Why MAGA is Swiftie Boating a Pop Star

A Taylor Swift explainer for people who mix her up with Britney Spears

This one isn’t for the Swifties, or the fans of the real Tennessee titan, pop star Taylor Swift. See what I did there? I worked a football reference into a discussion of a pop singer. The opposite has been going on — a pop singer getting into the NFL’s peanut butter — since Swift started dating Kansas City Chief’s tight end Travis Kelce, and MAGA has lost what’s left of its mind. It’s not just about whether the broadcast shows her cheering for her boyfriend. The end of the world is, allegedly, nigh.

Three examples:

1. The Pentagon has been forced to deny that Swift is a “psychological operation” to re-elect Joe Biden after Fox News host Jesse Watters said, “It’s real. The Pentagon psy-op unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset for combating misinformation online.”

2. Best-selling author and less-successful presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy posted, “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.”

3. And when Time named her Person of the Year, Jack Prosobiec, an influential white nationalist, posted, “The Taylor Swift girlboss psyop has been fully activated. From her hand-selected vaccine shill boyfriend to her DINK lifestyle to her upcoming 2024 voter operation for Democrats on abortion rights”

To which I say, at least Taylor Swift is drawing some heat away from the Jews. Dayenu. But as tempting as it would be to minimize this as a confectionary controversy over sportsball, pop music, and blithering morons, I would counter that Donald Trump is leading in the polls to be elected the next president, and the absolute worst forces in American politics that sustain Trump are butthurt to an extent that goes beyond performative outrage. What is it about a modern-day Monroe-DiMaggio that prevents them from shaking it off?

First, the obvious: Taylor Swift is a woman. Also, she campaigned for Democrats in Tennessee in 2018 when her senator voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. Then there’s Travis Kelce, a pitchman for Pfizer vaccinations and Bud Light. So on the surface here you’ve got a homophobic derp gumbo with a sexist roux.

You’ve got a homophobic derp gumbo with a sexist rue.

Next, the funnier: She is richer and more popular than Donald Trump, which so obviously drives him nuts that he has claimed that he is “more popular” than she. Ha. See also: ha.

Let’s take a breather. I dove right into this, resisting the urge to apologize in footnotes after every sentence. It’s a humiliating time to be a patriot. Having to puzzle together why Goliath is angry at the sirens saps the battle of whatever glory is left to the combatants. But I find value in understanding how things got so dumb, and if you’re with me, onward. If you want to bail out here, I understand, because from here on out we go deep.

I’m old. (OK, not that deep.) I read about bands I liked in books I bought at Scholastic fairs and, later, in Rolling Stone magazines I bought at the grocery store. Yes, I felt the ecstasy of vicarious expression in the music of Huey Lewis & the News (sue me), but I never identified with Huey. There was me, in the crowd, cheering for him, up on stage. The connection was created in the experience I shared with Dave Quast (hi Dave!) whose late mom Merrie drove us 212 miles to see him at the Tacoma Dome. Dave and I are still friends. Huey exists like the memory of a fling, a fissure of fun I’d be embarrassed to share now.

Television, though, was a little different. The technologies of message and the medium required our attendance: at the appointed hour in the living room. We communed with M*A*S*H, the Cosby Show, Cheers, Friends, and Seinfeld. We reacted to the upheavals in the Seaver household as if we’ve been part of the family. We knew where we were when we found out who shot J.R., when Radar told us Col. Blake died, or when Gary on Thirtysomething died in a car crash. The stories, like poetry, forced us to meet them halfway, them on the screen and us on the living room carpet, a connection forming between those points in what’s called a parasocial relationship.¹

For the last 17 years, Taylor Swift has been a ginormous pop star. And for the last 17-plus years, social media has built the virtual universe that millennials and Generation Z have inhabited. Facebook came before Swift’s stardom, Twitter right with it, Snapchap soon after. Her fans have read about her public breakups and pop triumphs on the same timeline that gave them FOMO about their friends’ vacations. A fan’s parasocial relationship with Taylor Swift felt the same as it did with an analogue friend because everything was equalized by the algorithm.

Her fans have read about her breakups on the same timeline that gave them FOMO.

