AT THIS POINT, TAYLOR AND TRAVIS MIGHT BE THE PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT
The far right has extended the romance as a conspiracy for President Biden, which means the Super Bowl is veering out of control and making us ask what might happen in Vegas, if not the election year
The extreme right wing — far, far, far from this Super Bowl and any soundness of mind — should come out and spread more lunacy. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will not use the halftime show to endorse Joe Biden for re-election. They will announce why they’re running for president and vice president themselves.
Let’s go cuckoo on low conspiracy theories. Choose Swift as the quarterback and Kelce as her tight end. Swelce, Biden or Donald Trump? Swifties will agree and vote for her, knowing her support helped Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020 when she said, “Under their leadership, I believe America has a chance to start the healing process it so desperately needs.” And Kelce? He’s the one who urged double vaccines for COVID-19 and the flu.
We’re almost at a point in life when a pop goddess and her football boyfriend seek the ultimate political offices. Not quite yet, goobers, as we keep wondering if Swift’s overpowering charms will at least sway the November vote. Sports are rigged, now more than ever in the legalized gambling mode, but her appearance in Las Vegas with Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs is not a mad scheme to help Biden. They qualified for the third time in five seasons because Patrick Mahomes has the football and the defense is sturdy. She is in love with Kelce, which explains her numerous suite stops at his games throughout the land, and he loves her. They happen to be playing the San Francisco 49ers for the championship, which she will watch if her plane arrives in time from Tokyo, where she has made more than a billion dollars on her Eras Tour.
All of which hasn’t stopped gonzo propaganda that Taylor and Travis are Biden wetheads. “I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple,’’ said Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for president as a Republican candidate and loathes the media. “Let’s see how it ages over the next eight months.”
“A front for a covert political agenda,” Fox News anchor Jesse Watters said.
“Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield. … It’s all been an op since Day One,” said Mike Crispi, a conservative media sort.
And when Ramaswamy agreed Swift might be part of an on-high psychological ploy, Elon Musk replied on X: “Exactly.” What we have isn’t just the 58th version of an emotional clash. We have some portion of the country believing Swift is an android, with Kelce as an automaton. The game becomes a wacko bombshell, in some minds, and I’ll do my best to avoid it though six of 10 U.S. adults say they are between casual-to-frenzied fans of Swift and eight of 10 U.S. adults know of her relationship with Kelce. This is bigger than a colossal sports event. People are out of their gords.
“Just imagine if people were as dedicated to Jesus as they are professional sports. I think the country might look pretty different if that were the case. But sadly, as we know, it’s not,” said Alison Steinberg, a host on One America News Network. “And perhaps that’s why we’re witnessing the crumbling and degradation of our once great nation. Instead, all we seem to care about are the celebrities and athletes propped up by the Hollywood elites and this ongoing theater. This fake, carefully crafted show that the masses have been hypnotized by and can’t seem to turn off. The question is … why do the powers that be need this dynamic duo to sway the vote? Don’t they have enough dirty tricks up their sleeves as it is?”
If I’m the NFL commissioner and rallied wildly around gambling’s riches, after the Supreme Court screwed football as football, I’d be more concerned about a Kayshon Boutte showing up at Vegas casinos. A rookie receiver for the New England Patriots, he bet more than 8,900 times at LSU through an alias. Players who aren’t performing in the game can’t wager on the NFL or enter a sportsbook, but they can gamble on other sports. Roger Goodell shouldn’t be wrapped up in the far right. He should be concerned about a scandal.
At least Kelce, who arrives Sunday and is in for another blurry week, is trying to explain this as a love-first mission. “Hopefully, everybody realizes that we’re two people in a relationship supporting each other and having fun with it,” he said. “It’s nothing more than that. As much as the world wants to paint the picture and make us the enemy, we just have fun with it and we enjoy every single bit of it. I love it when Taylor comes and supports me and enjoys the game with the fam and friends. It’s been nothing but just a wonderful year.”
The wild negativity? “We hear it but we hardly ever talk about it," Kelce said. “There’s nothing to even talk about, nothing to really bring up.”
They are two massively popular figures who can make political statements. What they say this year will be influential. But anyone who watches a week from Sunday night would be wise to keep track of the score, time of possession and quarterback ratings. As a Pentagon spokesperson said of Watters’ crack, “As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off.”
The song references always fit, don’t they?
“And it’s not just on Twitter — this nonsense is now everywhere your angry grandpa goes,” comedian Jimmy Kimmel said. “The same people who believe Joe Biden has dementia and needs Kamala Harris to feed him butterscotch tapioca every night also believe that he has somehow planned and executed a diabolically brilliant scheme to fix the NFL playoffs so the biggest pop star in the world can pop up on the Jumbotron during the Super Bowl in between a Kia and a Tostitos commercial to hypnotize her 11-year-old fans into voting for Joe Biden.
“I mean, it makes sense. It makes total sense. These people — these people think football is fake and wrestling is real.”
These people are dopes. “If you’re screaming at Taylor Swift, you’re just a loser,” Charles Barkley said. “You’re just a loser or a jackass.”
Or far, far, far away.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.