Issue: Pop Culture

Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny stole the show.

The Seattle Seahawks “smothered” the New England Patriots to win last night’s Super Bowl. But it’s Bad Bunny’s halftime show that’s getting all the attention.

National Review, admittedly not a bastion of sports writing, calls the both the game and the halftime show “forgettable.” NR’s Luther Ray Abel, however, did an excellent job of summing things up:

While the players filed off the field, America prepared itself for the greater gridiron battle: the anti-American Bad Bunny half-time show vs. TPUSA’s populist alternative that featured Kid Rock and a handful of generic country singers.

Bad Bunny’s performance had him wandering sugarcane fields in a padded shirt and bearing a football, touring Puerto Rican cultural storefronts, and presiding over a presentation of rotating rumps. Performing exclusively in Spanish, as is his wont, Bad Bunny sang lyrics that were as alien to me as they were to older relatives — a departure from last year’s half-time show starring Kendrick Lamar, which was indecipherable exclusively to those over age 40.

Lady Gaga showed up at some point, and some strings contributed the most musically interesting aside of the show. Ricky Martin popped out of the foliage with some bananas, and then Bad Bunny — bearing the Puerto Rican flag — led a revolution of sorts up a power pole. He then led a parade of flags, listing off the countries of Latin America and North America.

Suzy Weiss of The Free Press didn’t seem to care for either Bad Bunny’s or TPUSA’s halftime show. Happiness guru Arthur Brooks asked at the same publication, “Can We All Relax About Bad Bunny’s Spanish Halftime Show?” Needless to say, President Trump, who is not relaxed about Bad Bunny, weighed in. Luther Ray Abel writes about a brilliant Budweiser ad, but Ms. Must can’t quite tell if he’s being tongue-in-cheek. Townhall waxed ecstatic about TPUSA’s patriotic show.

And City Journal picks this weekend to ask, “Is Football Doomed?” How about dooming those ridiculous halftime shows?

As you probably have heard, Jimmy Lai—Chinese-born British citizen, Hong Kong newspaper mogul, democracy advocate, and critic of Beijing—was sentenced to 20 years in prison. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal observes:

The 20-year sentence might as well be a death sentence for the 78-year-old newspaper man. He is in ill health and has spent most of the last five years in solitary confinement, the lone window fixed to block sunlight. Along the way, the Hong Kong government denied him his choice of lawyer and stole his newspaper without a court order. Six former Apple Daily executives also received multi-year sentences on Monday.

This isn’t the way Hong Kong operated under Britain. It isn’t the way a world trade and financial center operates. But it is the way of Hong Kong under Chinese rule.

Whatever the Hong Kong government may say, the people who live there know Beijing is the real authority.

“An Anti-ICE Movement Increasingly Run by Revolutionaries” is the headline of a sobering City Journal story. Stu Smith writes:

As public support wanes, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become the target of nationwide protests. While many of these protests are peaceful and popular, they have also created an opening for aggressive activist networks with long histories of revolutionary politics. Some of these groups are moving beyond lawful dissent, with organizers and online channels increasingly promoting confrontation, disruption, and other unlawful actions against federal authorities.

Leaders of Centro CSO are clear about the tactics they endorse. At a major conference in Chicago this past fall, one member described confronting ICE vehicles in Los Angeles.

“You should have seen how f*cking scared they were when a couple dozen Chicanos surrounded their unmarked black tinted truck,” Gabriel Quiroz Jr., a Centro CSO member, said. He mentioned that a number of WayMo cars caught fire “by accident,” prompting laughter from the audience.

Do celebrities who parrot anti-ICE slogans realize this? I doubt that they’d care. The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler has a good piece on the profound ignorance displayed by celebrities at the anti-ICE Grammys (we’ll get a rerun at the Oscars):

What I don’t understand is the shallowness of activism we’ve been subjected to. Is there some secret group text that goes out to progressives saying, “This week, it’s ‘From the River to the Sea.’ ”? And then, “Beware of DOGE”? Or more recently, “Hands off Greenland, Europeans might be offended“? Everyone is a mini Greta Thunberg bouncing from climate to Gaza to who knows what. Dissent du jour.

