Grenoble I haven’t been a big Taylor Swift fan. Even when she was country, she was poppy. Now that she’s all pop, I can’t really keep up. I know she sells a lot of music, and that she is often mentioned in the same breath as Beyonce, but who can tell from day to day. Beyonce seemed to have some politics, but Taylor Swift had seemed all bubble gum and whatever. Now, I may have to re-examine this whole thing given the fact that Swift has jumped into Tennessee – and therefore national — politics with her boots on and is kicking it.
If you were on the moon or just reading the front pages you may have missed this. Swift came out of nowhere with an announcement that she was going to vote Democratic in the midterm elections. At first it was just a bit of a blip on the screen coming from the right wing. For some reason, many in the right-side media had just assumed Swift was a gun-toting, card-carrying “one of them.” This out of nowhere Demo-thing caught them off guard, though there was no evidence that it was a betrayal, since Swift had never come out from behind the pomp and glitter and declared herself one way or another.
Turned out that was nothing. She then clearly injected herself into the elections in Tennessee where this Pennsylvania girl now lives as a woman. She didn’t pull any punches in her endorsement for the Senate seat to replace Bob Corker by opposing far right Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn by saying to her more than 100 million Instagram followers,
“Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me. She voted against equal pay for women. She voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which attempts to protect women from domestic violence, stalking and date rape. She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples. She also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values.”
Then she dropped the microphone and according to Voter.org there was a record surge of more than 166,000 new registrants among young people 16 to 24 in 48 hours after her posting, including 6200 in Tennessee.
`Did she take a risk? I doubt it. Swift is smart. She stood up to a stalker in court in Colorado and won. She can afford to have a poll. She kept within the lines by focusing on women’s issues in a time when women are hyper-aware, and given her history confronting stalkers her position on the Violence Against Women Act was something that no one could argue is not an issue where she was an expert. Even her position on gay rights is solidly within the majoritarian views of Americans. She wasn’t trying to be Jane Fonda in Vietnam or the Dixie Chicks on Iraq where some Americans could claim she had no business. She was walking closely on her marks on the stage where she sings and that includes about women’s empowerment.
I’m not knocking her. I’m just saying she knew what she was doing, and she did the right thing by speaking up and telling her public and the rest of us where she stood.
We need a lot more people like Taylor Swift standing up for what they believe, and not just counting followers, but actually proving they know when and where to lead them.
Getting some miles away from the United States and filtering reality through the news, an emerging political scenario where the Republicans hold the Senate, the Democrats take over the House, and Trump owns the Supreme Court lock-stock-and-barrel seems to have almost acquired the stamp of certainty. Let’s say all of this comes to pass, then what? Nirvana, hardly! More likely, desolation row.
