Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA Meltdown

The far right always has something or someone to whine and complain about be it the falsely named "One  Million Moms" having a cow over advertisers using same sex couples and thus "promoting the homosexual agenda" or little rich boy Tucker Carlson and other purveyors of lies and conspiracy theories ranting that liberals are pushing "the great replacement" and seeking to make whites a minority in America.   One of the most bizarre spectacles currently is MAGA world's meltdown over Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce who are being a threat to white America's way of life.  Part of the phenomenon stems from the fact that nothing frightens right wing males and pretend "Christians" more than a smart, independent successful woman who rejects the 1950's world - women are tp be trapped in homes as subservient wives and mothers - to which they want the nation to return.  Yet some of the right wing hysteria is so insane that one has to wonder how anyone with even a tiny amount of common sense could ever believe the insane tropes. Meanwhile, the attacks on Swift will likely only alienate more women (and fathers and brothers) from the GOP and conservative's agenda. A column in the New York Times looks at this latest batshit craziness  Here are excerpts:

For football fans eager to see a new team in the Super Bowl, the conference championship games on Sunday that sent the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers back to the main event of American sports culture were sorely disappointing.

But one thing is new: Taylor Swift. And she is driving the movement behind Donald Trump bonkers.

The fulminations surrounding the world’s biggest pop icon — and girlfriend of Travis Kelce, the Chiefs’ star tight end — reached the stratosphere after Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years, and the first time since Ms. Swift joined the team’s entourage.

The conspiracy theories coming out of the Make America Great Again contingent were already legion: that Ms. Swift is a secret agent of the Pentagon; that she is bolstering her fan base in preparation for her endorsement of President Biden’s re-election; or that she and Mr. Kelce are a contrived couple, assembled to boost the N.F.L. or Covid vaccines or Democrats or whatever.

The pro-Trump broadcaster Mike Crispi led off on Sunday by claiming that the National Football League is “rigged” in order to spread “Democrat propaganda”: “Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.”

Other detractors of Ms. Swift among Mr. Trump’s biggest fans include one of his lawyers, Alina Habba, one of his biggest conspiracy theorists, Jack Posobiec, and other MAGA luminaries like Laura Loomer and Charlie Kirk, who leads a pro-Trump youth organization, Turning Point USA.

The right has been fuming about Ms. Swift since September, when she urged her fans on Instagram to register to vote, and the online outfit Vote.org reported a surge of 35,000 registrations in response. . . . And then Time magazine made her Person of the Year in December, kicking off another round of MAGA indignation.

The love story that linked her world with the N.F.L. has proved incendiary. Mr. Kelce’s advertisements promoting Pfizer’s Covid vaccine and Bud Light — already a target of outrage from the right over a social media promotion with a transgender influencer, Dylan Mulvaney — added fuel to that raging fire.

The N.F.L.’s fan base is huge and diverse, but it includes a profoundly conservative element that cheered on the star quarterback Aaron Rodgers’s one-man crusade against Covid vaccines and jeered Black players who knelt during the national anthem.

The Swift-Kelce story line, for some, has delivered a bruising hit to traditional gender norms, with a rich, powerful woman elevating a successful football player to a new level of fame.

Some of the Monday morning quarterbacking has been downright silly, including speculation that Ms. Swift is after Mr. Kelce for his money. (Her net worth exceeds $1 billion, a different universe than the athlete’s merely wealthy status.)

Other accusations appear to be driven by fear and grounded in some truth, or at least in her command of her 279 million Instagram followers: that she has enormous influence, and has supported Democrats in the past.

“I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country,” she wrote on social media. “I believe in the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG.”

She added, “I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.”

While her early pop music may have mainly attracted teens and preteens, those fans have reached voting age, and her music has grown more sophisticated with the albums “Evermore” and “Folklore” to match her millennial roots and her fans’ taste.

Much of the Swift paranoia has lurked on the MAGA fringes, with people like Ms. Loomer, the conspiracy theorist from Florida who declared in December that “2024 will be MAGA vs Swifties” and Mr. Kirk, who declared in November that Ms. Swift would “come out for the presidential election”. . . . 

Then Swift-bashing reached Fox News in mid-January. The host Jesse Watters suggested the superstar was a Defense Department asset engaging in psychological warfare. He tied Ms. Swift’s political voice with her boyfriend’s Pfizer endorsement to the remarkable success of her Eras tour, which bolstered local economies and landed her on the cover of Time.

Andrea Hailey, the chief executive of Vote.org, made the most of the Fox News criticism, saying the organization’s partnership with Ms. Swift “is helping all Americans make their voices heard at the ballot box,” adding that the star is “not a psy-op or a Pentagon asset.”

But her appearance on the field with Mr. Kelce in Baltimore after the Chiefs beat the Ravens on Sunday, complete with a kiss and a hug, appears to have sent conservatives into a fit of apoplexy that may only grow in the run-up to Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas Feb. 11.

These anti-Swift people are truly insane.