“Why Unemployment is Rising Among Young College Grads” addresses a seemingly contradictory phenomenon. “Their skills, experience and ability to function are increasingly out of step with employers’ needs,” Allysia Finley argues. She explains:

The real problem is a mismatch between labor supply and demand. Government subsidies and public schools have funneled too many young people to credential mills, which churn out grads who lack the skills that employers demand. Many would be better off training in skilled trades, for which demand is enormous.

More than half of high-school grads matriculate to college, even though only 35% of 12th graders score proficient in reading and 22% in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This suggests that many college students aren’t academically prepared or even inclined. But colleges ensure they graduate just the same by handing out A’s for no effort.

Speaking of jobs, Ms. Must was vastly amused by a quote in a New York Times story on the latest at the Washington Post—CEO Will Lewis stepped down “after a stormy tenure.” Here’s the yummy quote:

Katie Mettler, a former chair of the Washington Post Guild, said on Saturday: “I’m glad Will Lewis has been fired. I wish it had happened before he fired all my friends.”

The underlying theme is that WaPo owner Jeff Bezos should have underwritten, indefinitely, Ms. Mettler’s smug “friends.” This snobbish idea is more nakedly stated in a snarky piece in the London Spectator headlined “How the Washington Post became a liability for Bezos“:

What’s changed is something different. The people who do care about world affairs and literature are not the kind of people whose attention Bezos wants to attract. His new demographic is fans of Amazon’s new Melania documentary.

Just a note: “Melania” has been hugely lucrative (here is a terrific review by Charlotte Allen), whereas the Post lost $100 million last year. Fox Media Reporter Howie Kurtz says Bezos has ruined the Post and should sell it.

“No, Texas Isn’t a Blue State. But Democrats Win Is a Warning” is the headline on Nicole Russell’s USA TODAY column:

In sum, [Democratic winner Taylor] Rehmet described an old political slogan, “All politics is local.” I am concerned that conservative candidates at the local level may try to ride Trump’s national coattails, forgetting how true this statement really is.

More Texas: Parents in the Lone Star State are rushing to support school choice in record numbers.

It’s been noted in recent days that the transgender movements lock on public opinion is collapsing. But not everywhere:

Feminist Isadora Borges de Aquino Silva of Paraíba, Brazil, doesn’t believe that a male can become female. The 34-year-old veterinary student said so on social media in November 2020. She also posted video remarks by Sydney University emeritus professor Bronwyn Winter: “A person who identifies as transgender retains their birth DNA. No surgery, synthetic hormones, or change of clothes will alter this fact.” Ms. Winter cited Simone de Beauvoir to support her views.

For doing what U.S. feminists refused to do, Ms. Silva could go to prison.

Headline of the Day Isn’t Good Enough for This One: “Trump Hates Minnesotans Because We Love Each Other,” by Minnesota DA Keith Ellison. Do you ever get the feeling that words like “love” and “hate” are being thrown around promiscuously? I passed by a Baptist church with a big banner: “Stop Cruelty.” What a bold idea. … Treat Yourself: Kamala Harris attempts to explain why she’s against photo ID for voting.

As Americans wait to find out how long the partial government shutdown will continue, the Grammys held forth last night. Much of the evening was an anti-ICE rally:

“Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say, ‘ICE out,’” the singer [Bad Bunny] exclaimed. The crowd erupted, giving the singer a standing ovation.

He went on to say immigrants “are not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens — we are humans, and we are Americans.” He urged fans and fellow artists to confront fear and division with love and compassion, a message that seemingly resonated with the crowd.  

Justin and Hailey Bieber also made their thoughts known on the issue. The two appeared in coordinating black ensembles with tiny pins affixed to their couture with the words “ICE OUT.”

