'it’s sad'

Bad Bunny academic specialist (yes, that’s a thing) Vanessa Diaz was interviewed on Monday’s PBS News Hour after the Puerto Rican singer’s Spanish-language Super Bowl halftime show to speak reverently of the performer symbolizing Puerto Rican resistance to American colonial might, or something.  Co-anchor Amna Nawaz: ....His 13-minute set was historic, the very first in Super Bowl history performed nearly entirely in Spanish. The show was dense with symbolism, including messages of Puerto Rican pride and independence....we're joined now by Vanessa Diaz. She's an associate professor at Loyola Marymount University and the author of the book "P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance…. Vanessa Diaz, Loyola Marymount University: Bad Bunny right now is the world's most streamed artist. So that just gives you a sense of the gravity. This isn't someone who just is popular in his hometown. On a global level, Bad Bunny is the number one artist…. (NewsBusters own Jorge Bonilla wasn’t impressed with Bad Bunny’s alienating performance or his unpopular stand on independence for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.) The talk of the 13-minute spectacle quickly turned to sociology and the politics of "resistance." Nawaz: So your book situates Bad Bunny in the legacy of what you call Puerto Rican resistance. Walk us through some of the moments in which we saw that play out during yesterday's performance. Diaz cited Bad Bunny carrying an old-style Puerto Rican flag with the triangle in blue is actually the light blue. And the light blue is a symbol of Puerto Rican independence…." Spanish, by the way, is hardly an anti-colonial language. Nawaz mentioned President Trump’s criticisms and Turning Point USA’s “counterprogramming halftime show. They billed it as the All-American Halftime Show….” It featured Kid Rock and country artists. The leftist academic lashed out, contorting the very title of the “All-American Halftime Show” into a racist attack on her ideologically constructed pop-star hero. Diaz: I mean, from the moment Bad Bunny was announced, there was immediate backlash. And the reality is that has everything to do not just with the current political moment, but with the entire history of the U.S. construing, in like a mainstream narrative, construing Latinos as perpetual foreigners who do not belong, who are a threat to the U.S....And I think that the fact that the halftime show that Turning Point USA created was called the All-American Halftime Show just goes to show you that this isn't about citizenship. This is actually about racism against Latinos. And that's just blatant to see because it insinuates that Bad Bunny's halftime show was not American. And that was the antithesis of what the performance was. Given that Bad Bunny has stated he wishes Puerto Rico to be decolonized and to separate from America, and that virtually all of his Super Bowl performance was sung in another language, to say the show “was not American” is hardly a stretch and certainly not racist. Diaz previously delivered an extended radical rant on NPR’s race-based podcast “Code Switch,” with fellow leftist academic and Bad Bunny fan Petra Rivera-Rideau. Fun fact: The only thing Diaz lets her children watch on TV is Bad Bunny, which certainly seems healthy. DIAZ: Well, how cool that we get to watch this with our kids? Like, I would never have my kids watch a football game, honestly, but we're going to watch the halftime show together. I have 4-year-old twins, so, you know, I think that the only - some of the only things I've ever let them watch on TV have been, like, select Bad Bunny performances. Diaz lets us know her support for Bad Bunny comes from a bone-deep leftism: “We exist within a capitalist system that thrives on inequality, that thrives on exploitation, and we all exist within it….” A transcript is available, click "Expand." PBS News Hour 2/9/26 7:34:01 p.m. (ET) Amna Nawaz: Last night's Super Bowl halftime show by Bad Bunny delivered a powerful message and made international headlines today. The Grammy-winning Puerto Rican rapper, singer and producer, whose full name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, is one of the most popular musical artists on the planet. His 13-minute set was historic, the very first in Super Bowl history performed nearly entirely in Spanish. The show was dense with symbolism, including messages of Puerto Rican pride and independence. But it also quickly became a magnet for criticism from the president and others even before he took the stage. To help us unpack it all, we're joined now by Vanessa Diaz. She's an associate professor at Loyola Marymount University and the author of the book "P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance. This is all part of our arts and culture series, Canvas. Vanessa, welcome to the