When my publisher asked me to write about what has made Taylor Swift a billionaire, I noted that she seemed, as a singer-songwriter who began her career in country and branched out to pop, to bridge the American cultural divide.
Silly me. I should’ve known that everything and everyone in this society at this time can be politicized and thus divisive. Witness the witch hunting of Swift, who in the run-up to Super Bowl LVIII — in which her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s team the Kansas City Chiefs will defend their title against the San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas on Sunday, Feb. 11 — has been branded everything from an agent of the Biden Administration, the Pentagon and NATO to an actual witch, casting a spell on her fans. (Comedian Jimmy Kimmel, host of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” suggested her critics consult “spell” check.)
All this because she has taken some progressive stances and encouraged her fans, including some 279 million Instagram followers, to vote, while Kelce has done a commercial for the Pfizer vaccine. So apparently the fix is in and the game is on for the Chiefs to win a rigged Super Bowl in which Swift will appear and somehow magically convey the need to vote for President Joe Biden. (Never mind that for such a conspiracy to work, every team in the NFL would have had to be in collusion.)
Athletes and entertainers have always had an uneasy relationship with politics. Remember former President John F. Kennedy’s brief flirtation with the Rat Pack and Marilyn Monroe and Sammy Davis Jr.’s awkward embrace with former President Richard M. Nixon? There’s a sense of using and being used, with both sides often winding up disappointed, because there’s a limit to what each can do for the other and because there’s often a failure to understand that and the true nature of the other. That doesn’t mean that athletes and entertainers shouldn’t be political if that’s what they want. But their actions need to be seen in totality.
I don’t think Swift is a poster child for the left anymore than Novak Djokovic is a poster child for the right. And yet former Republican presidential candidate and former-President Donald J. Trump fanboy Vivek Ramaswamey seems to think that’s just what they are. Not only has he suggested Swift is part of some vast left-wing conspiracy, but he praised Djokovic, who opposed mandatory Covid vaccinations, when he beat Carlos Alcaraz at the Western & Southern Open in his native Cincinnati last year in the run-up to the US Open — a thrilling match that could’ve gone either way. (What if Djokovic had lost? Would Ramaswamey have still noted his anti-mandatory vax stance?) Also, has Ramaswamey taken note of Djokovic’s “woke” qualities — his support for refugees and the environment, his antiwar position, his habits of meditating, journaling and doing ballet and yoga? Hardly Gov. Ron DeSantis material.
People are complex creatures ,picking and choosing from a buffet of values and qualities. Yet such are our times and our tribalism that we grasp at anything from someone we admire, despite not knowing him or her, to validate our group, ourselves. This says a lot about our insecurities, our loneliness, our longing for love in an age of AI and anxiety. And it’s also a warning to us to keep our idols in perspective. The right talks about the cult of Swift. But what about the cult of Trump? Doesn’t the Bible say we are to have no idols before God?
Ultimately, this may all be about a fear of a powerful woman who won’t be controlled. To paraphrase what I once wrote of Joan of Arc: Is Swift a witch or just an itch the Republicans can’t scratch?