The pins aren’t a new jewelry trend — they’re part of a growing protest movement by Hollywood elites at major award shows this season aimed at calling attention to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Three high-end intellectuals debated “Bad Bunny’s High-Risk Choice” at the Grammys in the New York Times this morning. I kid you not. The New York Times also has the “best and worst” moments at the Grammys. The New York Post’s “Page Six” gave us everything we missed [mercifully?] from the Grammys. Axios has a photo spread of stars sporting their “ICE Out” pins. Also during the Emmys, Trevor Noah accused President Trump of having visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island; President Trump promptly threatened to sue. Bombshell New Theory: Epstein was working for Vladimir Putin.  

Speaking of Epstein, a massive trove of three million documents and photographs has been released by the Department of Justice. The emblematic photo (at least for Ms. Must) is Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on all fours above a woman. Trafficking details are included in the cache. The goal for the Left is to catch President Trump in the Epstein spider web. The New York Times reports plenty of references to the president, but so far, he has eluded their grasp. The documents reveal contacts with other VIPs, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

In a column headlined “Kevin Warsh, Jeffrey Epstein, Inequality and the ‘Mob’,” the Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley explains why so many people can’t get enough of the Epstein scandal. “Especially at times like this, the multitudes enjoy seeing wealthy people dragged through the mud,” Finley argues. Warsh is not in the files—Finley simply notes that Epstein mania eclipsed his nomination as Fed Chairman. Indeed, Warsh is characterized as “just what the central bank needs,” by Allison Schrager at City Journal.

Will greedy trial lawyers help end child mutilation?

National Review’s Wesley J. Smith writes:

The first gender “detransitioner” medical-malpractice case to go to trial resulted in a $2 million dollar verdict against the medical professionals who approved a double mastectomy for the plaintiff, Fox Varian, in 2019 when she was only 16.

This verdict is an important development in the great cause of protecting gender-confused minors from being subjected to irreversible procedures from which they can never be made whole. Why? Trial lawyers! I know this community well. Hell, I was one! Most are liberal politically, but if they smell money in the water, they will sue the “gender-affirming” care industry into the ground just as they do other business sectors with deep pockets.

This verdict is an important development in the great cause of protecting gender-confused minors from being subjected to irreversible procedures from which they can never be made whole. Why? Trial lawyers! I know this community well. Hell, I was one! Most are liberal politically, but if they smell money in the water, they will sue the “gender-affirming” care industry into the ground just as they do other business sectors with deep pockets.

A story at The Free Press calls the verdict “a legal first that could change gender medicine.” Unherd’s Lisa Selin Davis says this verdict is only the beginning. Trans-lunacy, meanwhile, is still thriving in New York. New York AG Letitia James fired a staff member who wasn’t onboard with the trans issue.

The City That Never Sweeps. The New York Post elucidates:

Mayor Mamdani’s New York has become the city that never sweeps.

Eight-foot-high piles of rat-infested trash are choking the streets around Gracie Mansion — while Hizzoner’s new home has gotten the white-glove shoveling treatment.
Mamdani has meanwhile crowed that he can’t “imagine how it could get better’’ in the city, even as more and more New Yorkers are blasting the lack of “collectivism” in the Big Apple.

The mayor’s Upper East Side neighbors are being forced to trudge through garbage-plagued streets, roaming rodents and mounds of snow tainted with dog pee a full week after Winter Storm Fern.

Some people are more equal than others. ….

Icy weather can’t stop anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis. We’ve all noticed the outsized role women are playing in the mob action in Minneapolis. In “White Liberal Feminists Are Full of S—” Bridget Phantasy takes note of this phenomenon in Spiked Online:

I think most normal people look at these aggressively anti-ICE, liberal white women and think, what are you doing? How entitled do you have to be to think that by muscling your way into this situation, you aren’t in danger? If you really believe that you’re up against a similar force to the SS, you would assume that you might get killed every time you interact with them. At the very least, you would be wary of some very harsh consequences. But these women don’t see it like that. They will provoke law enforcement in ways that make you question which reality it is they believe. I don’t think there were many people going around provoking Hitler’s thugs back in the 1930s.

“I’ve Seen Insurgencies Up Close — And Anti-ICE Actions Look Eerily Familiar” is the headline over a New York Post story.

