Entertainment
They Yap About Taylor Swift, But They're Telling Us About Themselves

You don’t have to be a follower of Taylor Swift or a fan of professional football to notice the very strange crusade that so-called “conservatives” have been waging against them. Those icons of music and sport, as American as they could possibly be, are suddenly tarred on right-wing media outlets as secret instruments of a plot by powerful hidden forces – in the Pentagon, the White House, or somewhere in “the deep state,” whatever that means.

It is now possible to watch otherwise normal-seeming people on television, including several with their own nightly shows, spreading insane rumors about Swift and her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. In a calmer time, anyone who persistently shouted such lurid nonsense would have been a candidate for long-term residence in what was euphemistically called “a nice home,” without access to sharp objects. With deinstitutionalization, they are now paid astronomical salaries to declaim their fantasies on Fox News and its cable competitors. (This is considered progress.)

For weeks, the airwaves and the digital space have been aflame with attacks on Swift and Kelce, promoting the notion that these two attractive, talented, and amazingly successful people are not what they seem to be. Consider the recent rant by Jesse Watters, a primetime host on Fox News, who insinuated that Swift isn’t a legitimate musical sensation, but merely a tool propped up by Pentagon military intelligence for mass manipulation. Watters called her a “psyop,” jargon for a government propaganda tool or event designed to influence public opinion and political behavior.

“Have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?” he asked, questioning her popularity as a musician. "Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting. What kind of asset? A psyop for combatting online misinformation." Of course, like so many other events reported breathlessly by Fox fake news, that never happened. It was just a figment of Watters’ monkey mind, which he tried to pass off with a deceptively edited video clip.

It isn’t hard to see what inspired the vile slagging of Swift and Kelce (who also committed the offense of getting vaccinated against COVID-19, just as all the Fox hypocrites did when the company required it). She appears to be a Democrat and a supporter of reproductive rights, an opponent of racism, and perhaps worst of all, a symbol of female power and independence. She has backed a few Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden in 2020 – and Republicans dread the prospect that she’ll do it again this year. Ominously, from their perspective, she has already prodded tens of thousands of her fans to register as voters.

Indeed, the right-wing loonies are warning that the Super Bowl has long been “rigged” for the Chiefs to win, leading up to a romantic Biden endorsement by Kelce and Swift. Pretty sick and, dare I say, un-American.

The craziness is so stupid that it’s almost funny. Even some conservatives are begging for it to stop, because they fear the political consequences of angering the Swifties, as well they should. But it isn’t funny at all.

What thugs like Watters are telling Swift is that she will be punished for disputing their authoritarian and misogynist ideology. Her adversaries have not only viciously insulted her, but circulated AI-faked explicit nudes. Naturally, Watters seized on the faked photos as another opportunity to mock and shame a female body. (Don’t you hope he gets a chance to meet Travis Kelce in person someday?)

Whether Swift endorses Biden or not, she has performed a great service, simply by impelling the worst people in America to show who they really are – and how their uncontrollable hatred poisons everyday life in this nation. Let’s not forget.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting newsroom formerly known as The Investigative Fund, and a senior fellow at Type Media Center.

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In Sex Cases, An Accusation Is Not Proof Of Guilt

Gerard Depardieu

French President Emmanuel Macron

The French actor Gerard Depardieu is world-known as a lusty, usually charming pursuer of the carnal. He's now being accused of crimes against women, some violent in nature. A star of French cinema, Depardieu is being defended by French President Emmanuel Macron. Other supporters are former French first lady Carla Bruni, actress Charlotte Rampling and Depardieu's former partner, actress Carole Bouquet.

An accusation is not a conviction. It is common in custody battles for one parent to falsely accuse the other of child abuse. Jilted lovers are known to smear their ex-partners for revenge. Grifters make false accusations to shake "deep pockets" down for money. And some accusers are mentally unstable.

Depardieu might be guilty of serious crimes, but isn't it early to talk about stripping away his Legion of Honor medal? Depardieu denies the charges of rape and assault and, as Macron says, he deserves a presumption of innocence until a court decides otherwise.

A group leading the war against Depardieu, called MeTooMedia, responded to Macron, "You invoked the presumption of innocence, as if innocence took precedence over presumption."

Well, doesn't it?

Look, serious allegations must be investigated. But until it's established that a crime has been committed, it's only someone's word.

Depardieu is a big fat target who makes gross sexist remarks on the record. A character of enormous appetites, Depardieu is no Cary Grant, nor ever was.

But while rape is a violent crime, publicly saying crude things about a girl on a horse is not. A company would be well in its rights to dismiss an employee who did this, but then the perp would be jobless not incarcerated.

It's not against the law to be a pig, which based on Depardieu's rap sheet of filthy remarks, he may well be. Anyone who wants to boycott his movies is free to do so. Barring him from appearing in movies, however, is another matter.

Hardly a day goes by without some news report that "So-and-so has been accused of sexual harassment." Therefore, he must step down or be blacklisted or hand someone a bag of money. And it's alarming how many allegedly smart people fail to ask whether the individual was guilty and, if so, whether the charge involved truly serious misconduct.

When Joe Biden was running for president in 2020, a random woman accused him of grabbing her privates. What followed were urgent calls for him to leave the race, not so much from Republicans but from Democrats backing one of Biden's competitors for the nomination.

"In an ideal world, the Democrats would not have nominated a candidate whose history included guerrilla-nuzzling women and a possible sexual assault," Jennifer Senior wrote in The New York Times back in 2020.

All this before taking a close look at Biden's accuser. Tara Reade had a history of knocking on the door of her landlord to ask for emotional support. She often didn't pay her rent. She also had a thing for Vladimir Putin and eventually defected to Russia. Yet on the basis of this troubled woman's unverified accusations, Biden's campaign could have fallen.

It's not just the veracity of the accusation that needs questioning; it is also the accusation itself. Biden did "nuzzle" the back of at least one woman's head. He shouldn't have not done that, but characterizing that dated fatherly gesture as a "guerrilla" attack was hysterical.

One of the biggest raps against Depardieu, according to Le Monde, is that, on a trip to North Korea, he was heard "making explicit sexual comments in the presence of a female interpreter." That was no reason for a wax museum in Paris to immediately remove his figure.

Accusations are not facts. How about waiting for facts?

Reprinted with permission from Creators.