Schlapp said, “We won't have our resources, we won't have our homes, we won't have our livelihood."
Well yeah: If you’re found guilty of sexual assault like Trump has been BY A JURY OF YOUR PEERS then, yes, you should no longer have the resources to trample over the rights of your sexual prey. Is that concept so hard to grasp? Nota Bene: The jury in E. Jean Carroll’s recent trial determining the amount of the award for defamation was comprised of 7 men and 2 women. And, as far as I know, none of them have been credibly accused of groping or assaulting anyone.
It needs some reform as Democrats have adopted lawfare as part of their political strategy and Democrats tend to run the government of large cities while also dominating the corporate media that influences Democrat constituents that Democrat political opposition is an existential threat and thus the government can abuse their power and get Democrat constituent support for it.
Congratulations, Nina, on your excellent journalism.
And what a timely and disturbing issue. Very very disturbing.
How troubled and insecure these males must be, so threatened by the success of Taylor Swift that they explode in online insults and threats and AI-porn. I can't really think of any parallel time or situation where young men were so hopelessly incompetent in relating to women.
These "influencers" of course are pumping up the outrage to feed the algorithms (and their bank accounts), making huge incomes by selling sexual hatred and misogyny. And their legions of followers? Basement trolls blaming (and hating) young women for their own failures? This cannot end well.
Thanks again for a well-written, well-resourced, no-holds-barred piece of journalism. I'm pretty sure this is what the Substack creators had in mind when they started it.
there is surely some strong inner force driving these anti-women, anti-gay movements among young men. They grow up watching unlimited pornography, spending countless hours going down rabbit holes on the internet, rarely (I'm guessing) have satisfying relationships with girls, and lashing out with the kind of misogynistic hatred that Nina described.
Maybe it's all part of the incel mindset (I'm not a loser, girls are losers, and I'm gonna make them pay); or maybe it's suppressed or confused sexual identity. But it's all been given a huge bump of approval by the Misogynist-in-Chief. Brags about grabbing women by the p*****, then denies any guilt, then lashes out at his accusers. And this Orange Conman is their "masculine" role model?
Even before American boys gained all their sex education from dirty videos on the Internet, they could get them from dirty videos on VHS tape, dirty letters in Penthouse, and dirty stories on street corners.
For the latter, I applied my father's rule: "Lippman's Law of Social Inflation," which he coined in 1949. The law is "Anything that happens on a date is multiplied each time the guy tells the story."
So if the guy and his girl went out for pizza and a movie, followed by a peck on the beak, by the 25th re-telling, they flew to The Bahamas for the weekend, stayed in the Presidential Suite, did it in a hammock, with bowls of cocaine, gallons of Scotch, and imported a hooker for an exciting three-way. Woooooow.
However, it's been made worse by the Internet, as you say. Now you can hit a button and see home videos of famous and not-so-famous women bopping boyfriends and girlfriends. Why celebrities shoot home videos of their sexual encounters in this day and age, I cannot fathom.
Incels have more issues than Time magazine, and the biggest is their sense of self-entitlement -- that because they are male, white, and two of their ancestors were in the 16th Mississippi in the "Late Unpleasantness," they are entitled to a girlfriend who looks like Morgan Fairchild in her prime.
They blame the women when they are turned down, and I don't blame the women: I wrote about this in a column right here on my Substack page, so I won't repeat myself too much. I'll just say that these incels need to take a shower, use deodorant, put on clean clothes, get out of mommy's basement, get a job, and stop obsessing over "World of Warcraft."
Eliot Rodger is the scariest of the bunch...he had this bizarre idea that if he won the lottery, bought a cool car, and appeared in it in front of a sorority house, the sisters would surround him and it, and offer sexual favors for being swanked around in the car.
He spent so much on the lottery (with no success) that he could have instead signed up for eHarmony, mentioning that his father was an assistant director on the "Star Wars" series, he would have probably got a LOT of answers, even if a good chunk would be women hoping for acting roles.
Even so, he would have achieved his great goal in life...to get laid.
I'm sure they also have sexual identity issues. They hammer each other in these internet discussion groups with homophobic/homo-erotic insults. They're the kind of young men who seriously believe that if they hire a gay man to give them oral service, they're not gay, especially if they beat the gay man up after the transaction is complete, and take back the money.
