There are some people who don’t know, or claim to not know, why there’s controversy over artist “Bad Bunny’s” planned Super Bowl LX halftime performance. There’s story after story, too, about how MAGA is “melting down” over it. But are they? Or is America, once a melting pot, melting down culturally?

To review, the performance by Bunny, actual name Benito Martinez Ocasio, at the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, California, in February will be entirely in Spanish. Ocasio can sing in English and has done so (though approximately 95 percent of his songs are in Spanish). But the Puerto Rican native has decided that his Super Bowl offerings will be delivered only in his native tongue. You won’t even be able to “press 1” for English.

Yet this alone probably wouldn’t have been enough to spark the current controversy. Rather, Ocasio has also waded into politics. In fact, just last month he said that he didn’t want to perform in the U.S. He was concerned about his fans’ safety, he claimed, because of President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown. “[T]here was the issue of — like, f****** ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] could be outside [my concert],” said the rabbit.

Now, though, Ocasio will nonetheless be appearing in California. Is he a hypocrite, as pundit Ben Shapiro has remarked? Or is he of the not-unheard-of opinion that the Golden State is no longer part of the U.S.? More likely is that pocketbook is trumping principles (which were surely just preferences in Bunny’s case).

Ocasio has also called ICE agents “mothers” and “sons of b.” And, no, this isn’t very ladylike. (A relevant point perhaps since the Bunny has performed in drag.) He has, additionally, issued doctrinaire leftist complaints about American “colonialism” and “police violence.”

What’s more, far from being a uniter, Ocasio further stoked controversy’s fires on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. After speaking Spanish on the show, he quipped, “And if you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”

(Actually, I’ll just pass on the Super Bowl. Full disclosure: I don’t ever watch it, anyway.)

So what’s the game here, other than football? Ocasio may be marketing himself, believing there’s “no such thing as bad press.” For the NFL’s part, it certainly is marketing itself. The league’s average viewer is now 48-50 years old — and this number is steadily increasing. And approximately 77 percent of football’s audience is white. So the NFL knows that ensuring future vibrancy means capturing younger generations and “non-whites.” Ergo the rabbit.

Will this marketing decision yield fruit? The aforementioned Shapiro points out that the Super Bowl halftime show isn’t for the “dudes,” anyway. It’s when they visit the restroom and the women come in and watch the performance. So whether this is a “Get woke, go broke” situation remains to be seen. Let’s face it, too, many people are addicted to their bread and circuses.

More pressing than football’s fate, however, is America’s. So what of the deeper issues reflected here?

Exploring this Wednesday, Newsweek’s Jesus Mesa’s headline reads, “Bad Bunny Is the Most Popular American on Earth. Why the MAGA Backlash?”

If you’re now feeling self-conscious not knowing the “most popular American on Earth,” don’t. In reality, Ocasio’s 80-85 million social-media followers (according to a Grok AI analysis) don’t even give him top-10 placement. Figures like Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast), Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson boast hundreds of millions of followers.

But more interesting are Mesa’s implicit philosophical errors. He calls the Super Bowl halftime performance “one of the last shows of force from the dwindling American monoculture.”

Does it occur to him that intensifying the “multiculture” phenomenon enough can result in multi-countries? (There’s a reason the Roman Empire dissolved while China is still intact.)

Mesa later cited anti-Bunny backlash from figures such as Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Fox News’ Tomi Lahren, and even President Trump. He then quoted a Northeastern University political science professor named Amílcar Barreto as saying of Ocasio:

By doing it [the performance] in Spanish, he’s challenging the idea that English is the only legitimate language in American life. That’s why it reads like a provocation — it’s not just music.

Whatever is meant by “legitimate language,” the reality is there’s a reason a majority of countries have official national languages. That is, having a common tongue to bind people together can prevent dissolution into multi-countries.

Mesa further concedes that, as he puts it, “the backlash over Bad Bunny isn’t just about language.” It’s “about the fear that something foundational is being replaced.” He means the “monoculture,” of course.

Whether it’s “fear” or love or both, however, is it surprising? Leftists will object upon hearing about a jungle-dwelling tribe being overwhelmed by outsiders. “This is cultural and demographic genocide!” they may bellow. Yet they’re shocked, and allegedly offended, when non-pod-people Westerners treasure and aim to preserve their culture. How odd: Why wouldn’t these Americans choose cultural extinguishment as any “enlightened” citizen of the world would?

In a way, though, many Americans have chosen it — indirectly, via the ballot box. For the current situation — the balkanization-born development of mini-nations within our nation — is bad policy’s inevitable result. That is, we’ve for too long just had too many immigrants coming in too fast — and too monolithically.

University of Edinburgh Professor Stephen Tierney explained this threat very well in his 2008 book Multiculturalism and the Canadian Constitution. He wrote:

In a situation in which immigrants are divided into many different groups originating in distant countries, there is no feasible prospect of any particular immigrant group’s challenging the hegemony of the national language and institutions. These groups may form an alliance among themselves to fight for better treatment and accommodations, but such an alliance can only be developed within the language and institutions of the host society and, hence, is integrative. In situations in which a single dominant immigrant group originates in a neighbouring country, the dynamics may be very different. The Arabs in Spain, and Mexicans in the United States, do not need allies among other immigrant groups. One could imagine claims for Arabic or Spanish to be declared a second official language, at least in regions where they are concentrated, and these immigrants could seek support from their neighbouring home country for such claims — in effect, establishing a kind of transnational extension of their original homeland in their new neighbouring country of residence.

And so it is happening, as we press 1 for English and have Spanish TV stations like Telemundo and Univision. Know, too, that Univision ranks as a top 5 broadcast network in prime-time viewership — regardless of language.

Perhaps this is why our immigration used to be governed by the “National Origins Act” (of 1924). It served to maintain America’s demographic balance (and doing so forestalls the development of competing subcultures). But this all ended with the adoption of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It opened the floodgates.

Nonetheless, some people still can’t imagine why having a foreign language featured in one of the U.S.’s premier sporting events is controversial. Yeah, it’s a real mystery.