Why are so many people flipping out over Taylor Swift and the NFL?

Question

abc3643 · Accepted Answer

This is in the New York Times today (31 JAN 2024)...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/opinion/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-republicans.html

======

Taylor Swift, Donald Trump and the Right’s Abnormality Problem
Jan. 31, 2024, 5:02 a. m. ET
By Ross Douthat (/* abc3643: ... who is generally a conservative columnist */)
Opinion Columnist

There was a brief period in the later part of the Covid-19 pandemic, between the moment when Glenn Youngkin swept into the Virginia governorship and the full political return of Donald Trump, when I became convinced that American liberalism was headed for a truly epochal defeat in 2024.

It seemed then that — under the influence of progressive radicalism, institutional groupthink and coronavirus fears — the liberal establishment was untethering itself from American normalcy to a politically suicidal degree. Blue cities and regions were rerunning aspects of the left’s 1970s social program on fast-forward and generating spikes in crime and disorder. The Democratic Party’s economic agenda had yielded 1970s-style inflation. Joe Biden was elected as a moderate but was too aged and diminished to actually impose moderation on his party. And elite liberalism was increasingly associated with a mixture of Covid overreaction and ideological hysteria: Imagine a double-masked bureaucrat running a white-privilege workshop, forever.

Liberalism in 2024 is still in all kinds of trouble, but the truly epochal defeat seems less likely than it did back then. In part this is because of adaptations within the center-left. Blue-state Covid restrictions were unwound a bit faster than I expected — in part because of the political peril they created for Democratic politicians. Many of those same politicians have found ways to get some distance from their party’s activists, especially in swing states like Pennsylvania. And ideological fervor on the left seems to have passed its peak, yielding a more contested environment inside elite institutions and a modest left-wing retreat in the culture as a whole.

But the other reason that liberalism is surviving its disconnect from what remains of American normalcy is conservatism’s inability to just be normal itself, even for a minute.

Trump himself is a great abnormalizer. But so are the various fixations and follies that take shape in his wake — like the very-online right’s bizarre reaction to the romance between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, a love story that’s united the two remaining pillars of our common culture: the National Football League and, well, Swift herself.

Conservative hostility to Swift has been simmering ever since she dipped into partisan politics in 2018 and 2020, though it should be stressed that this antipathy is hardly universal: An Echelon Insights poll from last summer found that what it called “Trump-first Republicans” were more likely to be hostile to Swift, whereas more “party-first Republicans” gave her the same broadly favorable ratings as the country as a whole.

But within that hostile faction, her relationship with Kelce has transformed a merely unfavorable impression into outright paranoia, with various online influencers portraying the romance as some kind of carefully crafted political propaganda, whose true purpose is to make a Swift or Swift-Kelce endorsement of Biden’s re-election bid as meaningful as possible to Swifties and football fans alike.

To give this theory its maximal due, it is apparently the case — at least per my colleagues’ reporting — that the Biden campaign is indeed hoping for a Swift endorsement and imagining that it will give the president some kind of electoral boost. So there is some partisan interest, some hope of an advantage for the Democrats, at play in both the celebrity romance itself and perhaps the outcome of the Super Bowl.

But there are two levels at which the online right’s reaction to this doesn’t make any sense. The first is that celebrities’ endorsing liberal politicians is just not an especially decisive part of politics. Swift endorsed Phil Bredesen in the Tennessee Senate race, and he lost to Marsha Blackburn by 11 points. She endorsed Biden in 2020 and he won, but nobody looking back imagines that the Swift factor mattered all that much.

If you wanted to stretch a bit to envision a real Swift effect in 2024, you could say that Biden’s distinctive problem with youth turnout and Gen Z disillusionment has created a rare situation in which a superstar endorsement could make a meaningful difference. But the idea that it would matter enough to inspire and justify a media-regime influence operation, complete with some remarkable acting performances by the faking-it romantic partners and some kind of game-fixing shenanigans by the N. F. L., is the silliest possible conspiracy theory.