They also remind me of the 12-year-old boys in my neighborhood when I was growing up in Greenwich Village in the 1970s. The gay community was moving in, and couples would sneak into unlocked trucks near the piers for action, and these boys would go there to watch.
Their tone on it was, "That's disgusting! Move over, I can't see!"
At the big middle school dance, boys and girls stood apart on the gym floor, under the bunting and DJ's music, staring at each other, afraid to make the first move. Finally, the girls started dancing with each other, so the boys just stood on their side of the floor, sneering that the girls were "lesbians." No, the boys did not dance with each other.
They were mixed-up...they couldn't go out with girls, as that was still "sissy," but they could not be gay.
I was a teacher for almost 40 years and saw a lot of frustrated young men, but today it's became a vast sub-culture of immature males blaming all females for their own inadequacies.
That's behind the anti-Taylor Swift thing.
And the internet just gives them the feeling that they're part of a big community of like-minded victimized males.
Young men expect a smokin’ hot woman (preferably older and more experienced) to swoop down on them and say, “I’ve never done this before, but I’ll show you exactly how.”
It appalls me that when an adult man statutorily rapes a teenage girl, our society is furious, but…..
When an adult woman statutorily rapes a teenage boy, our society says, “Nice. He got schooled in the arts of Venus by a sophisticated older woman.” Of course, we don’t use that sentence, but a more coarse version of it.
Mickey Mantle was an adulterous mess because he hit a horrifying trifecta as a boy:
He was molested by his half-sister and her female pals, who played with his budding manhood and ridiculed him.
A boy his age chased him down a street in Commerce, Oklahoma, and sexually molested him.
One of his female high school teachers, aroused by his muscles and boyish grin, seduced him.
And this was in 1930s and 1940s Oklahoma, where “real men” could not complain or speak out about such treatment. It’s still hard today.
After that, Mantle never had a chance to build a proper marital life. It wrecked his self-esteem, built up his alcoholism, and contributed to his adultery.
I have a good, life-long friend who describes this rather common scenario--not always on the Right, but more often than not--that, “The harder they squeeze in one place, the more it squirts out somewhere else.” Birds of a feather.
Nina, this whole Taylor Swift "conspiracy" nonsense is getting crazier by the day, especially with the upcoming Super Bowl - now the loonies on the right are saying the Super Bowl's rigged. And FOX says the CIA's behind some kind of "black op" to get young girls to vote for Biden. I mean, you can't make this up.
Anyway, may I have your permission to "share" your post "Revolt of the Bobbleheads" on my substack newsletter (with attribution of course)?
I have several Trump-supporters who comment regularly, and I'm wondering how they will defend this next level MAGA-madness.
Hi Nina, I cross-posted your article yesterday, and I see a lot of my usual posters joining in (and I think subscribing). Your article clearly touched a nerve,
and it's always productive to engage in civil discourse with those who disagree.
Not all MAGAs are delusional idiots; there are a lot of intelligent folks over there who just see things differently, and I learn a lot about the MAGA mentality from them (even if they're misguided).
Since I don’t follow any of these bobbleheads, I really appreciate your reporting on them. I hardly knew who Taylor Swift was until my granddaughter made me aware of her recently and before all of this crap about her surfaced. Now I’m a devoted fan. You go girl!
Well Taylor Swift is an influencer. I wish she and other entertainers would just stick with making their art and stay out of politics. Because celebrities are the least connected with the real lives of the majority. But those kids with their screen devices will follow their American pop idol over a cliff.
There's a lot to what Frank says here. But even worse, I think, is when celebrity "influencers" use their entertainment audience to actually become politicians.
"celebrities are the least connected with the real lives of the majority"
You mean celebrities like Donald Trump?
And what about those immature little-boy bloggers that Nina is writing about? And their audiences with their screen devices?
Although I hate what they're saying, I do believe there's still a 1st Amendment, and Taylor Swift as well as these bobbleheads are all entitled to exercise their free speech.
Or are singers and influencers and entertainers exempted from exercising their free speech?
Trump built a business empire before he was a celebrity. Big difference. Taylor writes, plays and sings songs, looks pretty and has a massive PR infrastructure to keep her relevant in the pop culture arena. She will burn out. Look at Katy Perry for an example of what that looks like. But she does not have a shred of life experience that qualifies her for influencing voters. Her experience in life is exactly the opposite of being qualified.
