This is not a story about Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl
This is not a column about Taylor Swift. It is possibly something more ridiculous, a column about all the columns about Taylor Swift. And yet attention must be paid, because so much attention is being paid. That is the ineluctable logic of the media-politics complex, a philosophical school of which Donald Trump is the American Aristotle. Ms Swift is no slouch, either.
Ignoring the national convulsion over the relationship between Ms Swift and Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, an American-football team competing in the Super Bowl on February 11th, would be deceiving readers about the reality of American life. However, this reality has its basis in unreality, not in fact-free lies about a stolen election but in fact-free speculation about whether the romance is a real love affair, or a cross-branding triumph by two marketing savants, or, darker yet, a “psychological operation” hatched by the Pentagon to re-elect President Joe Biden. (The Pentagon has denied this.)
After laying out this basic background, news organizations face a choice. They can either indulge in further credulous or cynical conspiracy theorizing, as some stars of Fox News have done, or they can scrutinize those who traffic in conspiracies while not ruling out the cross-branding theory, and speculate about if and with what effect Ms Swift might endorse Mr Biden, as she did in 2020.
2024-02-08 09:40:12
Link from www.economist.com