Taylor Swift is making men do dumb things. A Charlotte official is the latest | Opinion

Here’s some advice for men everywhere: Stop being weird about Taylor Swift.

You don’t have to love her. You certainly don’t have to label yourself a “Swiftie.” But hating on her for simply existing, as many men have been wont to do lately, is just asking for trouble.

Charlotte City Council member Tariq Bokhari may have learned that the hard way from an interaction he had with StarMed Healthcare on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday night.

StarMed (or whoever runs their account) posted something pretty innocent: “Is there a luckier guy on earth rn (right now) than Travis Kelce?”

For whatever reason, Bokhari decided that was something a public official should criticize.

“Did an 8 yr old girl hack your account? Actually… I take that back. This makes sense of a lot of the posts I’ve seen here over the last few years,” Bokhari replied.

It didn’t end well for him. StarMed got the last word, saying, “Considering Travis Kelce’s knack for navigating the field, maybe he can give you a playbook on understanding transportation.”

Ouch!

All things considered, it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was a hasty tweet, and we’ve seen a lot worse lately with men and Taylor Swift.

Swift’s relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — and general dominance of the zeitgeist — has rankled men in the sports world. NFL viewers have complained ad nauseam about her supposedly taking over their TV screens, despite the fact that she only appears for about 25 seconds over the course of broadcasts that run longer than three hours, The New York Times calculated.

It was fodder for an unamusing joke at the Golden Globes. Baltimore Ravens fans heckled Swift at Sunday’s AFC championship game, yelling, “You’re ruining football!” Some sports commentators have even gone as far to suggest that the Chiefs’ losses in December were partially Swift’s fault, calling her the team’s “Yoko Ono.”

It’s sexist and gross and weird, and it often results in an avalanche of backlash for the person perceived to be making a slight against Swift.

Yet that doesn’t seem to be enough of a deterrent to conservatives, who have dubiously decided to make Swift their new Political Enemy No. 1.

Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pushed a ridiculous conspiracy theory about the Super Bowl potentially being rigged to provide a bigger stage for Swift and Kelce’s endorsement of Joe Biden. And he’s certainly not the only conservative to suggest that Swift is all one big psy-op orchestrated by the deep state. Earlier this month, Fox News host Jesse Watters floated the idea that Swift might be a “Pentagon psy-op asset.” Meanwhile, Trump and his allies have reportedly pledged a “holy war” on the pop star, with Trump insisting that he is “more popular” than her, according to Rolling Stone.

(One of my favorite examples is from after the 2023 election, when right-wing activist Charlie Kirk warned that Swift would mobilize her fans in the presidential election because “all the Swifties want is swift abortion.” What a quote.)

Some conservatives, however, are smartly trying to caution their party against the pitfalls of antagonizing Swift. That includes local figures like past city council candidate Kyle Luebke and former county commissioner Matthew Ridenhour, who shared an article from right-wing commentator Richard Hanania in which he describes a theory he’s dubbed “Taylor Swift Democrats.” The gist of it is that a whole lot of American voters will just side with whatever party seems the most “normal,” and Republicans are looking deeply abnormal with their meltdowns and tinfoil hat conspiracies about things like Taylor Swift.

That theory is probably right. If Republicans want to hold onto any kind of long-term political success, they’re going to have to start making inroads with younger voters, and they also can’t afford to completely lose women. Making an enemy out of Swift hurts their standing with both.

And yet, it keeps happening. Men are desperate to tear down Taylor Swift because they’re threatened by her ability to mobilize and empower her legions of female fans, often in ways that conflict with conservative male interests. Ironically, though, their attempts to diminish her influence are only making it stronger. They’re starting a war they’re guaranteed to lose.