Celebrities corrupt the democrat process by influencing their devoted followers to believe things they should not believe. If Taylor wants to be involved in politics, then quit being an entertainment celebrity and run for office.
Come on Abraham, you already listed conservative entertainers with a clear bur in your saddle about them. Is it that you only support those celebrities that match your ideological interests?
You really need to read up on Trump';s history if you think he "built a business empire." His grandmother founded it, his dad Fred built it out and Trump, with seed funds from daddy, built Trump Tower then went bankrupt - epically bankrupt - and was only saved from living in a van down by the river bc he was too in debt for bankers to forget about. Then Mark Burnett came along and made him into a reality show businessman. Look it up.
Nina, I am sure that you have never started, operated or grown any business by this comment. The ignorance is fascinating in not understanding what it takes. Trump enterprises has been significantly bigger and more diverse than anything Trump's father had started.
There are a lot of children of wealthy parents that get seed money and then like Hunter Biden use it for drugs and hookers.
I think Trump Derangement Syndrome destroys objectivity. There is a similar Musk Derangement Syndrome. Basically those that start, operate and grow private business are much more impressive people than are those that make their living criticizing them and claiming they were just lucky or spoon fed.
I would not hire Biden to manage the supply room. Trump has all the business skills needed to run many major corporations... despite his volatile personality and ego.
Frank, I'm sure Mr. Trump has skills that neither Ms. Burleigh nor I have. But Trump's "seed money" amounted to $450,000,000 during his father's lifetime. His great talent came because he moved from building businesses to branding them and licensing the brand, technical skills he relied on his lawyers to execute. The brand was only successful enough to overcome his repeated failures after he became a reality show celebrity based on ghostwritten books and relentless self-promotion.
I don't want to minimize the skills that successful business people at any scale have. I admire them for their abilities, even when I may dislike the way they behave in other respects. But I think Trump's skills are more like John Gotti's than John D. Rockefeller's, and I think calling him a successful businessman is an abuse of language.
And, as I've said before, my view on this has nothing to do with politics. It was fully baked long before Trump entered politics, and formed during the period when he was a Democrat. I do not think this is a person you should want to offer as a model.
Naw. You are wrong. Eloquent, but wrong. As someone that has started, operated and grown business both from the ground up and after having taken it over from the previous founder, I know first hand that people having never done the same don't have a clue for what it takes.
I assume you have always been an employee and never an owner-operator of anything.
Let's put it this way. Give the same seed money to Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Joe Biden wouldn't have a clue, does not have the capability nor business brains to do anything other than spend it.
Running one hospitality business is one of the most complex and challenging things anyone can do. Trump enterprises runs multiple of these.
And Trump kids are fantastic and well adjusted professionals that assist. Compare that to Biden's loser kids.
You Trump haters just cannot concede a single positive point about the man. There is a clear sickness there.
Not at all, Frank. Like you I dislike celebrity endorsements of all kinds and ideologies; but I'm defending their right to express political opinions - it's called the 1st Amendment. No one has to quit their job to express an opinion or endorse a candidate.
They are politicians. Entertainers are artists... and in my experience artists tend to be the least qualified to influence anyone else about how to vote. Yet, in our social-media powered pop culture they have outsized power to influence elections.
My guess is that if the average artist celebrity tended to lean right politically, you would be on the other side of this. My perspective is that they should never be silenced, because I am a 1A absolutist, but shaming them is not only another 1A right, but good for democracy.
Mr. Lee, On this point we agree. I cannot stand the “Celebrity Culture” that is American life. As if someone who has a good voice, or is a good actor/actress, or a star athlete, should have such sway over our lives? A good analogy would be to say, “She’s a great singer, so I’d be happy to have her perform brain surgery on me.” It’s woven into Americana, unfortunately. But demeaning true expertise is, in general, mostly prevalent on the Right, hate to say. Anti-science, anti-intellectual...if you really think the Geek Squad doesn’t know Jack Shit, then throw away your iPhone or Android, since they’re the ones who created it.
Being pretty much solidly in favor of saving democracy from the scourge that is Trump and his followers, though, I’ll accept Taylor Swift’s help. Sorry ‘bout that.
David, you wrote: A good analogy would be to say, “She’s a great singer, so I’d be happy to have her perform brain surgery on me.”
I don't see where she's asking to perform brain surgery. All she's doing is exercising her 1st Amendment rights. Just like the bobble heads in Nina's article: I hate what they're saying, but they have the right to say it.