show thanks for joining us. Vanessa Diaz, Loyola Marymount University: Of course. Thank you for having me. Amna Nawaz: So you literally wrote the book on Bad Bunny. You teach a course on his cultural impact. For anyone unfamiliar, just how big a star is Bad Bunny? Vanessa Diaz: Bad Bunny right now is the world's most streamed artist. So that just gives you a sense of the gravity. This isn't someone who just is popular in his hometown. On a global level, Bad Bunny is the number one artist. And in fact, he was three other years as well, 2020 to 2022. This isn't a new thing. His popularity just keeps growing. He just recently got the first ever Grammy Album of the Year for a Spanish-language album, his album "Debi Tirar Mas Fotos." And he won two other Grammys last week. So he has broken records we never imagined possible for a Spanish-language artist. And he's been doing that for some time. So on a global level, Bad Bunny is a massive, massive star. Amna Nawaz: So your book situates Bad Bunny in the legacy of what you call Puerto Rican resistance. Walk us through some of the moments in which we saw that play out during yesterday's performance. Vanessa Diaz: I think one of the most profound moments where Bad Bunny showed himself to be not just a figure of resistance, but carrying the long tradition behind him, is when, just before he started the song "El Apagon," he emerges from the fields with a flag, a Puerto Rican flag over his shoulder. And if you notice, the triangle in blue is actually the light blue. And the light blue is a symbol of Puerto Rican independence. That's the color of the flag before the U.S. in 1952 changed the color to the dark blue to mimic the colors of the American flag. And so that light blue is really symbolic of advocating for Puerto Rican independence. And as he walked out with that flag, we saw those folks who were the cane field workers in the beginning climbing these electrical poles. And that was a reference to what was the longest blackout in American history following the devastating Hurricane Maria in 2017 that left Puerto Rico without power for almost a year. So that song "El Apagon" means "The Blackout." And so it was these workers, cane workers now climbing the poles to repair electrical issues. And in the wake of the hurricane, one thing that was really striking was that the U.S. was not responsive. And Puerto Ricans with no experience often climbed these electrical poles to start reconnecting wires, risking their lives to try to bring their communities electricity. And all of that was part of the meaning behind these things that some might not know. Amna Nawaz: There were some special guest stars as well performing with him. We saw Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin. Tell us in particular about the song Ricky Martin sang. Why is that important? Vanessa Diaz: Oh, so Ricky Martin took the stage to perform the song "Lo Que Le Paso a Hawaii," which is, "What Happened to Hawaii?" And this song is perhaps the most pointed political song on the entire album "Debi Tirar Mas Fotos." And it's really about Hawaii and Puerto Rico as two nations that were taken by the U.S. in 1898 and one became a state and one is the commonwealth, some might call it a colony, of Puerto Rico, right? And so there's this tension around what should happen to Puerto Rico. And in that song, Bad Bunny is saying he doesn't want us to be like Hawaii, doesn't want Puerto Rico to become a state. And Bad Bunny had people at his residency every Sunday night. He had a guest sing that song. And so this was a kind of nod to the residency and also giving Ricky Martin, who had to cross over in English to become the massive star that he became, and to have him take the world's biggest stage and be able to perform in his native language of Spanish representing Puerto Rico and do this political work he could never do as a mainstream artist 25 years ago was very significant. Amna Nawaz: We mentioned some of the criticism. You saw the president describe the performance as -- quote -- "an affront to the greatness of America." He said: "Nobody understands a word this guy is saying." As you also reported, Turning Point USA, the conservative political group that was founded by Charlie Kirk, held a counterprogramming halftime show. They billed it as the All-American Halftime Show. They saw upwards of some six million viewers. What do you make of that sort of broader backlash both to his selection to perform in the first place and the performance? Vanessa Diaz: I mean, from the moment Bad Bunny was announced, there was immediate backlash. And the reality is that has everything to do not just with the current political moment, but with the entire history of the U.S. construing, in like a mainstream narrative, construing Latinos as perpetual foreigners who do not belong, who are a threat to