MAGA's 'fake Super Bowl' halftime a 'small ray of hope in our bleak political moment': analysis

Salon's Amanda Marcotte says that MAGA fury over Puerto Rican megastar Bad Bunny headlining the Super Bowl and their "fake" alternative to it shows how "pitifully out of touch" they are with pop-culture and that, she says, is a ray of hope for the future.

Turning Point USA, the ultra MAGA far-right organization founded by the late influencer Charlie Kirk, has announced "The All American Halftime Show," something Marcotte notes has neither a lineup nor a location yet.

What it does have, however, she says, is a "groundswell of racist rage," in response to the anti-MAGA reggaeton star.

"Mr. Bunny, whose real name is Benito Martínez Ocasio, raps and sings almost exclusively in Spanish," Marcotte explains. "The delicate snowflakes of the right react to that language, which is spoken at home by over 40 million Americans, like it’s the summer sun swiftly melting them into the whiniest vapor imaginable."

Reaction to the announcement of TPUSA's own halftime show included a "hyperbolic flurry" "from MAGA followers, hoping that hate alone would somehow produce an entertaining alternative to one of the most popular artists in the world," Marcotte says.

Marcotte quotes one such reaction from someone "who presumably voted for a thrice-married adulterer for president," Marcotte snaps.

That reaction: "Finally, a wholesome family halftime show during football. The demonic evilness has to stop and be wholesome and make people smile and feel comfortable watching something."

And while "Anything in English" was the first option in TPUSA's website poll on what genre of music their fans would like to hear at their proposed halftime show, some suggested 90s Christian-leaning rock band Creed, while others, Marcotte says, offered "a murderers’ row of has-beens like Papa Roach, Nickelback, Staind . . ."

"Basically, the same array of CDs you’d find in the floorboards of the least dateable guy you knew in the 1990s," Marcotte quips.

Mocking MAGA who fell for a satirical meme advertising MAGA musicians Kid Rock, Ted Nugent and "A Guest Appearance by Measles," Marcotte says "Not everyone was begging for acts you’d usually expect to headline a cruise ship advertised to people who graduated college when Bill Clinton was president."

"Some people wanted music that's even more unpopular," Marcotte notes, including "worship music."

When Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) suggested replacing Bad Bunny with 82-year-old country singer Lee Greenwood of "God Bless the U.S.A." fame, Marcotte remarks that "it was pathetic to pretend this is a factual reflection of current American trends in pop music."

MAGA being so out of touch, she writes, "reflects a small ray of hope in our bleak political moment."

"MAGA’s relationship with pop culture only has two forms: Complete cluelessness and/or resentment that most people think their taste stinks. This matters, because it’s been a truism on the far-right for decades now that capturing the culture is the key to obtaining their larger political goals."

The Christian right, she says, "holds that is crucial for conservative Christians to control pop culture." And not just with young people, notes Marcotte.

But MAGA's foray into the late-night comedy audience, "which tends towards the AARP demographic," was another complete failure, she says.

"Hundreds of thousands of dollars were poured into five pilot episodes of 'The Talk Show With Eric Metaxas,' hosted by a far-right author who specializes in faux-history books marketed as Christmas gifts for MAGA grandfathers who will never read them," Marcotte says.

"The show — featuring people who were famous decades ago, like Carrot Top or Danny Bonaduce — was so terrible that even people who thought there could be a market for Christian nationalist “comedy” gave up on financing it."

Another failure, Marcotte says, is "the Daily Wire, a media company founded in part by MAGA wunderkind Ben Shapiro," whose "mistakes began when they started to yearn for a role in pop culture, a space their existing audience doesn’t understand and often actively hates."

Marcotte says that not all conservatives are challenged when it comes to making art, "but MAGA couldn’t be better designed to repel the creative urge."

"Bad Bunny isn’t just alienating to MAGA because he makes Spanish-language music. Reggaeton is the perfect encapsulation of how real artists embrace difference . . . It’s a genre that emerged from people combining hip-hop, dancehall reggae and all manner of Latin American genres, like salsa and merengue. It’s what comes from learning from the past but striving for the future, two modes of thought that MAGA rejects out of hand," she says.

MAGA, instead, she writes, "would rather beg for a halftime program that sounds so boring that even the people clamoring for it now probably won’t watch it when it happens. You can bet that most Americans, meanwhile, will be wiggling their hips to 'Dákiti.'"