As a career FBI official who specialized in detecting and countering nefarious networks both at home and abroad, it’s all eerily familiar.

When I deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, I saw similar spotter tactics employed by any number of guerilla groups who communicated via handheld radios to initiate IEDs on roadways traveled by American troops.

The organized crime outfits and narco-traffickers I pursued during my 25-year FBI career sought to protect themselves with tactics much like those of “Community of Service,” operating in separate cells so that compromising one wouldn’t expose the rest.

In a similar vein, a Federalist piece headlined “A Nation That Won’t Enforce Immigration Laws Isn’t A Nation At All” suggests this:

It may be that the next few years will decide whether America remains a sovereign nation or succumbs to subversion from within.

More Decadent West: “This Ayatollah Ffanclub Heaps Shame on London” is Brendan O’Neill’s latest. “As Iranians fight for freedom, people in London praise their theocratic murderers.”

“Dear Jeff:” Washington Post employees write a letter to WaPo owner Jeff Bezos that reminds us how “arrogant, entitled and graceless” the legacy media is.

The New York Post’s Miranda Devine writes that the Melania movie has made box office—and how:

In a big blow to the Trump-deranged community, Melania Trump’s eponymous movie knocked the lights out on its opening weekend. It came in at No. 3 overall, and its $7 million box office take in three days is almost unheard of for a documentary.

“Melania” is crushing it on Rotten Tomatoes, too, with a 99% audience score on the “popcorno­meter” easily besting the sneering critics’ 10% on the Tomatometer ratings.

It was advertised as a sort of mini-shutdown with a sell-by date. But it looks like (here and here) we may be in for something else.

I leave you with my favorite story of recent days—the Kentucky farm family that welcomed a freezing calf into their home. Please don’t miss the sweet pix. How much fun for the children.

Tomorrow is the quintessential American holiday, a feast of good food and gratitude. Melanie Kirkpatrick, who wrote an entire book on “the holiday at the heart of the American experience,” has a nice essay in the Wall Street Journal on the scuffles over the date of the holiday:

Americans have celebrated Thanksgiving for more than 400 years, beginning in 1621 when the Pilgrims and Wampanoag came together for their famous feast. It wasn’t until 1941, however, that the holiday’s date was codified in law, when Franklin Roosevelt signed a joint resolution of Congress mandating its celebration on the fourth Thursday of November.

It was FDR’s ill-considered decision three years earlier to move the date—then observed on the last Thursday of November—that sparked Congress’s action. The president’s change had caused a national uproar, such that residents of half the states ate their turkey dinners on what they considered to be the traditional date, while those in the other half did so on “Franksgiving,” the date newly ordered by the president. The residents of Texas, Colorado and Mississippi, apparently having a special affection for turkey dinners, celebrated on both dates.

The Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving (though it can be argued that giving thanks is so much a part of what makes up the American spirit that the feast goes back even before 1620) in the most precarious of circumstances. If you are like me, you look forward to the Wall Street Journal’s annual publication the day before Thanksgiving of an account of the Pilgrims’ journey to Plymouth, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton. It is given the headline “The Desolate Wilderness”:

Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew.

 What a miracle this country is!

Here’s a story from the New York Post that I think has a tie-in with the theme of gratitude: America is No Longer Left vs. Right: It’s the Resentful vs. the Resilient.” A snippet:

While the resilience crowd focuses on building — strong families, thriving communities, and successful companies — the resentment crowd harbors dark fantasies about punishing their enemies and rewards any blowhard who promises to make the guilty pay.

One side believes that you deserve everything and must work for nothing; the other, that you deserve nothing and must work for everything.

Mark Halperin’s funny “For This They Are Thankful” (alas, no link, but you can go on Halperin’s 2-Way this morning and find out who is grateful for what) list has Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy being thankful that the women of “The View” agree with him on something. Ms. Must also agrees with the Secretary’s message to air travelers:

“How do we maintain maybe some of that frustration we have as we travel this Thanksgiving season? Maybe we should say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to our pilots and to our flight attendants,” Duffy said during a Monday press conference.

