Election '24: Yes, the Taylor Swift shoe finally dropped

This is our "screens culture" nation and, yes, there are valid religion questions here

I’ll start with this confession: This post has been radically rewritten.

You see, a day or so ago I opened a file and started writing a meditation on why it wasn’t paranoid for cultural conservatives to worry about the escalating mass-media pressure on Taylor “F*** the patriarchy” Swift to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

I guess I should have posted that item right away, before whatever happened last night after that ABC News thing.

However, I still think this topic is (#ALAS) important, in a land in which the lives of entertainment celebrities are everything — especially in a race between a blunt former reality TV star and a Left Coast politico who is riding the comfortable waves of sympathetic media coverage.

In that world, Swift is not your ordinary single (#ForNow) cat lady. If you doubt that, check out this USA Today news briefing that I filed away. The headline is “Gaza near breaking point,” but this was one of the 13,400 items that showed up in a Google News search for “Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift holding hands.”

In other words, the defining phrase in American news culture remains: “And now this.”