The field was dark, the stadium roaring, when Bad Bunny strode out in a shimmering silver suit and did something that somehow still manages to shock parts of the United States: he performed the Super Bowl halftime show almost entirely in Spanish.

There was no wardrobe malfunction, no sexual pantomime more explicit than the average music video, nothing that would not pass for a Friday night on mainstream TV. What there was, instead, was a Puerto Rican megastar treating a global audience as if Spanish‑speaking culture did not need to apologise for existing at the centre of American life. For some Republican lawmakers, that alone was apparently indecent.

In the days after the game,conservative outrage settled on Bad Bunny's setwith the familiar, wearying precision of a culture‑war machine looking for its next target.Donald Trump grumbled.

Right‑wing commentators frothed about how the 'real' halftime show was the MAGA‑flavoured Turning Point USA event nobody actually watched. And then a clutch of Republican politicians tried to turn a 13‑minute medley into a federal case.

Tennessee congressman Andy Ogles fired off a letter demanding a 'formal congressional inquiry'into the National Football League and NBCUniversal for airing what he called an 'explicit and indecent' performance. He singled out'Safaera'in particular, blasting the track for 'graphic lyrical content, including references to analingus, sexual intercourse and other explicit themes.'

The punchline, of course, is that those lyrics did not air. Bad Bunny's team scrubbed or censored the explicit lines from'Safaera'and other tracks, including'Tití Me Preguntó'and'Monaco'. The live version bore about as much resemblance to the original lyrics as a supermarket 'clean' edit does to drill.

That did not stop Florida Republican Randy Fine writing to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner Brendan Carr to complain that 'what Americans witnessed during the Super Bowl halftime show with Bad Bunny was despicable and never should be allowed to be shown on television again.'

Bad Bunny's halftime filth gets SLAMMED!Lawsuits flying at Bad Bunny for dropping abusive language bombs during the Super Bowl halftime show - straight FCC violation on national TV.MAGA patriots calling on Brendan Carr at FCC to hit him with massive fines and ban him from…pic.twitter.com/aAwb1dDbjk

In one of those lines that reveals far more than it intends, he added: 'In America, our laws are not suggestions, and no matter what foreign language is spoken, compliance is required.' Fine even cited a line from Bad Bunny's track'NUEVAYoL'— 'el perico es blanco', a slang reference to cocaine — despite the fact it was not performed in the set. The outrage, in other words, was less about what viewers actually saw and heard on the night, and more about what some politicians think Latin music is in their heads.

Now the FCC has quietly done what regulators are supposed to do: looked at the evidence and applied the rules. According to reporting in the New York Post, sources confirmed that because the songs in question were aired with their sexual and drug references removed, the show did not breach American broadcast decency standards.

Source: International Business Times UK