The 1st Amendment applies to singers and influencers and plumbers and brain surgeons; and we can listen to them or laugh at them. It's a foundational principle of participatory democracy.
And while her music is irrelevant to me, and her boyfriend's football team is equally irrelevant to me, I'm glad they're exercising their 1st amendment rights and trying to move people to the polls. And I'm sure relieved they're anti-Trumpers. (I'm guessing if they were pro-Trumpers the folks on the Right would be celebrating. Right now, it just looks like they're scared sh*tless.
Go Taylor! Go Travis's team! Go Dems.
again, to put a bullet on it for the naysayers, it's called exercising their 1st Amendment rights.
Of course I agree with you. My point was more tongue-in-cheek, in that we ascribe super-human traits to people who are celebrities, usually famous and rich. My basis is that the value of a person is (or should be, rather) independent of their wealth and fame. That's all. Judge them by their stated values, and more so for what they do than what they say. Taylor Swift falls on the better side of that balance, for sure. Elon Musk, as but one of many examples, falls on the abhorrent side of that balance.
But is her opinion worth more than anyone else's (including, for example, mine, or yours, or Nina Burleigh's) except for the fact that she's a global superstar because of her rare talent as an artist and musician? There are plenty of very thoughtful and spiritually aware people who have nowhere near the same notoriety, yet have the mindfulness and presence to contribute as much to the public discourse but don't get one millionth the amount of attention from the adoring masses as Taylor Swift. It's more a reflection of our outsized celebrity culture than anything fundamental about First Amendment rights. Economic inequality is also political inequality.
Yes: Go Taylor! Go Travis (I have a number of family members in KC)! Go dems!
ah, David, the old tongue-in-cheek (maybe we need an emoji for that).
And I agree that celebrities have disproportionate influence, but in the end I prefer to make my own judgements on people and products - and really don't choose my politicians (or beers) by who endorses them.
But we're living in a consumer society swimming in celebrity worship so all these "influencers" probably cancel each other out in the end.
(but this Taylor "election interference psyop" conspiracy tells me the Right is getting nervous)
At this point, I’ll take whatever support we can garner for preserving democracy in the US come November. Interesting that the Far Right is torpedoing their own ship, but once you start down the rabbit hole is that not to be expected?
thanks David, I read the article and it's spot on: delusional conspiracies dripping with desperation - a superstar endorsement is suddenly an "election interference psyop."
And for the Right, it's counter-productive: since females are the largest voting block, this whole anti-Swift thing is just saying "look how crazy and misogynist the Republican party has become". They should have quit at "nasty".
Does that ("stay out of politics") also apply to Trump's celebrity endorsers like Kid Rock, John Voigt, Ted Nugent, Scott Baio, James Woods, Roseanne Barr, Brett Favre, Dennis Quaid, Kelsey Grammer, Kanye, etc etc?
Who decides who can endorse politicians and who can't?
In a free society, I say my say, and you can agree or not. I can endorse my candidate, and you can endorse yours. And doesn't that right of free speech apply to singers, celebrities, plumbers, businessmen, surgeons, bloggers?
Like you, I make my own decisions irregardless of celebrity endorsements - but I don't deny their right to do it.
Schlapp said, “We won't have our resources, we won't have our homes, we won't have our livelihood."
Well yeah: If you’re found guilty of sexual assault like Trump has been BY A JURY OF YOUR PEERS then, yes, you should no longer have the resources to trample over the rights of your sexual prey. Is that concept so hard to grasp? Nota Bene: The jury in E. Jean Carroll’s recent trial determining the amount of the award for defamation was comprised of 7 men and 2 women. And, as far as I know, none of them have been credibly accused of groping or assaulting anyone.
Carrol is a serial lawfare rent seeker. She has claimed many men have sexual assaulted her and is trying to win some big rewards.
This one will be overturned though.
You mean jury of his political enemies.
If you mean the general public, then OK, I’ll accept your premise. The jury was selected by both Carroll’s and Trump’s attorneys.
So you don't believe in the justice system anymore?
Then trump has successfully undermined yet another American institution.
It needs some reform as Democrats have adopted lawfare as part of their political strategy and Democrats tend to run the government of large cities while also dominating the corporate media that influences Democrat constituents that Democrat political opposition is an existential threat and thus the government can abuse their power and get Democrat constituent support for it.
