No, I don’t read Glamour magazine,
but this came across my feed after Tim Pool mocked it and decided to
look. It’s another one of those moments where one is stunned but not
surprised at the same time. A writer for the publication was at the
Super Bowl, where Taylor Swift was booed out of the stadium. This led to the headline: “Why Taylor Swift Getting Booed at the Super Bowl Was Even More Chilling Than You Think.”
Since Donald Trump took office, there have been several
times I felt chilled by the rapid increase in misogyny seeping in our
culture. But watching Taylor Swift at Super Bowl LIX booed by a crowd of
thousands on Sunday night was a new low.
It was just a football
game, people might say. Or Swift— who is famously dating Kansas City
Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce—got heckled by some rowdy Eagles fans
excited to be at the biggest sporting event of the year. So? Don’t take
it so seriously.
But I was there at the game. When Swift’s face
appeared on the Jumbotron, an almost instant—and distinctly male—dissent
erupted from around me. Swift, of course, was there to support her
boyfriend, and was far from the only celebrity in attendance. In fact,
the screen showed a new famous person—from Paul McCartney to Anne
Hathaway and Lady Gaga—nearly every time there was a break in the play
with virtually no response from the crowd.
Swift was different.
As soon as she appeared on screen, the crowd seemed to delight in
jeering and heckling her, and the mood shift was palpable. I watched in
real time as Swift, alongside her friend Ice Spice, took in the
response, her brow furrowing in confusion and then apparent discomfort.
Looking
at the camera, she distinctly said, “What is going on?” And girl, same,
because we were all wondering what the hell was happening.
[…]
To
me, the disparate reactions felt like a message. That the Super Bowl,
one of the biggest cultural events in the country, has been reclaimed by
Trump and the type of toxic masculinity he appears to be the beacon of.
And he and his supporters seem to be living for it.
Just look at
the president’s response shortly after he left the game. Not only did
he acknowledge that Swift was booed by the crowd, he delighted in it. As
he had many, many times before (including saying he “hated” Swift after
she endorsed his 2024 rival Kamala Harris) the president weaponized his
massive following against her.
“The only one that had a tougher
night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift," Trump the president
wrote on Truth Social. "She got BOOED out of the Stadium. MAGA is very
unforgiving!"
By calling her out, Trump looked to play by the now-standard internet misogyny playbook.
Oh, you knew that was coming, right?
Swift is a Pennsylvania
resident and grew up an Eagles fan, apparently only to betray the city.
That’s going to get you booed. Second, relax; the Super Bowl was never a
liberal thing. Progressives hate sports, especially football, so this
event wasn’t “reclaimed” by Trump or anything. And these reactions to
Swift being booed are precisely why left-wingers don’t watch sports—if
this triggers you, I don’t know what to tell you. For those who do and
dish out takes like this, we don’t want to hear it.
The game is on, g*ddammit.
Given
the attention that Swift and Kelce were getting from Birds fans, this
was bound to happen, especially with Trump there. Overall, Swift being
booed wasn’t precisely some shocking incident. Swift lured more female
fans to watch the game, and NFL spouses are becoming a constant part of
the storyline around the league. That’s fine. Some have even become
entrepreneurial about it, like Kristin Juszczyk, wife of San Francisco
49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk, who made some pretty cool custom jackets,
one of which was worn by Taylor Swift.
Swift got booed. Get over it. She’s not going to be deported. And it wasn't chilling, please.
We're talking about a woman worth a billion dollars. I think she could handle it, and she did.
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