As you may have already noticed, Taylor Swift is everywhere. At the Eras Tour the stadiums were full. Her concert film filled the theater. Cheering on her boyfriend Travis Kelce as he pops up on the TV screen in his luxury suite at a Kansas City Chiefs game.
And now she's living rent-free inside the heads of Fox News hosts.
After reports emerged that the Biden re-election campaign was trying to win the support of a superstar (who endorsed President Biden in 2020), commentators on the network donned their culture war helmets. “Don’t get involved in politics!” Jeanine Pirro urged her. “We don’t want to see you there!” Another commentator, Charlie Arnault, pleaded, “Please don’t believe everything Taylor Swift says.” Sean Hannity spoke about the issue on prime time: “Maybe she wants to think again.”
Fox's anxiety attack comes after months of MAGA commentators proclaiming baroque conspiracy theories about the power couple. The romance between Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce was staged. that the NFL was preparing a Super Bowl for the Chiefs; And it ended up being all an unholy plot to shore up support for Biden. Fox host Jesse Watters even said Swift's success psiop The Ministry of National Defense takes the lead.
Looking back <폴은 죽었다>lacked imagination.
Of course, people are entitled to their own opinions about a celebrity's political speeches or the possible existence of a secret Pentagon Diva Institute. But if Fox News' hosts truly believe that inviting celebrities to get involved in politics is irresponsible and dangerous, they might want to turn their attention to Fox News.
Over the years, Fox has invited Kiss bassist Gene Simmons to talk about his handling of the Ebola outbreak. There was Fabio, a fashion model who blamed California's crime on liberalism. We gave Kid Rock his take on cancel culture. Last year, actor Jim Caviezel declared Donald J. Trump “the new Moses” on “Fox & Friends.”
And let's not forget that Fox played a major role in the introduction of certain TV celebrities into politics. He may be better known as the candidate against whom candidate Biden will face off.
In March 2011, the network announced “Mondays With Trump,” a new weekly segment on “Fox & Friends.” Each week, the host of NBC's “Celebrity Apprentice” has been a frequent network guest over the years, deploring the Obama administration's policies and explaining why they fired figures like Gary Busey and LaToya Jackson in that week's episode. explained to.
Through his pronatalist campaign, Trump's attachment to Fox and its audience deepened, with his tweet calling Obama's 2012 victory over Mitt Romney “a complete nonsense and a travesty.”
Despite his popularity, President Trump did not appeal to Fox viewers. He appealed, at least in part, because of his celebrity. For years they have been hearing progressive speeches at the Oscars. They have also heard that Hollywood celebrities despise their beliefs, especially from Fox. Well, here was a true primetime network celebrity who spoke his language and stood by his side.
Fox didn't just welcome celebrities who aligned with its political leanings. (The hosts also tend to speak fondly of Ronald Reagan, who knew his way around a movie set.) It did much to make conservative politics popular and inject entertainment value.
Fox developed a sense of dazzling brilliance from its early days under Roger Ailes, a talk show producer turned political operative. A Fox executive once described “Fox & Friends” as “an entertainment show that provides news.” Glenn Beck, a star of the early Obama era, called his show “a fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.”
More broadly, Fox has long embraced the kind of pop-political culture warfare that made Roseanne Barr a martyr and Kathy Griffin a demon, and left viewers questioning whether Beer was too liberal. Like right-wing publisher Andrew Breitbart (who adopted the ideas of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci), this book believed that politics was downstream from culture.
However, they were selective about which celebrities stayed in their lane and which ones merged. After LeBron James criticized then-President Trump in a 2018 interview, Fox's Laura Ingraham told him to “shut up and dribble.” For some reason, there was no question that former quarterback Brett Favre and golf champion Jack Nicklaus supported President Trump.
Meanwhile, much of the criticism of Ms. Swift seems condescending, implying that the 34-year-old female pop star is gullible, naive and ripe for the tricks of political manipulators. “Does Taylor realize that the man she wants to support is kind of a stumbling block and a mess?” When Hannity interviewed right-wing rocker Ted Nugent, she asked him, raising concerns he had not addressed (“Never be shy about sharing your opinion!”).
Do conservatives at Fox really have anything to worry about? There's a good argument to be made that celebrity political endorsements mean very little. Academic researchers hypothesized that Oprah Winfrey's blessing helped give Obama a million votes in 2008. And in 2018, Swift supported a Democrat who lost in the Tennessee Senate race. It's true that since 2020, her reputation has risen from 'star' to 'molten cosmic supercluster where galaxies are born'. But whether her influence might translate into votes is just a guess.
But another celebrity principle may apply here. This is the Streisand Effect. Just as Barbra Streisand's attempts to hide photos of her in her own home drew more attention, Fox's opposition could widen Swift's support for her. If you shift the perception of the story to conservative condemnation of the GOP vs. Swifties, the ultra-popular millennial women Red America vs. “Red (Taylor's Version)” America, it could backfire.
But blaming celebrities, waging war on culture, and playing on fears of cultural alienation are too deeply ingrained in Fox's sensibilities for the network to do anything differently. Ms. Swift can sing. Look what they have done for themselves.