the U.S. And so this language of criticizing his performance and calling him un-American is just the perpetuation of these stereotypes, despite the fact that he is an American citizen. And I think that the fact that the halftime show that Turning Point USA created was called the All-American Halftime Show just goes to show you that this isn't about citizenship. This is actually about racism against Latinos. And that's just blatant to see because it insinuates that Bad Bunny's halftime show was not American. And that was the antithesis of what the performance was. Bad Bunny, Musician: God bless, America, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay. Vanessa Diaz: He talked about the fact that not only do Latinos belong here in the U.S., we are an integral part of American culture, and that America, America, as he says, is actually more than just the U.S. It's all of the Americas. Amna Nawaz: Despite the criticism, you may have seen the embrace that he and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell shared backstage after his performance. The NFL even shared that moment online, clearly happy about their choice. From a business and cultural perspective, why was Bad Bunny a good choice for the NFL? Vanessa Diaz: Well, the NFL is a business organization. Their primary concern is, is this good business? And there's no doubt, I don't think by anyone's -- there's no doubt from anyone that this was the smartest business decision. Bad Bunny is the biggest artist in the world. He's the most streamed artist in the world. He is selling out stadiums all over the world. So I think that Bad Bunny was not just a natural choice. He was the best choice from a business standpoint. And so this just happens to be a moment with something very political coincided with a strategic business decision. And I'm really happy about that. Amna Nawaz: That is Vanessa Diaz, associate professor at Loyola Marymount University. Vanessa, thank you so much for your time. Good to speak with you. Vanessa Diaz: You too.

Public DomainThe victims of the Burger Chef murders, clockwise from top left: Jayne Friedt, Mark Flemmonds, Ruth Ellen Shelton, and Danny Davis. In 1978, Speedway, Indiana, was a quiet town of less than 13,000 people that was only on the map due to the nearby Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That November, however, the town made the news for a different reason: the Burger Chef murders. Four employees of a local fast food chain vanished while closing the restaurant on the night of Friday, Nov. 17, 1978. The police initially thought that the young men and women — who ranged in age from 16 to 20 — had simply stolen cash from the register and gone out to party. It wasn’t until their bodies were found two days later that they realized what had really happened. By that point, the restaurant had been cleaned and reopened. Any evidence had been scrubbed away. The perpetrators were long gone. Indeed, the Burger Chef murders remain unsolved to this day. While several suspects have been questioned over the years, the tragic case went cold long ago — and it’s likely to stay that way. The Botched Investigation Of The Burger Chef Murders Just after midnight on Nov. 18, 1978, an off-duty Burger Chef employee stopped by the Speedway, Indiana, restaurant to help close. According to an FBI report, “He noticed that nobody in the Burger Chef was in sight and on going to the back door, noticed that it was open approx. three inches.” He entered the restaurant and saw that the cash register drawers and the safe were all open, too. He called the police, who discovered that $581 was missing, though two employees’ purses and $100 in coins had been left behind. There were no obvious signs of a struggle of any kind, so the police assumed that the four employees who had been working that night — Jayne Friedt, Ruth Ellen Shelton, Danny Davis, and Mark Flemmonds — had stolen the cash. As Stoney Vann, a retired sergeant with the Indiana State Police who investigated the case, told WRTV in 2023, officers thought the youngsters were “irresponsible kids” who were “going to show up in a few hours.” The Indianapolis StarThe headline of The Indianapolis Star on Nov. 19, 1978, the day the bodies were found. “So not a lot of investigation was done,” said Vann. Not everyone agreed, though. Ken York, a detective who also investigated the Burger Chef murders, told WTHR in 2003, “Professionally that would be hard for me to accept because the two girls’ purses were still at the scene at the Burger Chef.” Still, the restaurant opened as usual the following morning, the surfaces were cleaned, and no photos were taken of the scene. This proved to be a terrible mistake, because the four employees never did show up again. Instead, their bodies were found in a forest two days later. The Young Victims Of The Burger Chef