The unavoidable politics of Taylor Swift

Upon seeing photos of the two of them, popular conservative voices seized on the moment, with Charlie Kirk immediately highlighting Kelce’s pro-vaccine advocacy and Tomi Lahren referring to Swift’s “lefty, liberal, brain-dead political opinions.”

Swift, however, has typically moved cautiously and hesitantly when it comes to the political arena. Both right and left have been desperate to claim Swift as one of their own, yet she remained exceptionally quiet on politics for years — including during the divisive 2016 presidential election won by Donald Trump. Swift’s lack of comment back then enraged some liberals — an editorial in The Guardian in 2017 called her “a musical envoy for [Trump’s] values.”

This changed in 2018, when Swift broke her studied silence to speak out against Senate Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn and endorse two Democratic contenders in the Tennessee race. It didn’t make a difference in the conservative state — Blackburn won — but it served notice that Swift wasn’t entirely apolitical.

Since then, Swift has left a trail of liberal breadcrumbs — including endorsing Joe Biden for the 2020 presidential race and supporting LGBTQ+ rights through her music. But while this appeased some of her critics, it generated a whole new set of angry voices against her.

Taylor Swift has barely endorsed any Democrats or Democratic issues, and yet she’s immediately tarred as a “brain-dead lefty”. And they’re upset at the football guy for taking Anheuser-Busch ad money.

The problem is that we live in an age where anything cultural immediately becomes political, and anyone on “the wrong side” is vilified in some cheap act of tribalism. Talk about actual issues, not about colors on flags! It’s boring, it’s cheap, and it’s making any kind of civil discourse impossible.

Do you hate that Taylor occasionally alludes to gay people existing and that being are ok? Is it that she likes to wear rainbow colors and hang out with the queers? Are those the issues? That’s homophobic, let’s move on. Jeez.

If she's dramatically increasing voter turnout I'm not sure the rest matters to me.

She's a world leader, whether she wants to be or not. She's not the first, certainly, and the weight of that responsibility can't be very fun when all you wanted to be was a musician, not a major public figure.

But, with great power does come great responsibility, and I think she's coming to terms with that. I just hope she remembers to stay level-headed about it, which I think she might. Musicians are often pretty in-touch with their own feelings.

I generally dislike massive celebrities being overtly political outside of their artistic endeavors. Their political opinions are no more valid or important than anyone else's yet they exert a ton of influence over their fans, often young and impressionable fans, who are highly likely to agree with them without really informing themselves on the issue. I think they need to be super careful and responsible with that power.

With that being said, I'm really struggling to be upset with Swift or Kelce for "wielding their influence" to "promote their politics" as outlined in this article. Swift is cool with LGBT people and tells her fans to register to vote? Kelce is pro vaccine and also did a beer commercial with a brand that also did a sponsored social media post with a trans person once? This stuff is so benign it's barely even news. These issues are only political because Republicans specifically made them political so if they're upset about it, I can't really feel sorry for them.