Congratulations, Nina, on your excellent journalism.
And what a timely and disturbing issue. Very very disturbing.
How troubled and insecure these males must be, so threatened by the success of Taylor Swift that they explode in online insults and threats and AI-porn. I can't really think of any parallel time or situation where young men were so hopelessly incompetent in relating to women.
These "influencers" of course are pumping up the outrage to feed the algorithms (and their bank accounts), making huge incomes by selling sexual hatred and misogyny. And their legions of followers? Basement trolls blaming (and hating) young women for their own failures? This cannot end well.
Thanks again for a well-written, well-resourced, no-holds-barred piece of journalism. I'm pretty sure this is what the Substack creators had in mind when they started it.
Thank you!
These morons desperately need a life. Or a girlfriend. Or both.
Or, in Matt Schlapp’s case, a boyfriend.
Well, yes...as I consistently say and hold:
The bigger the homophobe, the deeper he is in the closet.
there is surely some strong inner force driving these anti-women, anti-gay movements among young men. They grow up watching unlimited pornography, spending countless hours going down rabbit holes on the internet, rarely (I'm guessing) have satisfying relationships with girls, and lashing out with the kind of misogynistic hatred that Nina described.
Maybe it's all part of the incel mindset (I'm not a loser, girls are losers, and I'm gonna make them pay); or maybe it's suppressed or confused sexual identity. But it's all been given a huge bump of approval by the Misogynist-in-Chief. Brags about grabbing women by the p*****, then denies any guilt, then lashes out at his accusers. And this Orange Conman is their "masculine" role model?
Your analysis is pretty accurate.
Even before American boys gained all their sex education from dirty videos on the Internet, they could get them from dirty videos on VHS tape, dirty letters in Penthouse, and dirty stories on street corners.
For the latter, I applied my father's rule: "Lippman's Law of Social Inflation," which he coined in 1949. The law is "Anything that happens on a date is multiplied each time the guy tells the story."
So if the guy and his girl went out for pizza and a movie, followed by a peck on the beak, by the 25th re-telling, they flew to The Bahamas for the weekend, stayed in the Presidential Suite, did it in a hammock, with bowls of cocaine, gallons of Scotch, and imported a hooker for an exciting three-way. Woooooow.
However, it's been made worse by the Internet, as you say. Now you can hit a button and see home videos of famous and not-so-famous women bopping boyfriends and girlfriends. Why celebrities shoot home videos of their sexual encounters in this day and age, I cannot fathom.
Incels have more issues than Time magazine, and the biggest is their sense of self-entitlement -- that because they are male, white, and two of their ancestors were in the 16th Mississippi in the "Late Unpleasantness," they are entitled to a girlfriend who looks like Morgan Fairchild in her prime.
They blame the women when they are turned down, and I don't blame the women: I wrote about this in a column right here on my Substack page, so I won't repeat myself too much. I'll just say that these incels need to take a shower, use deodorant, put on clean clothes, get out of mommy's basement, get a job, and stop obsessing over "World of Warcraft."
Eliot Rodger is the scariest of the bunch...he had this bizarre idea that if he won the lottery, bought a cool car, and appeared in it in front of a sorority house, the sisters would surround him and it, and offer sexual favors for being swanked around in the car.
He spent so much on the lottery (with no success) that he could have instead signed up for eHarmony, mentioning that his father was an assistant director on the "Star Wars" series, he would have probably got a LOT of answers, even if a good chunk would be women hoping for acting roles.
Even so, he would have achieved his great goal in life...to get laid.
I'm sure they also have sexual identity issues. They hammer each other in these internet discussion groups with homophobic/homo-erotic insults. They're the kind of young men who seriously believe that if they hire a gay man to give them oral service, they're not gay, especially if they beat the gay man up after the transaction is complete, and take back the money.
They also remind me of the 12-year-old boys in my neighborhood when I was growing up in Greenwich Village in the 1970s. The gay community was moving in, and couples would sneak into unlocked trucks near the piers for action, and these boys would go there to watch.
Their tone on it was, "That's disgusting! Move over, I can't see!"
At the big middle school dance, boys and girls stood apart on the gym floor, under the bunting and DJ's music, staring at each other, afraid to make the first move. Finally, the girls started dancing with each other, so the boys just stood on their side of the floor, sneering that the girls were "lesbians." No, the boys did not dance with each other.