The deeper issue, though, is that regardless of the electoral impact of a Swift endorsement, the cultural valence of the Swift-Kelce romance isn’t just normal and wholesome and mainstream in a way that conservatism shouldn’t want to be defined against. It’s normal and wholesome and mainstream in an explicitly conservative-coded way, offering up the kind of romantic iconography that much of the online right supposedly wants to encourage and support.

Normally you can’t scroll for more than a few minutes through right-wing social media without encountering some kind of meme valorizing the old ways of jocks and beauties, big bearded men and the women who love them, heteronormative American romance in some kind of throwback form.

The quest to make sense of the right’s anti-Swiftism has encouraged weak attempts to suggest that the Swift-Kelce romance is somehow subverting these traditionalist archetypes and modeling a more progressive idea of romance — that because she’s richer and more famous than he is and he respects her career, they’re basically one step removed from a Bay Area polycule or Brooklyn open marriage.

But come on. A story where the famous pop star abandons her country roots and spends years dating unsuccessfully in a pool of Hollywood creeps and angsty musicians, only to find true love in the arms of a bearded heartland football star who runs a goofy podcast with his equally bearded, happily married, easily inebriated older brother … I mean, this is a Hallmark Christmas movie! This is an allegory of conservative Americana! This is itself a right-wing meme!

But the meme-makers don’t want it. They are rejecting for secondary and superficial reasons — Swift’s banal liberal politics, Kelce’s vaccine P. S. A. s — what they should be affirming for primary and fundamental ones. They are turning down the deep story, the primal archetypes, because the celebrities involved aren’t fully on their political side.

But the celebrities aren’t on their side precisely because the right keeps making itself so weird that even temperamentally conservative people (which both Swift and Kelce seem to be) find themselves alienated from its demands.

There are two key reasons for this self-defeating weirdness, both of them downstream from Trump’s 2016 victory. The first is the realignment that I’ve discussed a few times before, where the ideological shifts of the Trump era made the right more welcoming to all manner of outsider narratives and fringe beliefs (including previously left-coded ones like vaccine skepticism) while the left became much more dutifully establishmentarian. This realignment made the right more interesting in certain ways, more inclined to see through certain bogus narratives and official pieties — but also more inclined to try to see through absolutely everything, which as C. S. Lewis observed is the same thing as not really seeing anything at all.

The second reason for the right’s abnormality problem is that even normal people in the Republican coalition overlearned the lesson of Trump’s election. Having made the safe and moderate choices in 2008 and 2012 and watched both John McCain and Mitt Romney go down in defeat, Republicans made a wild-seeming choice with Trump and saw him win the most improbable of victories. And there was a reasonable political lesson in that experience, which is that sometimes a dose of destabilization can open a path to new constituencies, new maps, new paths to victory.

But the dose is everything, and trying to be abnormal forever because it worked for you once is self-defeating in the extreme. The goal of destabilization, after all, is to eventually create a new stability, in which your party and vision and coalition are understood by most Americans to be a safe and normal place to belong. That is what the Trump-era right has conspicuously failed to achieve. And it won’t get there so long as it sees even cultural developments it should welcome, romances that it should be rooting for, and shakes its head and says, “It must be a liberal op.”

WhiteSteve · Accepted Answer

It’s pretty wild. I don’t really feel any one way about Taylor. She’s just a pop culture megastar who I acknowledge as such. Not a consumer of her music, but I don’t hate it either. Just not a vibe I tend to seek out.

Some people who are overly concerned with politics are SUPER threatened by celebrities expressing political views, because they tend to be left-leaning, and they just can’t handle the threat of an influential person maybe rubbing off on a voting citizen. But make no mistake, it’s AWESOME when Kid Rock says something, lmao. It’s just the usual “they wouldn’t be mad if they thought it benefitted them, but it doesn’t, so they manufacture a a narrative about how bad and sinister it is. Political Spin 101

mandyfire98 · Accepted Answer

It wasn't an issue until one group politicized her. She came out and said uoung people need to vote but never even said which side to vote for but Republicans ended up turning on her and that bled into the nfl because she's dating Travis Kelce. Now Trump is trying to attack her too saying he's far more famous than her and saying she's not talented.

