What's behind the right's attack on Swift-Kelce romance? Fear of a powerful woman

Cease no matter you’re doing proper now as a result of odds are that you simply’re not working out of free will. That’s proper. The Taylor Swift tune you’re mindlessly buzzing whereas scrolling previous Tremendous Bowl advertisements on the way in which to checking your electronic mail isn’t only a innocent earworm, not less than in response to the MAGA Mediaverse.

It’s all a part of a nefarious plot to subvert the 2024 election and hand it to Joe Biden.

In a triangulation of paranoia, politics and pop music, right-wing influencers warned this week that celebrity Swift and her co-conspirators, the NFL, are a part of a widespread scheme to tank Donald Trump’s probabilities of profitable again the White Home.

This fastidiously constructed net of deceit has been uncovered/fabricated by misinformation brokers from Fox Information to OAN to regional discuss radio, lots of whom have additionally spent the previous couple of months convincing their followers that Swift is a Trojan Horse for the Democratic Get together … and an undercover Pentagon operative.

Fox Information anchor Jesse Watters urged earlier this month that Swift is perhaps “a entrance for a covert political agenda.” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh responded to Watters’ declare utilizing a track title and lyric from the singer’s hit repertoire: “As for this conspiracy concept, we’re going to shake it off.”

Taylor Swift, left, and Travis Kelce’s mom, Donna Kelce, watch the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs obtain the Lamar Hunt trophy after an AFC Championship recreation in opposition to the Baltimore Ravens.

(Julio Cortez / Related Press)

Now Swift’s recent-ish romance with Kansas Metropolis Chiefs tight finish Travis Kelce is being held up as proof that the NFL is concerned in a deep-six operation to sink the GOP come November. The soccer group will supposedly accomplish that by rigging the upcoming Tremendous Bowl in favor of Kansas Metropolis, due to this fact giving Swift the proper second — the halftime present! — to announce her endorsement of the Democratic candidate.

Huge pharma additionally has their hand within the malfeasance, or is it the Clintons? Or each? Onerous to maintain monitor, but when we had been to ask a Magic 8 Ball, as dependable a supply as any on Fox, “It’s decidedly so.”

Irrespective of that it doesn’t precisely require “Mission Inconceivable” coordination to make the above predictions come true: Swift, together with three-quarters of the leisure trade, endorsed Joe Biden over the past election cycle and doubtless will accomplish that once more.

The Chiefs gained the 2023 Tremendous Bowl, and this 12 months’s recreation marks their fourth look in 5 years. But on Sunday after the Chiefs’ victory in opposition to the Baltimore Ravens, conservative media persona Mike Cripsi took the daring step of “Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Tremendous Bowl, Swift comes out on the halftime present and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield. … It’s all been an op since day one.”

That’s “op” as in “psy-op,” a popular right-wing time period for psychological manipulation. Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy posted comparable psy-op sentiments on X, to which the platform’s proprietor, Elon Musk, replied, “Precisely.”

The concept that Swift and Kelce are gamers in a covert stratagem in opposition to Republicans is so facile that it feels beneficiant to even label it a conspiracy concept on the identical airplane as, like, Space 51 and the staged moon touchdown. But people have bitten, and now I’m writing about it.

However selecting Taylor Swift because the figurehead of this imaginary assault on MAGA world is a curious about-face on condition that the billionaire songstress was one of many few pop sensations embraced by the suitable.

The innocuous, feel-good singer emerged out of nation music twenty years in the past and for a lot of her profession was embraced by center America as a healthful, protected various to Beyoncé and different main women who don’t resemble the Swiss Miss cocoa woman.

So what modified? Nearly every little thing, together with the unhappy fact that every little thing is up for polarizing politicization when points and coverage are not on the core of a marketing campaign or a celebration’s targets.

Actual points — from the dearth of reasonably priced housing to a possible world struggle erupting out of the Center East to the a number of felony trials of the Republican front-runner — requiring discernment and critical thought. And since Trump’s GOP seems quick on each, they’ve turned to a different tried-and-true pink herring: Attacking a strong girl.

Sports activities pundits and conservative personalities have been grousing for months about legions of Swifties immediately attending Kansas Metropolis video games, and even donning Kelce’s “87” jersey. How dare they!

Kelce already was a questionable determine amongst right-wing sports activities followers for his function in a marketing campaign promoted by Pfizer that encourages individuals to get a COVID-19 and flu shot on the similar time. Now he’s dragged popular culture — a realm typically criticized by conservative pundits as a petri dish of woke ideologies — into the sacred world of sports activities, barely overlaying his tracks from apolitical participant to undercover leftist operative.

Regardless of the latter narrative, it’s Swift’s fame that launched Kelce onto the worldwide stage. Her record-breaking Eras tour, and a blockbuster movie enshrining the concert events, catapulted her from an omnipresent musical sensation to a world drive. Her boyfriend of the second naturally turn into a part of the phenomenon.

Typically a pop star actually simply is a pop star, and a soccer participant actually simply is a soccer participant. Even in an election 12 months the place concern of psy-ops and pop stardom collide.