
If you're saying it's history making, clearly you're saying that it's important in a cultural political way. In history-making halftime show performed almost entirely in Spanish, the Puerto Rican star paid tribute to his heritage and the many countries, from Brazil to Mexico, whose people have come to shape the modern-day U.S.
And again, this is one of the weird conflicts about giving that list of countries and including, for example, Canada. It's kind of strange, because if you're just celebrating immigration, then theoretically a lot of immigrants from other places all over the world who come to the United States. But as the Wall Street Journal...
Review points out just a week ago, Bad Bunny denounced ICE and Customs Enforcement while accepting a Grammy Award. But on the halftime stage, she offered up a buoyant celebration of Latino culture. The elaborate stage design included a maze of sugar cane and a single story house similar to the one he used during his 31 date residency in San Juan, Puerto Rico last summer.
As Bad Bunny strutted through the greenery, he passed by old men playing dominoes, women chatting in a nail salon and boxers sparring a montage of scenes from life in Puerto Rico. And then there were a stream of celebrities who showed up to offer their support. I will admit that I did not recognize any of them except for Ricky Martin showed up.
And I mean, I think we're all getting old because I'm old enough to remember when Ricky Martin was pretending to be straight. So he showed up flanked by a bunch of bananas, which was a little strange. Anyway, he showed up. Apparently, Pedro Pascal and Jessica Alba were there for like a hot second. And then he finished that set by spiking a football that said together, we are America.
So that's the part. If you're going to say it's important, and then we notice that it's important, and we ask, so why is it important? And then you tell us. And then we say, well, we don't like that. That's not us doing something wrong. That's you gaslighting people. But here are the things that are not wrong. Doing the vast majority of the show in Spanish, don't care. Fine.
I'll be honest to you. When Kendrick Lamar did his show, I had no idea what he was saying the entire show. And he was purportedly speaking English. I had no idea a single word that he was saying. So my bewilderment at the... innate illiteracy of many of our artists continues. My inability to speak the language they are speaking is not unique to the Halftime Show. That I'm not upset about.
I'm not upset about the featuring of Puerto Rican culture or Latino culture. Cool, fine. Kind of enjoy. The thing that I am concerned about is the innate argument that is being made that the greatness of America somehow must be subsumed under the rubric of all countries are awesome and America is somehow equivalent in some way to other countries. It is not.
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