5 months agomyinstaggram
From the very first time we see “God bless America” in print in 1885, it is directed at the United States as a nation, by an Englishman thanking the United States for his tour. That meaning is then cemented in Irving Berlin’s patriotic hymn, written as a prayer for God’s blessing on the United States, “the land that I love… my home sweet home,” and in decades of presidents closing speeches with “God bless America,” where everyone understands “America” to mean the United States. Bad Bunny walked onto the Super Bowl stage, used that exact fixed formula, and then tore the expression “God bless America” out of its American meaning and pasted it onto other countries. That is not a sweet little “redefinition,” it is a calculated slap at a phrase that has, from its very first recorded use, meant the United States of America. As if Bad Bunny’s hard core sexual lyrics were not offensive enough to the children in the Super Bowl audience, his utter disregard for a cultural landmark phrase, “God bless America,” which the United States has used since the 1800s, was not only disrespectful to the United States, but also disrespectful to Puerto Rico and to the Puerto Ricans who love the United States and live on its mainland. And to make it worse, he listed Puerto Rico as if it were a sovereign country, which it is not: Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States, under U.S. sovereignty and congressional authority, neither a sovereign country nor a U.S. state. So, taken as a whole, the end of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance did not attempt any unity or love at all; it cynically achieved the opposite. It trampled a uniquely American phrase and radiated hostility toward the fact that Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States and not a sovereign country.
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