They were mixed-up...they couldn't go out with girls, as that was still "sissy," but they could not be gay.
The whole incel subculture is frightening.
I was a teacher for almost 40 years and saw a lot of frustrated young men, but today it's became a vast sub-culture of immature males blaming all females for their own inadequacies.
That's behind the anti-Taylor Swift thing.
And the internet just gives them the feeling that they're part of a big community of like-minded victimized males.
Our whole society needs a re-set.
Yes, it is terrifying.
Young men expect a smokin’ hot woman (preferably older and more experienced) to swoop down on them and say, “I’ve never done this before, but I’ll show you exactly how.”
It appalls me that when an adult man statutorily rapes a teenage girl, our society is furious, but…..
When an adult woman statutorily rapes a teenage boy, our society says, “Nice. He got schooled in the arts of Venus by a sophisticated older woman.” Of course, we don’t use that sentence, but a more coarse version of it.
Mickey Mantle was an adulterous mess because he hit a horrifying trifecta as a boy:
He was molested by his half-sister and her female pals, who played with his budding manhood and ridiculed him.
A boy his age chased him down a street in Commerce, Oklahoma, and sexually molested him.
One of his female high school teachers, aroused by his muscles and boyish grin, seduced him.
And this was in 1930s and 1940s Oklahoma, where “real men” could not complain or speak out about such treatment. It’s still hard today.
After that, Mantle never had a chance to build a proper marital life. It wrecked his self-esteem, built up his alcoholism, and contributed to his adultery.
I have a good, life-long friend who describes this rather common scenario--not always on the Right, but more often than not--that, “The harder they squeeze in one place, the more it squirts out somewhere else.” Birds of a feather.
I like to say, prick a righteous right winger and watch the kink ooze out
I wouldn't use that analogy, but it works.
Laugh or cry? What simple-minded, selfish, greedy, imbeciles.
Nina, this whole Taylor Swift "conspiracy" nonsense is getting crazier by the day, especially with the upcoming Super Bowl - now the loonies on the right are saying the Super Bowl's rigged. And FOX says the CIA's behind some kind of "black op" to get young girls to vote for Biden. I mean, you can't make this up.
Anyway, may I have your permission to "share" your post "Revolt of the Bobbleheads" on my substack newsletter (with attribution of course)?
I have several Trump-supporters who comment regularly, and I'm wondering how they will defend this next level MAGA-madness.
please share!
Hi Nina, I cross-posted your article yesterday, and I see a lot of my usual posters joining in (and I think subscribing). Your article clearly touched a nerve,
and it's always productive to engage in civil discourse with those who disagree.
Not all MAGAs are delusional idiots; there are a lot of intelligent folks over there who just see things differently, and I learn a lot about the MAGA mentality from them (even if they're misguided).
thanks and I agree some of them might be redeemable
Speaking of Bobble-Heads, has anyone noticed that Mike Johnson looks exactly like the dummy puppet, “Charlie McCarthy” from the 50’s? 🤣 They traded one Bobble Head McCarthy for his avatar! https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/10-puppets-that-made-it-big-on-television.htm
So true!!
As always you tell it like it is! God I love it- thank you - sharing!!
Since I don’t follow any of these bobbleheads, I really appreciate your reporting on them. I hardly knew who Taylor Swift was until my granddaughter made me aware of her recently and before all of this crap about her surfaced. Now I’m a devoted fan. You go girl!
One of my subscribers just sent me a link with this quote from Trump loyalist Laura Loomer:
“The Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop is happening in the open…"
Sounds like the Trump camp's getting nervous about the "Taylor Swift election interference psyop"
MAGA is falling deeper and deeper into the delusional abyss. Maybe they should call in the space lasers!
Well Taylor Swift is an influencer. I wish she and other entertainers would just stick with making their art and stay out of politics. Because celebrities are the least connected with the real lives of the majority. But those kids with their screen devices will follow their American pop idol over a cliff.
There's a lot to what Frank says here. But even worse, I think, is when celebrity "influencers" use their entertainment audience to actually become politicians.
And that’s Reagan and Trump.
"celebrities are the least connected with the real lives of the majority"
You mean celebrities like Donald Trump?
And what about those immature little-boy bloggers that Nina is writing about? And their audiences with their screen devices?
Although I hate what they're saying, I do believe there's still a 1st Amendment, and Taylor Swift as well as these bobbleheads are all entitled to exercise their free speech.
