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Pop superstar Taylor Swift wants young people to vote. Her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, encourages people to get vaccinated. In a normal country, these modest gestures to promote civic responsibility might largely go unnoticed. But these are not normal times, and the United States is not a normal country.
Those on the right, in their march toward authoritarianism, have decided that Swift and Kelce are the new Colin Kaepernick—that “woke” being who is destroying football.
Like Kaepernick, who was run out of the NFL for protesting injustices against the Black community, this power couple is an easy target for the perpetually aggrieved. But unlike the former quarterback, they aren’t talking about defunding the police or fighting for racial equity by any means necessary. They just want people to go out and vote and get vaccinated. God forbid.
Unraveling the absurdity of all of this is both simple and complicated. The simple part is that fragile and toxic men make up a substantial portion of NFL fans. The fact that a billionaire pop star who draws millions of young girls to the sport can flex her economic and social power is more than they can handle. That she’s dating someone who is white, straight, pro-vaccines, and who sports a haircut from the 1950s—and who also took a knee during the national anthem—has them apoplectic.
That’s easy enough to understand. People are drunk on reactionary culture war tropes. The complicated part is that urging people to vote in a democracy is part of being a citizen. Getting vaccinated in the wake of a pandemic is common sense. But this country has an anti-democratic movement that feels threatened by young people voting and the idea that the government could do anything positive, like taking actions to save millions of lives. As social activist Naomi Klein demonstrates in her brilliant book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, the road to “proto-fascism” was paved by anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories. The results are seen in the current hatred of Swift and Kelce. Old-school vote suppressors oppose Swift, while new-school fitness-model fascists can’t stand Kelce. It’s an alliance of the bigoted and the craven that goes beyond the sewers of social media. Cable networks pander to the idea that their relationship is a psyop by the Biden Administration aimed at getting the President re-elected.
It is understandable that many on the left would be quick to rally around the couple—it’s almost instinctual to oppose anything regurgitated by Fox News. Yet there are also criticisms of what the Swift-NFL connection represents. She has brought the league millions of dollars in free advertising and a new audience. During the Super Bowl in February, Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, was asked about “The Taylor Effect.” His response can be summed up as, “Money is good!”
Travis Kelce Pfizer Commercial
Melanie Coburn is a former cheerleader and courageous whistleblower against the virulent misogyny of former Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder. She continues to speak out against the cover-ups by a league that wants new revenue from women without fighting for equity in the workplace.
Coburn is also a Swift fan. “You can’t deny the overwhelming influence of #TheTaylorEffect,” she noted before this year’s Super Bowl, citing a poll showing that, before the game aired, 21 percent of those who planned to tune in said they would do so because of Swift. “All I want [from] this day is transparency and accountability. As a Swiftie, I want to protect Taylor and her fans, especially all the new young ladies joining their fathers and friends as NFL fans. I know ‘All Too Well,’ and they should, too.”
This ugly misogynistic side of the game needs to be discussed if young girls and other Swifties are going to become the NFL’s fans of the future. There should be a reckoning about how the league has continuously come up short when attempting to engage with women and when dealing with its own employees. Without that, the left will be stuck defending football and pop stars when we should be defending the right to resist the growing reactionary tide taking root across the country.