The Transportation chief added, “Let’s try not to wear slippers and pajamas as we come to the airport. I think that’s positive.”

Which political party will be grateful after the midterms? Michael Goodwin writes that President Trump needs to hit the reset button if the GOP wants to win the 2026 midterms. Goodwin is critical of the president’s “scattershot” approach, which he says needs focus, and his handling of the economy.

Meanwhile, economics guru Larry Kudlow says that “America is the world’s hottest economy,” citing investments flowing in, growth, and free markets firing again. Less sanguine, Liberal Patriot John Halpin asks, “Can Either Party Crack the Code on the Economy?” Halpin argues that it’s easy to campaign on affordability but hard to bring down prices. But Thanksgiving dinner does appear more affordable this year, though the White House is careful not to say “mission accomplished” quite yet.

Big News on the D.C. Front: Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has been Washington’s Mayor for a decade, will not run for re-election. Bowser refused to take on President Trump à la Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and I’m wondering if that lost her so much of her base that this decision was inevitable. The field to succeed her will likely be crowded.

“Yuri, here’s what I would do.” The leak of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff advising a Putin aide could have an effect on negotiations to end the Ukraine war. The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins is not optimistic that the negotiations will succeed:  

Maybe ask a basic question: Can Mr. Trump deliver Vladimir Putin? Probably not. Mr. Putin might bite if a deal really delivered him control of Ukraine but here’s betting he’ll balk at an outcome that merely inaugurates a postwar period inside Russia dominated by the never-ending discovery by his people that the war left Russia worse off.

If Mr. Trump can’t deliver Russia, it doesn’t matter if he can deliver Ukraine. Yet at some point, Ukraine will want to play its top card, saying yea to a cease-fire and throwing down a gantlet to its allies.

Meanwhile, the American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka advances the gob-smacking, almost surreal (but fascinating) idea that there are two foreign policies emanating from the Trump White House, one a shadow policy shop under the aegis of Vice President J.D. Vance.

California Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell went on the Don Lemon show to say that military members are saying that the military can act as a “check” on President Trump. We think of the army acting as a check on dictators. Swalwell and his ilk are trying to persuade the American public, reality to the contrary, that we live in a dictatorship.

The Real Clear Politics gang debates whether Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are in separate camps and whether Senator Mark Kelly, who was one of the Democrats in the military as a check camp, should be court martialed.

An editorial in the Washington Examiner lambasts Kelly and his cohorts for their “reckless call for military disobedience”:

Elected Democrats have every right, indeed, they have a duty, to conduct oversight over the president’s use of the military to defend the nation. But what they may not do is encourage service members to disobey orders they don’t like ….

Civilian control of the military depends on elected leaders engaging properly in the legal process, not urging rank-and-file troops to freelance their own interpretations of presidential authority. By suggesting service members should substitute personal judgment for the chain of command, Democrats are eroding a foundational norm that has kept America stable through far fiercer political storms. If they believe the president’s actions are unlawful, their recourse is to the courts, to oversight hearings, and to statutory reform — not to social media videos aimed at soldiers.

Encouraging individual service members to decide which orders feel legitimate invites chaos, politicizes the armed forces, and threatens to fracture the institution Americans rely on in moments of crisis. There are no illegal orders here, just Democrats unwilling to accept that constitutional disputes must be resolved in courtrooms, not military barracks. Their recklessness endangers the principle they claim to defend.

USA Fencing is still trying to come to terms with and move forward from its failure to defend a female fencer when a male fencer claimed the right to compete in women’s sports. It would have been less complicated to take a stand for women athletes in the first place. Real Clear Politics has an excellent piece by a psychiatrist on failed attempts to refute the conclusion of the recent Department of Health and Human Services report, finding no medical evidence to support sex changes of minors. We should be thankful for a solid HHS report, even if wokesters exhaust themselves trying not to follow the science.

Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving. Should you find yourself grumpy, just follow Yuval Levin’s advice.