Or are singers and influencers and entertainers exempted from exercising their free speech?
Trump built a business empire before he was a celebrity. Big difference. Taylor writes, plays and sings songs, looks pretty and has a massive PR infrastructure to keep her relevant in the pop culture arena. She will burn out. Look at Katy Perry for an example of what that looks like. But she does not have a shred of life experience that qualifies her for influencing voters. Her experience in life is exactly the opposite of being qualified.
Celebrities corrupt the democrat process by influencing their devoted followers to believe things they should not believe. If Taylor wants to be involved in politics, then quit being an entertainment celebrity and run for office.
Come on Abraham, you already listed conservative entertainers with a clear bur in your saddle about them. Is it that you only support those celebrities that match your ideological interests?
You really need to read up on Trump';s history if you think he "built a business empire." His grandmother founded it, his dad Fred built it out and Trump, with seed funds from daddy, built Trump Tower then went bankrupt - epically bankrupt - and was only saved from living in a van down by the river bc he was too in debt for bankers to forget about. Then Mark Burnett came along and made him into a reality show businessman. Look it up.
Nina, I am sure that you have never started, operated or grown any business by this comment. The ignorance is fascinating in not understanding what it takes. Trump enterprises has been significantly bigger and more diverse than anything Trump's father had started.
There are a lot of children of wealthy parents that get seed money and then like Hunter Biden use it for drugs and hookers.
I think Trump Derangement Syndrome destroys objectivity. There is a similar Musk Derangement Syndrome. Basically those that start, operate and grow private business are much more impressive people than are those that make their living criticizing them and claiming they were just lucky or spoon fed.
I would not hire Biden to manage the supply room. Trump has all the business skills needed to run many major corporations... despite his volatile personality and ego.
Frank, I'm sure Mr. Trump has skills that neither Ms. Burleigh nor I have. But Trump's "seed money" amounted to $450,000,000 during his father's lifetime. His great talent came because he moved from building businesses to branding them and licensing the brand, technical skills he relied on his lawyers to execute. The brand was only successful enough to overcome his repeated failures after he became a reality show celebrity based on ghostwritten books and relentless self-promotion.
I don't want to minimize the skills that successful business people at any scale have. I admire them for their abilities, even when I may dislike the way they behave in other respects. But I think Trump's skills are more like John Gotti's than John D. Rockefeller's, and I think calling him a successful businessman is an abuse of language.
And, as I've said before, my view on this has nothing to do with politics. It was fully baked long before Trump entered politics, and formed during the period when he was a Democrat. I do not think this is a person you should want to offer as a model.
Naw. You are wrong. Eloquent, but wrong. As someone that has started, operated and grown business both from the ground up and after having taken it over from the previous founder, I know first hand that people having never done the same don't have a clue for what it takes.
I assume you have always been an employee and never an owner-operator of anything.
Let's put it this way. Give the same seed money to Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Joe Biden wouldn't have a clue, does not have the capability nor business brains to do anything other than spend it.
Running one hospitality business is one of the most complex and challenging things anyone can do. Trump enterprises runs multiple of these.
And Trump kids are fantastic and well adjusted professionals that assist. Compare that to Biden's loser kids.
You Trump haters just cannot concede a single positive point about the man. There is a clear sickness there.
https://www.trump.com/
Hell, beating the entire political establishment in 2016 is impressive enough. And he is likely to do it again in 2024.
Not at all, Frank. Like you I dislike celebrity endorsements of all kinds and ideologies; but I'm defending their right to express political opinions - it's called the 1st Amendment. No one has to quit their job to express an opinion or endorse a candidate.
They have a right and I have a right to call them a threat to democracy for doing it.
I am not suggesting we silence them, just shame them.
But why? Why aren’t famous entertainers as valid in their opinions as magas like mtg and boebert and gaetz?
They are politicians. Entertainers are artists... and in my experience artists tend to be the least qualified to influence anyone else about how to vote. Yet, in our social-media powered pop culture they have outsized power to influence elections.
My guess is that if the average artist celebrity tended to lean right politically, you would be on the other side of this. My perspective is that they should never be silenced, because I am a 1A absolutist, but shaming them is not only another 1A right, but good for democracy.
