It seems Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, has led his team to the Superbowl. Cool (speaking as someone with no particular interest in football)! Except Republican presidential candidate and bullshit artist Vivek Ramaswamy now claims it’s all prearranged — the Chiefs get the Superbowl, the Chiefs win the Superbowl, Taylor Swift endorses Biden as payback! See how it all fits together! As Philip Bump says, “This makes a lot of sense because the Chiefs haven’t been to the Super Bowl since, uh, last year, when they won. But before that they hadn’t been since, well, two years before. But that one they lost! But they’d won the year before that.”
And then there’s the weird conspiracy theories. And more weird theories. True, political paranoia is standard for right-wingers these days — they hate that Kelce is pro-vax — but even for them, it’s ridiculous. Though as Roy Edroso points out, conservatives have been spewing bullshit at Swift for some years now.
But wait, there’s much, much more! Fox News talking head (okay, more of a babbling head) Jesse Watters claims she’s might be a Pentagon psy-op. Trump toady and windbag Sean Hannity has warned Swift against endorsing Biden: “Does Taylor realize the guy that they want her to endorse is a kind of stumbling, bumbling mess, doesn’t have the energy to give a 30 minute speech, let alone perform a three hour concert like she does? He also is kind of very creepy. She may want to check out those creepy videos, they’re online.”
My response would be that everything Hannity’s saying describes Trump.
Hannity: “Or maybe she just bought into all the lies about conservatives and Republicans, that they are racist and sexist and homophobic and xenophobic and transphobic and Islamophobic, and Republicans and conservatives want dirty air and water, and a total ban on all abortion with no exceptions. If she believes all that, she is believing a lie, because those talking points are simply untrue.”
My response: None of those are lies. Not necessarily true of all Republicans but they’re true of the party as a whole: And those who are not sexist, homophobic, etc. are willing to support policies that are.
A lot of this is just a cheap form of clickbait (me posting about Swift certainly boosts my viewing numbers), like claims Taylor Swift worships Satan or works for George Soros. It also helps people like Ramaswamy keep their brand prominent which will undoubtedly help him transition to a post-politics careeer as a talking head on OAN or a consultant or whatever. It’s also feeding the rageaholics and fascists who make up the Republican base, reaffirming that yes, their country has been stolen away from them and yes, sinister forces are cheating their god-king Trump of the nomination.
Possibly some of it is a desire to please the Republican god-king, who delusionally believes he has more fans than Taylor Swift (and Alina Habba, his lawyer, thinks America needs more women like her and fewer like Swift) Because no mistake, the Republican platform comes down primarily to pleasing Trump. The Florida politician who wants the state to pay some of Trump’s legal fees. Ass-hat pundit Michael Knowles agrees. They’re still working on schemes to overrule the popular vote. Or to shield Trump from going on trial for his actions. And I’m sure they’ll parrot Trump’s lies that he won his fraud and defamation cases on appeal. It’s like the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” except when the boy points out the emperor’s naked, everyone refuses to listen.
In a two-party system it is a bad thing that one party has turned fascist and barking-dog enraged and insane. All the more reason to vote against them.
