In Bed With The Right - Episode 15： Taylor Swift

00:00:00.000 His persona and hers are both so rigorously unoffensive.

00:00:04.540 It's like being against literally like the football player and the cheerleader.

00:00:19.940 Hello, I'm Adrian Dobb.

00:00:21.700 And I'm Moira Donegan.

00:00:22.720 Whether we like it or not, I lost my train of thought here.

00:00:25.480 Sorry.

00:00:26.380 Well, we're in bed with the right. 0.98

00:00:27.560 That's what it is. 0.79

00:00:28.060 Sorry.

00:00:28.220 so background is um fun fact about me i'm functioning on three hours of sleep and i've

00:00:34.760 just run after uh 20 very sweet but very energetic toddlers for three hours so my brain is fried

00:00:41.620 and more as like let us please jump on the on the recording right now and capture this comedy gold

00:00:47.680 this is amazing adrian is usually one of the most uh like put together competent responsible people

00:00:55.420 in the room uh which is why i am just really uh delighted to see him finally weak enough

00:01:01.780 to be defeated by my powers i mean i i think you i think you give me too much credit but i do 0.96

00:01:10.160 acknowledge that i'm not usually i'm an unusual state of trash fire today and so uh let's fucking 0.59

00:01:17.140 do this what's our and i should say that this is a topic that you know like podcasters love being 0.91

00:01:22.940 Oh, I kept myself pure for the episode.

00:01:24.860 Like, I really don't know very much about this.

00:01:27.740 I've absorbed all this secondhand, and you're going to walk me through it. 0.99

00:01:31.680 And I have every, every suspicion that it's going to be stupid as all get out. 0.98

00:01:37.500 But I don't know the details. 1.00

00:01:39.180 This is pretty stupid. 1.00

00:01:40.700 And what we're talking about today is kind of a profound trash fire, even by the standards of right-wing gender politics. 1.00

00:01:49.000 Because today we are talking about the conservative commentariat's decision to antagonize and advance conspiracy theories about a little lady named Taylor Swift.

00:02:05.240 Taylor Swift.

00:02:06.540 So have you heard of Taylor Swift?

00:02:08.580 I haven't heard of her.

00:02:10.160 I've been told that, you know, haters are going to hate, hate, hate, hate.

00:02:15.120 But she prefers to shake, shake, shake.

00:02:17.760 So I'm guessing it sounds like she has a lot to shake off right now.

00:02:20.420 I also believe it involves a man that everyone seems to know and I do not, from which I deduce

00:02:25.760 that he's a sports person of some kind.

00:02:29.280 Yeah, this is going to be hilarious because a lot of this story is based on the interior

00:02:36.320 politics of the National Football League, which is something that neither Adrian or

00:02:41.260 I know anything about.

00:02:42.760 So let's set the scene a little bit. 1.00

00:02:44.660 taylor swift in case you haven't heard of her she's probably the most famous person in the world

00:02:49.820 i'd say you know sorry it's not ringing a bell you know she she's one of the last items of

00:02:57.780 monoculture you know it's like her it's beyonce and you know it's like literally joe botnan like

00:03:06.020 those are maybe the three human beings who everybody in the world more or less knows

00:03:09.980 who they are and taylor swift is coming off of a very very big year the era's tour yes she uh put

00:03:19.900 on this massive worldwide tour i think it's technically still going on in which she sort of

00:03:26.460 played a concert that composed her entire catalog which is at this point about a 15 or 20 year

00:03:34.380 career and she you know is performing like 70 000 people per night in the united states she is

00:03:43.720 wildly wildly popular she's a pop musician and you know she is kind of famous for dating uh

00:03:52.800 she dates uh has dated many millennial and gen x male celebrities yeah and then often wrote in

00:03:58.580 songs about them right that's the other thing she's yes yes she's also she is a mega star who

00:04:03.480 unusually for somebody as famous as she is she tends to write most of her songs herself

00:04:07.280 and she has cultivated her fan by like creating this persona in her music that is very first

00:04:15.920 person driven in which she sort of like divulges like kind of an unusual amount about the you know

00:04:21.820 interior experience of her celebrity life right i was trying to think of how i would characterize

00:04:26.660 her music and it's a lot like there's a lot of jokes in it it's like kind of got a posture of

00:04:31.800 self-deprecating knowing humor a lot makes her very different from somebody like beyonce whose

00:04:37.800 affect is very very different right an approach to um like sort of her relationship with her 0.98

00:04:42.380 audience i would say yeah a typical beyonce song has the subtext fuck you i'm awesome yeah like 0.85