Mr. Lee, On this point we agree. I cannot stand the “Celebrity Culture” that is American life. As if someone who has a good voice, or is a good actor/actress, or a star athlete, should have such sway over our lives? A good analogy would be to say, “She’s a great singer, so I’d be happy to have her perform brain surgery on me.” It’s woven into Americana, unfortunately. But demeaning true expertise is, in general, mostly prevalent on the Right, hate to say. Anti-science, anti-intellectual...if you really think the Geek Squad doesn’t know Jack Shit, then throw away your iPhone or Android, since they’re the ones who created it.
Being pretty much solidly in favor of saving democracy from the scourge that is Trump and his followers, though, I’ll accept Taylor Swift’s help. Sorry ‘bout that.
David, you wrote: A good analogy would be to say, “She’s a great singer, so I’d be happy to have her perform brain surgery on me.”
I don't see where she's asking to perform brain surgery. All she's doing is exercising her 1st Amendment rights. Just like the bobble heads in Nina's article: I hate what they're saying, but they have the right to say it.
The 1st Amendment applies to singers and influencers and plumbers and brain surgeons; and we can listen to them or laugh at them. It's a foundational principle of participatory democracy.
And while her music is irrelevant to me, and her boyfriend's football team is equally irrelevant to me, I'm glad they're exercising their 1st amendment rights and trying to move people to the polls. And I'm sure relieved they're anti-Trumpers. (I'm guessing if they were pro-Trumpers the folks on the Right would be celebrating. Right now, it just looks like they're scared sh*tless.
Go Taylor! Go Travis's team! Go Dems.
again, to put a bullet on it for the naysayers, it's called exercising their 1st Amendment rights.
Of course I agree with you. My point was more tongue-in-cheek, in that we ascribe super-human traits to people who are celebrities, usually famous and rich. My basis is that the value of a person is (or should be, rather) independent of their wealth and fame. That's all. Judge them by their stated values, and more so for what they do than what they say. Taylor Swift falls on the better side of that balance, for sure. Elon Musk, as but one of many examples, falls on the abhorrent side of that balance.
But is her opinion worth more than anyone else's (including, for example, mine, or yours, or Nina Burleigh's) except for the fact that she's a global superstar because of her rare talent as an artist and musician? There are plenty of very thoughtful and spiritually aware people who have nowhere near the same notoriety, yet have the mindfulness and presence to contribute as much to the public discourse but don't get one millionth the amount of attention from the adoring masses as Taylor Swift. It's more a reflection of our outsized celebrity culture than anything fundamental about First Amendment rights. Economic inequality is also political inequality.
Yes: Go Taylor! Go Travis (I have a number of family members in KC)! Go dems!
ah, David, the old tongue-in-cheek (maybe we need an emoji for that).
And I agree that celebrities have disproportionate influence, but in the end I prefer to make my own judgements on people and products - and really don't choose my politicians (or beers) by who endorses them.
But we're living in a consumer society swimming in celebrity worship so all these "influencers" probably cancel each other out in the end.
(but this Taylor "election interference psyop" conspiracy tells me the Right is getting nervous)
Worth reading Jay Kuo’s post on this issue this evening at https://open.substack.com/pub/statuskuo/p/the-far-right-is-swiftly-unraveling?r=1fin0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
At this point, I’ll take whatever support we can garner for preserving democracy in the US come November. Interesting that the Far Right is torpedoing their own ship, but once you start down the rabbit hole is that not to be expected?
thanks David, I read the article and it's spot on: delusional conspiracies dripping with desperation - a superstar endorsement is suddenly an "election interference psyop."
And for the Right, it's counter-productive: since females are the largest voting block, this whole anti-Swift thing is just saying "look how crazy and misogynist the Republican party has become". They should have quit at "nasty".
Does that ("stay out of politics") also apply to Trump's celebrity endorsers like Kid Rock, John Voigt, Ted Nugent, Scott Baio, James Woods, Roseanne Barr, Brett Favre, Dennis Quaid, Kelsey Grammer, Kanye, etc etc?
Absofrigginlootly
So celebrities don't have 1st Amendment rights?
Who decides who can endorse politicians and who can't?
In a free society, I say my say, and you can agree or not. I can endorse my candidate, and you can endorse yours. And doesn't that right of free speech apply to singers, celebrities, plumbers, businessmen, surgeons, bloggers?
Like you, I make my own decisions irregardless of celebrity endorsements - but I don't deny their right to do it.