MAGA in uproar about scheduled Bad Bunny Superbowl performance..

[Syne]

If they're here illegally. But that goes for Chinese, Korean, etc. as well.

[Magical Realist]

Being Latino does not equate to "being here illegally." Sucks that you have to actually talk to people and learn about them before calling them illegal.

[Syne]

No one said Latino meant illegal. Seems you're projecting your own racism again. You should really try to keep that under wraps.

[Zinjanthropos]

What a world! I won't be watching halftime show anyways but will there be Bad Bunny protests? Wouldn't want to miss that, might be better than the game.

I hear that!

But I don't expect any protests. Despite MR's thread title, the response among MAGA (otherwise known as "Normal People") to "Bad Bunny" is generally speaking, "Who?" and "Never heard of him". Absolutely no uproar, more of a yawn...

Superbowl halftime is time for getting food in the kitchen and beer from the fridge.

It's not the first time that the halftime show has been some left-wing performer trying to be divisive and provocative.

We are very good at tuning it out...

We might watch if the performer is a sexy young female prone to wardrobe malfunctions, but a male (? you can never be sure with democrats) Puerto Rican pop performer we've never heard of?

Spanish rapping in America
Latin Trap king in America
Bad Bunny a hit in America
Don’t give a shit in America

If it wasn’t so comedic I wouldn’t really care about American politics. Everyone so emotionally involved with the added element of biased news reporting that contains preponderous amounts of mud slinging . Always attempts to remove politicians from office. Seems one has to have a Trump personality just to get past all the impediments and get things done.

[Magical Realist]

Now MAGAs all butthurt about country singer Zach Bryan's new song "Bad News" mentioning ICE. Geeze...these people need to get a life!

https://www.axios.com/2025/10/07/zach-br...yrics-maga

[Syne]

Meh, Democrats get butthurt about us enforcing immigration laws, not supporting gay marriage, not wanting to trans the kids, etc., etc..

[Yazata]

The thing is, country music fans typically lean right. While some of the performers lean left because of their music-industry business and social ties.

When performers forget their fans and their roots, they run the risk of losing their audience.

So Zack Bryan might just have committed career suicide.

And once again, my own personal response is 'I don't really care', perhaps with a bit of mild Schadenfreude.

[Image: GwGo1IjXMAEmMj0?format=jpg&name=900x900]

[C C]

The thing is, country music fans typically lean right. While some of the performers lean left because of their music-industry business and social ties. [...]

Hillbillies (Ulster Scots culture) have always had run-ins with the law. Going back to moonshine days and the "drug cooks" of today, forcefully resisting foreclosures and repossessions, etc. And their far older unruliness and rebelliousness in the British Isles (the original source of "red neck" where the color pertained to a cloth worn around their throats, rather than sun-burn). They have not universally adored the police and whatever local authority throughout time and place. So the trigger word here was indeed "ICE", a narrow choice that currently carries hot political baggage.

The music industry in even contemporary Nashville does coerce its entertainers to lean left, or at least not to ruffle or tweak the establishment. John Rich revealed that some time ago.

Country star Zach Bryan clarifies 'misconstrued' ICE song that prompted MAGA outrage and White House response
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/arti...16920.html

INTRO: Zach Bryan is setting the record straight. After sharing a snippet of an unreleased song that appears to criticize President Trump and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Bryan has clarified that he is neither radically left-wing nor radically right-wing.

“To see how much shit [the song] stirred up makes me not only embarrassed but kind of scared,” Bryan said via an Instagram story on Tuesday evening. “Left wing or right wing we’re all one bird and American. To be clear I’m on neither of these radical sides.”

The country singer also clarified that he wrote the song months ago.

“This song is about how much I love this country and everything in it more than anything,” he said. “When you hear the rest of the song, you will understand the full context that hits on both sides of the aisle. Everyone using this now as a weapon is only proving how devastatingly divided we all are.”

The 29-year-old country singer added, “To all those disappointed in me on either side of whatever you believe in just know I’m trying my best too and we all say things that are misconstrued sometimes.”

LYRICS (Bad News)

Didn't wake up dead or in jail
Some out-of-town boys been giving us hell
I got some bad news
I woke up missing you
My friends are all degenerates, but they're all I've got
The generational story of dropping the plot
I heard the cops came
Cocky motherfuckers, ain't they?
And ICE is gonna come bust down your door
Try to build a house no one builds no more
But I got a telephone
Kids are all scared and all alone
The bars stopped bumping, the rock stopped rolling
The middlе fingers rising, and it won't stop showing
Got some bad news
Thе fading of the red, white and blue

[Magical Realist]

This occurred in 2003 with the popular Country band "The Dixie Chicks". As usual it comes down to speaking your truth or merely conforming to the opinions that make you more popular. This was long before Trump, when we had no idea there could be so much more to be against.

"In March 2003, the American country band the Chicks, then known as the Dixie Chicks, publicly criticized President George W. Bush, triggering a backlash. At a concert in London during their Top of the World Tour, the lead singer, Natalie Maines, said the Dixie Chicks were ashamed that Bush was from their home state of Texas and that they did not support the imminent invasion of Iraq.

The Dixie Chicks were one of the most popular American country acts at the time. After the statement was reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, it triggered a backlash from American country listeners, who were mostly right-wing and supported the war. The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted by many country radio stations, received death threats and were criticized by other country musicians. Sales of their music and concert tickets declined and they lost corporate sponsorship. A few days later, Maines issued an apology, saying her remark had been disrespectful. She rescinded the apology in 2006, saying she felt Bush deserved no respect.

Entertainment Weekly likened the incident to the backlash after John Lennon quipped in 1966 that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. The controversy was covered in the 2006 documentary Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing. In 2006, the Dixie Chicks released the single "Not Ready to Make Nice", which addressed the criticism. The Dixie Chicks and their position on Bush was cited as an influence by later country artists including Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chic...ge_W._Bush

[C C]

[...] The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted by many country radio stations, received death threats and were criticized by other country musicians. Sales of their music and concert tickets declined and they lost corporate sponsorship. A few days later, Maines issued an apology, saying her remark had been disrespectful. She rescinded the apology in 2006, saying she felt Bush deserved no respect...

And let's not forget that Southern Democrats once dominated the "country music" region in days of yore. They certainly didn't die-out completely come the 1990s. The party loyalty was still present in plenty of pocket communities (Natalie Maines, Democrat). And the older Southern Democrats gave those "dastardly" black and tan Republican factions all they could handle back in the latter part of the 19th-century, in terms of what accompanies a burning cross symbol.

EXCERPTS: In the early years of the Reconstruction era, newly enfranchised Southern blacks in states including Mississippi enthusiastically threw overwhelming support to the Republican Party, which spearheaded the cause of ensuring their civil rights. [...] During Reconstruction, efforts by black-and-tan Republicans in favor of racial equality drew violence from Democratic white supremacists including the Ku Klux Klan, who resorted to violence against the early civil rights activists.

Families of Southern Republicans, both black and white, were harassed by Democratic whites. The increasing decline of Southern Republicanism brought about by the rise of Jim Crow led many white Republicans to view abandoning civil rights advocacy as the only means of maintaining significant party influence in the region, contributing to the rise of the lily-white movement which would clash with black-and-tans for decades to come.