New Orleans I’m starting to like Taylor Swift more, even as I’m super tired of reading about her tour, her romance, and about everything else. It’s more a case of the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of thing. It’s also a situation where it’s all so MAGA conspiracy crazy, that somehow, she has driven the crazies even crazier, exposing them to ridicule even from stonecold conservatives. For that, if nothing else, she deserves all of our thanks.
Conservatives and Republicans by the score who traffic in these dark places of the soul where conspiracies are hatched and spread have reported in the corners of the MAGA whack world’s alternative reality that the little romance of Swift and Kansas City NFL Chiefs’ star tight end Travis Kelce has pushed them past the pale. I’m not going to go there, but somehow they think this is one huge psych-ops thing that combines music, football, and politics in a nefarious effort to takeaway the country somehow and reelect Joe Biden as president. Wow, these folks are really and truly running scared, and that’s the good news!
To most observers, Swift’s politics seem about fingernail polish thin. She’s a musical powerhouse and a cultural icon, but to her huge credit she gets the fact that she has a mammoth base in these so-called Swifties. She did come out clearly on some Tennessee endorsements, and she did send all the right smoke signals for Biden against Trump in 2020. Her people stood up strong in Latin America on her tour recently on women’s rights and choice. Huge props for all of that. She may not be standing tall all the time, but she’s definitely willing to raise her head over the ramparts when it counts on some issues.
The columnists are having a field day over this contretemps. Ross Douthat in the Times couldn’t understand why the MAGA-ites weren’t cheering that Swift had dropped out of her Hollywood dating pool and gone red blooded with a football guy. Eugene Robinson in the Post reasons that the trigger in the Taylor-Travis fling is their upset that they thought they owned football and the NFL and now fear that the rest of us are taking it away from them. They may also be frightened about Swift bringing more women and young girls into the stands in what they have seen as their sacred, misogynistic turf. Maybe some of the owners will be a little less gung-ho military and go more sequins and sherry? Heaven forbid!
One thing none of these folks’ mention is the original sin that probably still grates some MAGA-ites which was her abdication of being a country music queen, where she found her fame and fortune, to become a pop princess. They didn’t have something like the Dixie Chicks treachery of slamming George W. Bush over Iraq, so some of them no doubt have been waiting in the gap for her to do something that allows them to go loud and rouge over her desertion. Hey, she’s from Biden’s old stomping grounds in the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania hills where football was king, so she probably always had an eye out. Her backstory is not pickup trucks and tractor wheels but the main chance, and good for her, but that likely continues to rile these sensitive souls so worried about their replacement.
All of this is a huge hoot and to the degree it marginalizes the MAGA-ites even more, we all have to thank Taylor and Travis for as long as it lasts. Swift is more famous than Trump, so for her, this is all water off a duck’s back.