Real Super Bowl clash is between Swift and Republicans
Picture the scene: it’s 2009, and you’re watching the MTV Video Music Awards. Country music singer Taylor Swit is accepting her award for Best Video by a Female Artist, when up-and-coming rapper Kanye West interrupts her speech to announce to the world that the award should have gone to Beyonce instead. Suddenly there’s a bright light, and a time traveller appears before you. He tells you that one day, one of these two musicians will be embraced by the far right for their hyper-conservative views. Meanwhile the other will become public enemy number one among US Republicans, and their presence at the 2024 Super Bowl will be a point of extreme contention. The time traveller vanishes just as quickly as he appeared, leaving you very confused, and wildly misled.
Yes, it turns out that the biggest clash at this year’s Big Game (TM) isn’t between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers (two names I definitely didn’t just have to Google). No, this year the real batle of wills is between fans of the world’s richest recording artist and the entire Republican political establishment. Why? Well, as with all things US politics, there are a few different reasons, and none of them really make sense.
Swit started dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce in July 2023, and since then has frequently been spoted at NFL games, cheering Kelce on the way any supportive partner would. Her presence at games has opened the door to many of her fans, who may not have been particularly interested in the sport otherwise, to take an interest in American football. For some people, that alone is enough of a point of contention. Football, like a lot of hobbies, is immersed in the kind of hyper-masculine “no girls allowed” gatekeeping that we should have let behind in the nineties, and Taylor’s presence has opened a Pandora’s box of Swities right before the biggest game of the season. I understand the frustration. It must be annoying whenever the camera cuts to a beautiful woman for all of two seconds when you’re trying to focus on whatever a “tight end” is. There are also those who resent Swit for her perceived liberal values. In 2020, Taylor violated more than a decade of carefully calculated political neutrality to endorse the ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, which many Republicans saw as a betrayal of her country music roots (the second most conservative genre of music, behind dubstep).
Fox News commentator Sean Hannity this week called Swit out for exactly that reason, accusing her of misunderstanding Biden’s policies, as well as his own Republican values. For these people, Swit’s infiltration of the NFL gives her a brand new — traditionally conservative — audience to infect with her liberal nonsense. Then there are the more “out there” fringes of the right, who believe that Swit and Kelce are embroiled in a conspiracy to rig the Super Bowl. The theory, which was denied by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, posits that Kelce’s relationship with Swit becoming the main talking point of this year’s football season was no accident, and that the outcome has been “scripted” in advance to give it a perfect fairytale ending.
The theory dovetails nicely with broader Republican concerns that Swit’s prominence at the game will act as a convenient endorsement for Joe Biden, due to Swit’s previous support of the president. At its heart, Republican trepidation around Swit is rooted in the same thing it always is — she’s a very popular recording artist who wants to play for the other team (or, at least, is sympathetic towards them). The political right always seems surprised whenever somebody who creates art for a living turns out to lean let, even though it’s been a proven trend since man first banged two stones together rhythmically.