Mad at Taylor Swift? You need to calm down

Memo to conservatives fuming at Taylor Swift like she just started selling puberty blockers at her merch tables: Shake it off. If you insist on making the beloved everywoman an antihero, we could be in for a cruel summer (and even crueler November 5).

I'll stop now. You don't need even a glancing familiarity with the pop superduperstar's catalogue to realize that she's front and center thanks to beau Travis Kelce’s bid to become a Super Bowl champion. Again.

In a little more than a week, Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs square off against the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas. And Swift will be by his side (or rather in her luxury booth) cheering him on.

Swift previously took to social media to mock claims that she’s a witch with great effectiveness. She could potentially apply the kill shot to these MAGA fantasists – and by extension to the party that harbors them – with one Instagram post.

That has select conservatives apoplectic. A small subset took their Tay Tay rage to a new level. She’s a psyop, they cry, her manufactured romance part of President Joe Biden’s re-election scheme. And she’ll make it official on Super Bowl Sunday.

In short, the NFL fix is in. It’s like wrestling without the fake punches, corny dialogue, and scripted moments.

In her Biden era?

Yes, Swift is a Democrat. She made that clear in the 2020 documentary “Miss Americana,” which celebrated her “coming out” as a progressive diva after years of apolitical posturing. She pushed hard for Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms with mixed results (Marsha Blackburn became a Tennessee senator despite Swift’s attacks on her) and backed Biden in 2020.

She also successfully rallied thousands of young people to register to vote.

Democrats salivate over Swift pumping life into Biden’s comatose re-election campaign. If anyone can jolt the 81-year-old back to political life, it’s Swift. We’re already seeing a flood of think pieces all but demanding that Swift apply the defibrillator paddles to Team Biden.

Pundits are having a field day imagining a Biden-Swift pairing, even if it means the singer praises the elderly statesman solely from her social media accounts.

Bad blood for Trump

Conservatives eager to make Swift their enemy are making a grave mistake.

Let’s start with the likely GOP standard-bearer, Donald Trump. The real estate mogul will struggle to snag the female suburban voter, and that’s being generous. His boorish nature, checkered history with former partners, and accusations of sexual assault all but ended any hope of luring that demographic to the voting booth this November.

Alienating young, rabid Swift fans, and by extension their mothers, will put the kibosh on attempts to repair that fractured bond.

Swift’s squeaky-clean image should be praised, not attacked. Conservatives caterwaul over sexually charged singers like Cardi “WAP” B and Miley Cyrus while ignoring how Swift brings much-needed wholesomeness to the culture.

She’s beautiful but modest, and her lyrics center on broken romances and dreams of meeting her ultimate Romeo. Her steamiest songs pale compared to what’s heard on iTunes today.

She makes Sandy from “Grease” seem like a trollop.

And her romance with Kelce, a football god who looks as all-American as John Wayne, is full of hand-holding and chaste kisses. In an age of throuples and gender-fluidity, isn’t this refreshing?

Taylor's version

Another reason conservatives should reconsider their Swift rage? The press is weaponizing it already.

The Associated Press, which can’t find the time to fact-check President Biden, dashed off a story debunking the psyop charges.

Political and media figures on the right, including former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, political activist Laura Loomer, and One America News Network host Alison Steinberg, have amplified the allegations.

Conservatives are walking into a trap, and soon the rest of the progressive landscape will pile on. Stephen Colbert and company will mock conservatives from their late-night perches. “Saturday Night Live” will cook up a deeply unfunny sketch on the matter. Maybe more.

A version of this is already in play.

Swift previously took to social media to mock claims that she’s a witch with great effectiveness. She could potentially apply the kill shot to these MAGA fantasists – and by extension to the party that harbors them – with one Instagram post.

The new narrative will stick, and Republicans will look stodgy and out of step with pop culture. Check that. Stodgier and even more out of step with pop culture.

We can ill afford that at a time when said culture influences the political landscape more than even the late Andrew Breitbart envisioned.

Conservatives should praise her talent, hard work, and positively aspirational brand without needlessly angering her fan base or giving the liberal media a cudgel with which to beat us down. Her 2023 Eras Tour gave a reeling nation a lifeline, a chance to celebrate a pop superstar at the peak of her powers. And, to her credit, she kept politics off the stage through it all.

Yes, Swift is as overexposed as any pop star in recent memory. Sure, the press’ ability to wring clickbait headlines out of her NFL romance is exhausting. And those NFL camera operators are addicted to her reaction shots.

We get it.

Going to war against Swift, and not President Biden’s authoritarian measures 24/7, is a tactical error in the making.