Have we come to the point where the media is now an Ouroboros of coverage, eating its own tail in an effort to feed off of some kind of narrative?
The latest example involves Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Swift is the world’s most famous pop singer and Kelce, her boyfriend, the second-best player on an NFL team going to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in six years, the Kansas City Chiefs.
Because Swift was at Kelce’s games all season, the cutaways proved irksome for those who were there to simply watch a game, not watch reaction shots of the world’s most famous girlfriend. But this suddenly became stories about toxic masculinity and “weird, lonely, insecure men.” (That last quote is from sports radio host and Fox Sports 1 personality Colin Cowherd — who may indeed not be lonely, given that he’s married, but certainly comes across as weird and insecure, and vapid as well.)
Then, the story drifted into the political realm because, see, Swift is identifiably liberal. She famously took the side of Democrat Phil Bredesen in the 2018 Tennessee Senate race between him and GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn; Blackburn ended up shaking it off, to use Taylor-speak, winning by over 10 points.
Nevertheless, the media seems obsessed with an online “conspiracy theory” among conservatives — which seems to get more reporting on political news sites than it does air on social media — that the NFL and its owners are secretly fixing things so that Taylor and Travis get more coverage and that the couple endorses the president at the big game.
The Hill, for instance, reported about this on Tuesday, in a story about former Wyoming GOP/RINO Rep. Liz Cheney calling Swift “a national treasure.”
“The conservative side of social media has been flooded with conspiracy theories about the singer, accusing the NFL of fixing games in favor of the Kansas City Chiefs — the team Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, plays for — so the celebrity couple can attend the Super Bowl and endorse President Biden’s reelection campaign after a Chiefs championship win,” The Hill reported.
This was a real story, let me remind you — during campaign season, nonetheless — not something from a satire site like The Onion. And now, after basically manufacturing a rash of “conspiracy theories” — which are little more than the same dumb speculation about the refs and league after every game that doesn’t go a certain fanbase’s way — The Hill reported on Friday that the GOP front-runner could face “backlash” after a firestorm they’ve mostly created for him. Funny how that works.
“Former President Trump’s supporters are going after Taylor Swift amid chatter about whether the superstar could wade into the 2024 election with a coveted endorsement for President Biden,” The Hill’s Julia Mueller wrote in a piece titled “Trump risks backlash as MAGA world zeroes in on Taylor Swift.”
Is the NFL’s coverage of Taylor Swift over the top?
Except, as Mueller noted, Trump doesn’t really care about it. The media does — specifically, the left-bubble media.
“Trump, who is usually not shy about speaking his opinion, so far has stayed out of the fray, though Rolling Stone reported this week that the former president’s allies are pledging a ‘holy war’ against Swift, especially if she sides with Democrats in November,” she wrote.
That “holy war” quote from Rolling Stone came from an unnamed “source close to Donald Trump,” which is almost always the sign of an outlet that doesn’t have a source all that close to Donald Trump. (Remember the infamous New York Times Op-Ed, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” that turned out to be written by a low-level staffer nobody outside the White House — and most people inside of it — didn’t even know?)
For the most part, the biggest piece of “evidence” of this “conspiracy theorizing” is this tweet from former presidential candidate and conservative businessman/activist Vivek Ramaswamy, which seems to be about 39 percent serious in tone:
I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) January 29, 2024
If this is the intensity and fervor with which “holy war” is waged in the West, no wonder Constantinople fell to the Ottomans with such relative ease.
But naturally, The Hill found some leftist organizer who said that a conservative “attack on Swift would carry significant risks for Trump, given his existing vulnerabilities with women and young people.”
“Waging a war on Taylor Swift is certainly not a way to win over the young voters and women that they’ve been hemorrhaging because of their stance on so many issues and the people, the abusive men that they’ve elevated into positions of power,” said Kaivan Shroff.
Who? She’s “press secretary for the Gen-Z progressive group Dream for America.” This is a real story that they’re trying to make happen more desperately than the word “fetch.”
“The pivotal role young voters are expected to play in November was underscored this week when the [New York] Times reported that Biden allies were hoping to clinch Swift’s endorsement. According to a Pew Research breakdown from early last year, Gen-Z adults and Millennials make up more than half of Swift’s fanbase, which is also majority women,” The Hill reported.
Well, here’s a news flash fresh from the ticker: The kind of person who is going to be told how to vote based on the “Anti-Hero” and “Shake it Off” singer is already the kind of person who is not considering voting for Donald Trump. There is near mutual exclusivity between the two groups. If one is that mesmerized by the cult of celebrity and mass media and is receptive to its relentless messaging, one almost certainly doesn’t have a red MAGA cap in their wardrobe.
Nor, in fact, would they have voted for Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or George W. Bush or any other Republican that the party has ever run if a Swift-like figure told them to vote for the corresponding Democrat. Elvis Presley, at the height of his fame, could have endorsed and campaigned for Adlai Stevenson, and the only thing that would have changed would have been the removal of “Hound Dog” from the jukebox at the Young Republicans for Eisenhower re-election party.
And this isn’t mere conjecture. Remember, Swift — who was as famous in 2018 as she is today — waded into politics by endorsing Democrat Phil Breseden in Tennessee’s Senate race during that midterm cycle.
According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Breseden — a popular former governor seen as a moderate pragmatist in comparison to the firebrand reputation imparted to Blackburn by the liberal media — had largely been ahead for most of the race and was still in a virtual tie (46.8 percent for Blackburn vs. 46.3 percent for Breseden) when Swift released her endorsement on Oct. 7, 2018.
“I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG,” she wrote in the Instagram endorsement, according to CNBC. “I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.”
“As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn. Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me,” Swift continued.
“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.”
Final result? Blackburn 54.7 percent, Breseden 43.9 percent.
What’s changed since then? Aside from the fact that most of America knows what the word “Swiftie” means now, nothing.
There’s a certain point where you can’t get more famous than you already are, and Swift had arguably reached that point when she thought she was lending a helping hand to Phil Breseden. In a year where the backlash against Trump and the Republicans was strong, Swift didn’t just not boost young voter turnout to get Breseden elected, she arguably killed his chances by painting him as the kind of progressive that the rich and elite loved.
The difference this time is that, unlike Breseden, Biden isn’t liked. In fact, he’s loathed, with record-low approval ratings persisting into an election year. And sure, maybe a Swiftie or two signs up to vote for ol’ Uncle Joe if she gets involved, but she invariably puts her stamp on him as the official candidate of celebrity wokeness. I’m sure that’ll go over real well in the blue-collar states he needs to win, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio, as well as socially conservative swing states like Arizona and Georgia.
But no — despite an object lesson in how a Swift endorsement works, the media has turned idle online takes after a big game into a “conspiracy theory,” and are now warning that the blowback from these wild takes from “MAGA world” could cost Trump dearly.
To paraphrase William Randolph Hearst: You furnish the random social media posts from conservatives vaguely annoyed with cutaway shots to Taylor Swift, they’ll furnish the “conspiracy theories” and the “backlash.”