Murders On Sunday, Nov. 19, 1978, the remains of 20-year-old assistant manager Jayne Friedt, 17-year-old Ruth Ellen Shelton, and 16-year-old Danny Davis and Mark Flemmonds were found in Johnson County, Indiana, south of Indianapolis. In their haste to reach the site, multiple agencies drove their vehicles through the area, once again destroying potential evidence. The investigators arrived at a grisly scene: The Burger Chef murders had been brutal. Davis and Shelton had been shot. Friedt had been stabbed, with the blade breaking off in her chest. And Flemmonds had asphyxiated on his own blood after he was brutally beaten, seemingly with a chain. Central Indiana Crime StoppersThe knife blade found lodged in Jayne Friedt’s chest. What began as a petty theft investigation had transformed into something much darker. While any evidence that may have been left at the restaurant was long gone, Flemmonds’ corpse revealed a clue about what led to the Burger Chef murders. “Some of the bruising on his head and shoulders was estimated at being an hour or two old prior to death,” said York. There had seemingly been a violent struggle, likely at Burger Chef, before the employees were brought to the forest and killed. A theory emerged that the incident was the result of a robbery gone wrong. Perhaps one of the workers had recognized the criminals, so the perpetrators had killed all four of them to eliminate witnesses. Then, in 1984, a man came forward and seemingly confirmed this theory. Chasing The Suspects Of The Grisly Crime In the immediate aftermath of the Burger Chef murders, a man at a bar in nearby Greenwood, Indiana, bragged that he’d been involved in the killings. The police tracked him down, but he quickly changed his tune. He’d had nothing to do with it after all, he said, but he did know of a group of men who frequently robbed fast food restaurants. Investigators questioned these new suspects, too, but despite the fact that two of them later went to prison for similar robberies, there was simply no evidence linking them to the scene of the Burger Chef murders. FOX59 News/YouTubeInvestigators made clay heads of two suspicious men a witness saw outside of Burger Chef the night of the murders, but no suspects were ever arrested. It wasn’t until 1984 that there was a break in the case. Donald Forrester, an inmate at a local prison, asked the police if he could avoid an upcoming transfer to a more violent facility if he confessed to his involvement in the 1978 killings. They agreed — and Forrester began to talk. Forrester seemed to know things that only the perpetrator would be able to tell investigators. For instance, he was aware that Friedt had been found with a blade stuck in her chest, even though that information hadn’t been publicized. He also led officers to the spot where the bodies had been discovered. What’s more, shell casings were uncovered in Forrester’s septic tank that may have been from the gun that killed Davis and Shelton. Forrester went on to claim that he and his accomplices had gone to Burger Chef on the night of Nov. 17 to threaten Jayne Friedt, whose brother owed them drug money. When Flemmonds had stepped in to defend her, things turned violent. Flemmonds fell and hit his head, and the perpetrators believed he was dead, so they decided to kill everyone to cover their tracks. This aligned almost perfectly with the investigators’ initial theory. But before any charges could be filed, Forrester suddenly recanted his story, claiming that he’d been coerced. The case went cold once more. GlaceEntertainmentPR/Wikimedia CommonsThe Burger Chef building where the brutal crime took place was demolished in 2025. As the years turned into decades, technology gave detectives new clues about the Burger Chef murders. A palm print from Friedt’s car, which officers believe was used in the kidnapping, pointed to a new suspect, but the lead fizzled out once again. Even now, nearly 50 years later, vital evidence has never been recovered, such as the handle of the knife blade lodged in Friedt’s chest. In 2018, the police carried out new forensic testing and released an image of the blade, hoping to gain new information about the case. But nobody else came forward. Still, York thinks he knows who did it: The members of the fast food robbery gang. “Unless someone proves differently or someone confesses between now and then,” he said, “I’ll go to my deathbed believing I know who killed those kids.” After learning about the unsolved Burger Chef murders, go inside the disturbing story of Jared Fogle, the former Subway spokesman. Then, learn about the former cop who rigged the McDonald’s Monopoly game. The post The Haunting Story Of The Mysterious Burger Chef Murders That Left Four Fast Food Workers Dead appeared first on All That's Interesting.

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