Bhad Bhonnee
When the NFL announced that Bad Bunny would headline the next Super Bowl halftime show, it should have been the cleanest meritocratic decision capitalism could produce. The man’s numbers are ridiculous. He has been the most-streamed artist on Spotify for years, sells out stadiums in minutes, and moves more merch than most Fortune 500 companies.
By every metric capitalism claims to care about, sales, engagement, dominance, and virality, he is the perfect choice. And yet, the backlash came fast, loud, and unintentionally hilarious.
The Hypocrisy of the “Meritocracy” Crowd
For decades, free market evangelists have insisted that capitalism rewards the best: talent, hard work, and results. “If you don’t like the outcome,” they say, “work harder.” But as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, the idea of meritocracy has long been more moral fiction than functional system. It evolved from an egalitarian ideal into a justification for hierarchy. Political philosopher Michael Sandel argued in The Tyranny of Merit that meritocracy breeds “winners too proud and losers too ashamed,” turning inequality into moral destiny. Meanwhile, research in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology shows that belief in meritocracy acts as a system-justifying ideology that helps people rationalize inequality as deserved.
So when the same voices who preach “market logic” object to Bad Bunny’s slot, they are not defending capitalism. They are defending a caste system that only calls itself capitalism.
Danica Patrick complained in Entertainment Weekly that no Super Bowl performer should sing without English lyrics. House Speaker Mike Johnson called for “real American role models” to replace him. Donald Trump told The New York Times that the decision was “absolutely ridiculous,” insisting the NFL had “lost its mind.” And a chorus of pundits treated hearing Spanish at the Super Bowl as if it were a cultural insult.
These are the same people who insist success should silence critics. Apparently that rule expires when the successful person rolls their Rs.
The Super Bowl Is the Cathedral of Capitalism
Let’s not kid ourselves. The Super Bowl is not about football. It is a holy day of advertising, the annual festival of snacks, trucks, and patriotic jingles about financial apps. Every halftime show is a ritual sacrifice to the gods of engagement. Whoever commands the largest share of cultural attention gets the stage. It is not art. It is audience share with lasers.
By that logic, Bad Bunny is not a controversial choice. He is the inevitable one. The free market has spoken, and it picked a Puerto Rican who raps in Spanish. The problem for his critics is not that he does not fit the capitalist ideal. The problem is that he fits it too well.
Bad Bunny as Capitalism’s Perfect Creation
The irony is almost poetic. Bad Bunny is capitalism functioning at maximum efficiency. He started independently, without a record label. He weaponized streaming algorithms instead of radio executives. He turned his identity into a global brand. He monetized every pixel of culture that touched him. He did not just play the game, he rebuilt it on cheaper servers and faster code.
If meritocracy were real, this would be the end of the story. The guy won. He deserves the crown. But capitalism does not actually worship merit. It worships familiarity in a hoodie that says “hard work.” As political theorist Adrian Walsh wrote in The Review of Politics, capitalist societies routinely confuse productivity with moral worth, using “merit” as the moral cologne for market outcomes.
When Meritocracy Meets Cultural Anxiety
The backlash is not about profanity or politics. It is about the discomfort of watching a Spanish speaking artist headline the biggest American event of the year. Capitalism likes diversity the way it likes spice in food: just enough to notice, not enough to change the flavor. A Latin beat here, a brown face in an ad there, a global vibe that still feels safe to the suburbs.
Bad Bunny breaks that balance. He is not the guest feature or the background flavor. He is the main dish. He does not translate his lyrics to please anyone. He does not flatten his identity for the export market. He does not pretend to be grateful for the seat he built himself. For critics who depend on the illusion of inclusion without real power, that is terrifying. It is not just a concert to them. It is a demographic prophecy.
The Political Theater Around It
Right wing politicians wasted no time turning it into a culture war buffet. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem warned that ICE would have “a presence” at the Super Bowl, as if the NFL needed border patrol between commercials. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene declared his Spanish lyrics a threat to national unity. It is political performance art at its purest. The same people who call capitalism sacred suddenly want government intervention when the market crowns someone they cannot pronounce. They are not worried about the content of his songs. They are worried about what his success implies, that the American market no longer belongs to them.
The American Dream, but Multilingual
Think about what Bad Bunny represents. A Puerto Rican artist, technically an American citizen though often treated like a foreigner, becomes the biggest musician in the world without needing to conform to the mainland. That is supposed to be the dream: build something from nothing, let the market decide, bask in your hard earned reward. Capitalism 101.
But apparently that only counts when the winner looks like the people who wrote the textbook. When the system produces a Spanish speaking global superstar, the rulebook gets rewritten overnight. This is not a rebellion against capitalism. It is capitalism functioning too efficiently for its own comfort.
The System Cannot Handle Its Own Success
Here is the funny part. If capitalism were consistent, Bad Bunny’s halftime show would be its victory lap. It would be a live action PowerPoint proving that the free market works. Instead, it has become a crisis meeting for people realizing the invisible hand has brown skin. Meritocracy says, “May the best seller win.” The backlash says, “As long as he speaks English while doing it.”
The contradiction is not new. Capitalism sells equality of opportunity while quietly betting against it. It builds a global marketplace, then panics when global culture shows up to collect. The Asian Journal of Law and Economics argued in How Meritocracy Fuels Inequality that this rhetoric serves as the moral scaffolding of neoliberal capitalism, turning structural disadvantage into personal failure. Likewise, Philosophy and Public Affairs called it The Illusion of Meritocracy, describing how the myth of earning your place masks privilege and economic determinism.
The audience is now international. The money is multilingual. The only people who did not get the memo are the ones shouting about patriotism while buying products made everywhere else.
Bad Bunny Did Not Break the System. He Just Made It Obvious.
The halftime show will not just be entertainment. It will be a confession. The capitalist machine, stripped of its polite excuses, is about to broadcast that meritocracy was always conditional. Bad Bunny is not the outlier. He is the logical result of everything they claim to believe. If his presence feels like an intrusion, then the ideology was never about merit. It was about control. The Super Bowl does not reward who is most American. It rewards who can move product. And no one moves product right now like Bad Bunny.
Final Word: The Sermon at the Altar of Commerce
When the lights hit that field and Bad Bunny starts singing in the language of 600 million consumers, capitalism will have to stare at its own reflection. It will be forced to admit that the market does not care what language money speaks. If capitalism truly rewards talent and hustle, then this is the payoff. If not, then all that talk about earning your place was just marketing copy with a flag on it. Either way, the halftime show will be historic. For once, the empire’s favorite mirror will not be reflecting it back. It will be playing reggaetón, and the crowd will know every word.
Further Reading
Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit (Harvard University Press)
How Meritocracy Fuels Inequality — Asian Journal of Law and Economics
Primes and Consequences: System-Justifying Ideology — Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Adrian Walsh, “Capitalism, Inequality, and Meritocracy” — The Review of Politics
