The Runback....... and Seemingly Ranch
No, this is not a trick to get Taylor Swift on the feed as part of SEO....
Welcome to another week of The Runback. Have you been enjoying The Duckpin? Do you have comments or suggestions? Do you want to write for us? Let me know at theduckpin@gmail.com. Please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Threads, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Thanks in advance.
News and Politics
Guest Post: Governor Ehrlich 20 Years Later – His Legacy of Conservative Leadership: Twenty years?!?
Cox Still Limply Tilting at Windmills: Republicans nominating Dan Cox for Congress in 2024 would guarantee a Democrat wins the seat yet again.
GOP Voters Abandon the Faithful: The Republican Party is no longer a party people of faith can be comfortable with
October 2023 Republican Presidential Power Rankings: Is there even a point to this anymore?
Jamaal Bowman Must Be Prosecuted: If you believe that January 6th rioters should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, you should also believe Jamaal Bowman should be prosecuted as well.
The Monday Thought
Unless you have been living under a rock the last ten days, you know that Taylor Swift is dating Kansas City Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce and went to the Chiefs-Bears game last Sunday.
The combination of two absolutely rabid fanbases, NFL fans and Swifties, created a cultural frenzy and phenomenon unseen in this country since Beatlemania.
The seeming denouement of that frenzy led us to this now-famous tweet.
Whether this was a peak of American culture or its nadir I will leave up to you, the reader.
Look, I don’t say this to take anything away from Taylor Swift. She has transformed herself from a country singer-songwriter to the biggest pop star in the world. She’s worth nearly a billion dollars. Her media empire is ever-expanding and every time she sells a record or goes on tour, she basically has a license to print money.
The Kelce-Swift pairing has also exposed us all to the fact that there is a certain culture of “Swiftie” that is completely toxic and needs touch grass.
First, there’s the little stuff. Swift fans saying that “Taylor Swift put Travis Kelce on the map”? While this has expanded into a humorous series of TikTok memes, there are Swifties who believe this and think that an eight-time Pro Bowler and two-time Super Bowl champion was an unknown until Taylor came along. It’s beyond absurd.
Then there are the people who are really out there. People who are breaking down Swift’s lyrics to determine if it was really in the stars or something that she would end up with Kelce, people who break down whether or not she’s sitting on his lap in a photo, and heavens knows what else.
I truly don’t understand how people live like this, losing their minds over a pop star who doesn’t even know they exist.
Taylor Swift is far from the first pop star to have this kind of obsessive fan base. The Beatles, the Grateful Dead, Phish, the Bee Gees, and Elvis are among the artists who have generated this kind of hysteria. But none of this comes close to the bizarre national phenomenon that Swiftie culture has bequeathed to us with the Kelce-Swift romance.
But before you talk about how bad this is for society, look in the mirror. The late Andrew Breitbart1 said, “Politics is downstream of culture.” Now take a look at politics and you realize that a lot of people these days are no different from Swifties in support of their favorite politicians…..
Certain elements on the right, after all, are losing their minds over the Swift-Kelce pairing:
Kelce appears to have inflamed conservatives for his participation in a recent advertisement for the Pfizer vaccine, during which he encourages viewers to obtain their booster shots and flu vaccines.
Megyn Kelly and Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk discussed the Pfizer advertisement in an interview during which Kirk labeled the video as “propaganda” and suggested Kelce’s participation demonstrates the athlete is “for sale.”
“The question is what will break his heart first — his new relationship with Taylor Swift or the COVID shot?” Kirk joked. “They’re both in the business of breaking hearts.”
And why is that happening? Because a certain ex-President facing 91 criminal indictments told Republicans it’s OK to be an asshole to people who don’t share your political views. Why else would The Federalist be publishing a Trump-humper waxing poetic about how Taylor Swift’s music is a symbol of societal decline?
The most bizarre of all of the conservative criticism was this.
Dude, I don’t think anybody has confused you with Narcissus…..2
Conservative hate on the relationship got so bad that even Sean Hannity, hardly somebody with a backbone, stood up and defended them.
But there is a better way to identify how the Swifties relationship with Taylor Swift can be explained by politics, and it’s how certain Trump Voters treat Donald Trump.
For example.
Trump is far from the only politician for whom this is true, as the need to treat politicians like celebrities is embraced by both parties. But it is the way Trump supporters treat Trump that is the apotheosis of this treatment.
We can’t stop people from fawning over celebrities. But when people stop treating politicians like they’re Taylor Swift, that’s when our politics will get just a little better.
Who would be appalled by what has happened to his namesake publication after his death in 2012….
I say this as somebody who is not getting confused with a sex symbol in this life or the next.