In the face of intense MAGA backlash against Bad Bunny performing at the Super Bowl, columnist Molly Jong-Fast says it’s obvious why the NFL selected the gender-bending Puerto Rican singer: “Woke is good for business.”

It’s the “same reason that Jimmy Kimmel’s first show after his suspension had huge viewership,” Jong-Fast writes in the New York Times, adding it’s the same reason that South Park “is having its best ratings in years and that Target’s sales are off since it dropped its DEI efforts.”

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Jong-Fast explains that the NFL is anything but woke, pointing out that collectively, team owners donated $23 million to Republicans during the 2024 election, compared to only $2.5 million to Democrats. But progressive ideas are popular she emphasizes, and there’s a reason Bad Bunny is “one of the biggest pop stars in the world.”

She also says Democrats could learn something here and in the midst of a shutdown and endless GOP-spawned chaos, they “might want to ask themselves: What would Bad Bunny do?”

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What she means here is that Democrats need to uplift their most charismatic communicators, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), rather than continue to hitch themselves to “reasonable-seeming, compromise-oriented, low-charisma legislators” like Senate and House Minority Leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

“The Democrats need to empower messengers that the establishment is scared of,” Jong-Fast writes, “people who don’t delight megadonors. Democrats need to stake their claims on a set of strong beliefs, and see if Americans will follow. They need to stop being lawyerly and timid.”

“Back in 2002, Bill Clinton gave this advice to his party on how to appeal to voters: ‘When people feel uncertain, they’d rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right.’ This is not an argument for Democrats to be wrong; it’s an argument for them to stop worrying so much that they might be.”

She says today’s politics are less about “legislative skill” and more about the need to communicate strong, passionate messaging that terrifies the other side.

That, she explains, is why “it’s a good sign that MAGA is freaking out about Bad Bunny.”

“Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show last February, which was freighted in all manner of bracing and defiant political symbolism, was the most-watched performance in history, drawing 133.5 million viewers,” Jong-Fast concludes. “It broke the record held by Michael Jackson’s 1993 halftime performance. Democrats need to listen for the roar of the crowd.”

An outspoken LGBTQ+ ally, Bad Bunny has sported androgynous looks onstage and on red carpets, and appeared in drag in the video for his 2020 song “Yo Perreo Sola.” 

During a February 2020 appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, he wore a shirt that condemned anti-trans media characterizations of Alexa Negrón Luciano, a transgender woman who was murdered in Puerto Rico just days before. While Bunny identifies as heterosexual, he has also suggested in interviews that his own sexuality might be fluid, but has nonetheless faced accusations of “queerbaiting.”

He has also spoken out against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In a September 28 X post, anti-LGBTQ+ activist and filmmaker Robby Starbuck whined that “most” of Bad Bunny’s songs “aren’t even in English,” and fretted that the artist would “find some way to push a woke message” during the Super Bowl.

In a piece for Christian magazine Charisma, writer James Lasher railed against Bad Bunny “for crossdressing, kissing male dancers and performing sexually charged routines,” for “promoting gender-bending imagery,” and for platforming “occult imagery.” Lasher described the NFL’s selection of the artist as its halftime show headliner as “the latest and perhaps most blatant insult to both America and biblical values.”  

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