00:04:47.220 and taylor swift is more like this may have partly been my fault that this thing fell apart like i 0.81

00:04:52.380 think of that i know that song blank page right where like she basically seems to suggest that 0.95

00:04:57.240 she may be at fault at some relationships not working out yes she's very self-conscious

00:05:01.700 or performed self-consciousness a lot a lot of self-deprecating humor it kind of reminds me of

00:05:06.980 like a voiceover sitcom oh a little bit remember like malcolm in the middle or like there would be

00:05:12.140 like fresh off the boat yes yes and there's a it's kind of like that because her songs are also

00:05:17.480 quite i should preface this that i like taylor swift this is somebody who like tends to attract

00:05:21.220 a lot of ire just because of how famous she is i like her music i think it's fun but like she does

00:05:25.620 have like four songs and they're sort of episodic and they're structured the same way uh and they

00:05:32.080 sort of repeat and she'll like fill in these templates and make a new song and it reminds

00:05:36.560 me of a sitcom that way it's like it's kind of the same 30 minutes once a week but it's three

00:05:43.660 minutes and she comes out with like one album every year so that's taylor swift mega star 0.96

00:05:48.980 mega famous and what she really is because she is so famous because she is a monoculture because 1.00

00:05:54.820 she is something that is consumed really by women, but by more or less every woman in America, 1.00

00:05:59.740 she has become a stand-in for white womanhood itself, right? That's what we have to understand

00:06:05.160 about Taylor Swift. I also have a thing about Taylor Swift because she and I are the exact

00:06:09.920 same age almost to the day. Oh my God. Yes. Taylor Swift and I are exactly contemporaries.

00:06:17.180 And- Join birthday parties.

00:06:19.300 Yeah. I mean, I don't like pointing this out because, you know, I think Taylor Swift might

00:06:22.220 be doing a little bit better so i would prefer if she had had a little bit of time but hey not

00:06:27.180 everybody half of america is not mad at oh wait no half of america is also mad at you it's scratch

00:06:33.440 that yeah i bet she doesn't have a prius and a studio apartment so you know so like that's kind

00:06:40.220 of the background of taylor swift and this was her mega mega mega year right this is taylor swift at

00:06:45.340 the absolute height of her powers and sort of the other bit of background that you have to know about

00:06:50.060 taylor swift is that she has a boyfriend adrian do you know anything about her boyfriend i don't

00:06:55.580 know how to say his last name but he's this he's clearly his first name is travis it sounds like

00:06:59.880 is that correct yes the name is travis how do you say his last name kelsey kels no see okay kelsey

00:07:06.160 travis kelsey i love this i love talking about american football with this like beanpole of a

00:07:13.120 german philosophy uh and literature professor adrian down look so i i noticed so yeah so he's

00:07:19.660 clearly you know i think he wasn't he on like snl recently so like he's he's also having a moment

00:07:24.460 alongside her it sounds like and if i'm gonna guess given that we're headed to the super bowl

00:07:30.440 into super bowl sunday he plays for either the 49ers or the is it the chiefs where he plays for

00:07:37.840 the kansas city chiefs he is a he plays the position he plays is tight end my favorite yeah

00:07:44.180 It does sound like kind of dirty, but it is a hybrid offensive and defensive position.

00:07:51.480 So it's a very important position on the team.

00:07:53.780 Right.

00:07:54.040 And he is apparently quite good.

00:07:55.780 And he is also sort of at the height of his career.

00:07:58.280 Right.

00:07:58.460 Right.

00:07:58.760 And he is a guy who has made himself not just an athlete, but sort of a media star.

00:08:06.440 So Travis Kelsey.

00:08:08.240 Right.

00:08:08.620 He was on SNL, right?

00:08:09.960 I actually have no idea if he was on SNL or not.

00:08:12.540 But that's like the kind of thing he would do.

00:08:14.980 His main thing is actually that he's a podcaster as in addition to being a, because the thing

00:08:20.100 you have to know about Travis Kelsey is that he has a brother whose name is, I think, Justin

00:08:24.280 Kelsey, who is a few years older and who is also a professional football player.

00:08:30.020 So Travis Kelsey is a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs.

00:08:33.540 And Justin Kelsey, who I think is retiring this year, is his older brother who plays

00:08:38.520 for the Philadelphia Eagles.

00:08:39.800 And together they have made themselves.

00:08:41.940 I remember the Eagles. I lived in Philadelphia before.