Basically one side has mobilized and decided that she needs to be attacked because they assume she's trying to get votes for the democratic party and they know she's massively popular with young people who might not usually vote but will because of her and her popularity. She wasn't being attacked until she said young people need to vote. That was the exact moment.

wiltingrosepetal · Accepted Answer

dude I tried googling whatever this was about and what I saw was 'US right-wing conspiracy theory touts Taylor Swift as Pentagon Asset' bro- firstly I don't know what the pentagon or chiefs are and secondly all I'm hearing that she actually did was go to a footy game? and people are making political claims? someone explain 💀

Jersey2 · Answer

F Kaepernick and the fake BLM money scam. He was a failed QB that pulled the race card. BLM founders are living in mansions just like he is today.

Taylor Swift has brought me back to watching some football. I am not a big fan of hers or football but I do enjoy both from time to time. She is just there but the TV folks keep the camera in her because it is good for ratings and good for football.

One more game and she will be gone as her boyfriend will likely retire and hit the road with her. Then we won’t be able to go anywhere without seeing the wedding pictures and video.

ImHere22 · Answer

Because republicans are scared little whining idiots and apparently have nothing, literally nothing better than to start sh*t about Taylor and Travis. Like damn, the two are not talking politics; she’s touring, he’s got the Super Bowl coming up, and MAGA-lovers can’t get their names out of their mouths. Let TnT and everyone else just live their lives, you wack republicans!

RedInnocent68 · Answer

Because conservatives can’t accept that people have opinions other than theirs, and go apeshit any time they’re threatened. Whiny, hypocrite snowflakes.

BCA6010 · Answer

I couldn't care less about Taylor Swift or the NFL. Though I do find it laughable how many people are adamantly anti COVID mrna yet seem to have completely forgotten who and what Travis Kelce is.

OtterMan68 · Answer

Becuase MAGA will believe anything Tucker Carlson and Vivek Ramaswary tell them

Iron_Man · Answer

It’s not a big deal she’s just very popular and is dating ha ha ha the Kansas City Chiefs Travis Kelce

Anonymous · Answer

They are afraid of her influence. And maybe even just a bit jealous

NamerOfStars · Answer

For the same reason they flipped out over Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light; the older kids on social media told them to.

Hispanic-Cool-Guy · Answer

No idea. People just have to be mad over something as a woman following her boyfriend around playing a kid's game.

Sabretooth · Answer

as someone who has many of the Maga cultists in his family, I can't tell you that are emotionally driven and quick to anger. that makes them easy to herd.

Zestyassmf1997 · Answer

Celebrity worship is modern day bread and circuses. Meant to keep people dumb and distracted.

Surely · Answer

Don’t want to disappoint her. But I don’t watch football!

jshm2 · Answer

They aren't.  But feel they should, as she's not "pro Trump"

SolitarySolace · Answer

She’s endorsing Biden for reelection. Just more women in top of those already planning to vote for his decrepit ass. I swear women are going to ruin this country. Repeal the 19th

Anonymous · Answer

It's mostly 15 year old girls and the media is making a big deal of it.

MidwestHeels · Answer

They have nothing better to do in their lives

laly520 · Answer

thats what happens when a singer steps into any political matter

HaveNoName · Answer

All I know is IDGAF about some ordinary zero IQ person hyped up by media into a "star". But then, IDGAF about NFL either.

gorydetails · Answer

ironically her boyfriend was the first white player to kneel for the anthem. Fuck em both.

bradley142 · Answer

I don't know but i wished they would stop showing her dumb ass like who cares about her

normalice · Answer

It's just advertising.

strateguy632 · Answer

i am not flipping out. no reason to.

Snakeyes7 · Answer

I have no clue

Why are so many people flipping out over Taylor Swift and the NFL?

Most Helpful Opinions

Most Helpful Opinions

What Girls & Guys Said

Why are so many people flipping out over Taylor Swift and the NFL?

Most Helpful Opinions

Most Helpful Opinions

What Girls & Guys Said

We're glad to see you liked this post.