It was as if the television screen had wrapped around the living room carpet and bathed everything from the latest indignity done to Taylor Swift to your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend in the same light. Screw you, Jessica. You look trash anyway. And go to hell, John Mayer. You didn’t deserve her. And if you’re a college student, odds are you don’t remember a time when Taylor Swift wasn’t part of your virtual existence. Heck, you probably don’t remember ever not having a virtual existence.

Her music became a soundtrack to the parasocial rom-com playing out on millions of screens. Taylor Swift was singing to them about the tabloid fodder of her life. Her stardom got her famous boyfriends; the romance played out on social media; the boyfriend turned out to be a twat, which played out on social media; Taylor Swift records a song about the bad boyfriend, which her fans talked about online, creating a parasocial movement built on the very-online existence of a singer-songwriter who relentless articulated the emotional narratives of millions of young women. Her public life became their inner lives.

Why does this make MAGA grind its gears? Because Taylor Swift’s music doesn’t care if you get a boner. The Rolling Stones wanted to spend the night together. Marvin Gaye wanted to get it on. You made Madonna feel like a virgin. Britney Spears wanted you to hit her one more time. Except, of course, “hit her” was a euphemism, just like rock ‘n roll was, as well as jazz. It’s been argued that the only reason a fella learns to play the guitar is to have sex with women. That would explain why the Great American Songbook could be summed up as “I Wanna Sex You Up,” which is actually a good song. (sue me)

Taylor Swift’s genius is in writing anthemic breakup songs that a stadium of fans can sing along to. Taylor Swift is not trying to get you into bed. Taylor Swift is trying to get over you. Her mistake was in believing that you were ever worth her time in the first place. Taylor Swift wants to shake you off and move on. I can’t imagine what the Donald Trump wannabes in this world have against this poor lady.

It’s confusing, I’ll admit, for a large percentage of the culture to be frothing their milk over a cultural force that subtly excludes me. I have a couple Taylor Swift songs on my phone, one about being mean and another I can’t remember, but for the most part I didn’t get why people were losing their minds over her.

It must be worse for those not willing to assume best intentions or to extend a little empathy into that which confuses them. For those to whom NFL broadcasts provide a refuge of pre-internet normalcy, where so many men exist without any out gays, where liberal politics is aggressively suppressed, where the military is promoted even more aggressively, and where women exist only as cheerleaders, sideline announcers, and owners of endangered breasts in October, the mere sight of Taylor Swift being happy for 1-2 minutes a game must feel like an intrusion. I didn’t sign up for this. Now they’re coming for this, too.

For those to whom NFL broadcasts provide a refuge of pre-internet normalcy, the sight of Taylor Swift must feel like an intrusion.

In all likelihood, everybody’s going to calm down about this after awhile. After all, they still sell Bud Light at sporting events, and people seem to have forgotten to be big-mad about it. And maybe the cultural weight will prove more than their young relationship can bear, which would be a shame, though Swifties would be rewarded with another album of breakup songs with secret messages from their “parabestie” to decode.

S always tells me I need to leave you with a jolt of hopepunk. I’ll confess I’m disheartened by our countrymen’s renewable supply of vitriol against famous women uninterested in their bathing suit areas. Honestly, we treat homeroom teachers who rape 15-year-old boys better than we are treating Taylor Swift.

But there is this: It could be worse. It could be the ‘90s. We could be talking about Pam Anderson, or Diana Spencer, or the Dixie Chicks, or Shannon Faulkner, or Monica Lewinsky, or Courtney Love, or any number of witches we burned at the early-internet stake.

At least now, thanks surprisingly to social media, Taylor Swift has more people by her side than just the tall, handsome, and charming football player. She’s got millions of Swifties holding her hand through their phones. This is an entirely different world than the one I grew up in, and if I were wearing a red cap, I’d be scared, too.

Jason Stanford is a co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. Follow him on Threads at @jasonstanford, or email him at jason31170@gmail.com.

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1. Ooh, can I tell you the best story ever about a parasocial relationship I had? Sorry, I’ll make this quick. Long time ago, I was watching Friday Night Lights with my first wife. Coach Taylor’s Panther’s were getting absolutely robbed by a ref in a road game, and I found myself getting genuinely angry at the unfairness. The next morning, as I was tying my shoes to take the dog for a walk, I looked up at her and said, “You know what, I’m still angry at that ref!” Folks, she married the actor who played that referee a few years later, though I hold her blameless in this. He’s a fine chap and a helluva step-dad. The universe is hilarious.