00:08:44.840 Together, they've made themselves like a, like a funny duo, right? Where they have this podcast

00:08:50.980 where the older brother, Justin, plays the wacky kind of drunk, like silly guy. And Travis plays 0.95

00:08:59.560 the bashful straight man. Taylor Swift broke up with her longtime kind of like sad, limp boyfriend,

00:09:07.440 like a british guy she was dating for many years at the beginning of 2023 and it had been a long

00:09:14.160 running kind of a bit like a joke on travis kelsey's podcast with his brother that he had

00:09:19.980 a crush on taylor swift so it was this like and then she actually wound up they actually wound up

00:09:24.340 going on a date and it was like fun for football fans who had been following travis kelsey and

00:09:30.900 listening to his podcast with his brother where he's like i have such a crush on taylor swift

00:09:34.460 etc and then she actually appears at his game right yeah i mean i have to say so i i think

00:09:40.460 that's very sweet on the other hand like i'm very worried about like any tear in the parasocial wall

00:09:45.240 that isolates podcasters from real life uh this is uh yeah that's that's cute every thousandth

00:09:51.780 time maybe yeah you know there is a um but in this case it's cute yeah i also feel a little like

00:09:56.980 annoyed that a professional athlete has a podcast because i feel like that belongs to those of us

00:10:03.040 who are like physically kind of like uncoordinated and incapable i'm like no no no no no you you have

00:10:10.280 the ball and the running and i'm the one who talks for the living and like this is god has

00:10:14.240 distributed our gifts in this way and it's not fair for you to be on my turf um this is going

00:10:18.380 to be our occurring theme in this episode because there's a few times when people are stealing my

00:10:23.440 lines right or like sort of stealing my position so the the two of them become like what we kind

00:10:30.340 of term in media, a crossover event, right? Because they are extraordinarily famous people.

00:10:38.140 The other thing about Travis Kelsey is that he is famous for a football player, even before he

00:10:42.480 starts dating Taylor Swift. He's one of the important ones. And so what it is basically

00:10:49.340 is a merger of these primarily male and primarily female audiences into this one couple who have

00:10:59.300 just massive massive massive market share combined right yeah it's as if the marvel cinematic universe

00:11:04.840 and emily in paris somehow like had a kind of crossover yeah it's kind of yeah you're melding

00:11:10.980 two fairly gendered properties very gendered properties right and also you know this leads

00:11:19.120 among football fans to some very interesting emotions right so taylor swift like travis

00:11:28.260 kelsey is quite famous and quite rich taylor swift is much more so right they are both at

00:11:33.000 the peak of their fields but sort of the magnitudes of their fame and their money and their ability to

00:11:38.940 command attention are are also asymmetrical and they're asymmetrical in a way that's contrary to 0.99

00:11:44.300 what we normally understand as a gendered balance of power and heterosexual relationships right 0.78

00:11:48.060 it is not the man but the woman who's more famous yeah travis kelsey found like the one woman in

00:11:52.600 the world to date who's more famous than he is right but she starts performing what we can see

00:11:58.880 as like a very traditional feminine supportive role right she shows that up at his games she's

00:12:05.760 wearing his jersey she's quite literally cheering him on you know and she's embodying the supportive

00:12:12.180 role and it feels like in terms of status like she's slumming it a little bit right she's like

00:12:17.500 going from her pedestal as like maybe the most powerful woman on earth definitely one of the 0.66

00:12:21.300 richest women on earth and is like sort of becoming somebody who's standing by her man,

00:12:26.720 right? She's trying to embody this position where she is not the center of attention by cheering him 1.00

00:12:33.040 on at the sidelines. But that's not how media incentives work. That's how heterosexuality 0.94

00:12:37.000 works, but that's not how media incentives work. So if you are a Kansas City Chiefs fan who's

00:12:42.800 watching at home, suddenly the Sunday night football camera is cutting to Taylor Swift,

00:12:48.120 like every couple minutes every play every down you get to a cut to show her reaction in the box

00:12:56.120 now i should say i've i've watched a fair amount of football matches in my life but i i've never

00:13:02.780 really paid attention to how they're put together it's a sport with relatively few audience cutaways

00:13:07.140 to begin with right i mean like there it's tends to be kind of focused on what's because it's such

00:13:11.900 an incredibly busy field i feel like i see a lot more cutaways to audience reactions for things

00:13:18.240 like baseball because like honestly there's 30 seconds you can waste anyway is that right so

00:13:23.060 like basically it's also like an unusual presentation for a football game or would you

00:13:27.400 say there are cutaways i feel like at the very end you sometimes see the owner's box where everyone

00:13:31.940 is like starting to like spray each other with champagne or something like that or like mark

00:13:35.720 cuban will be sitting somewhere and like you know be like either upset or happy or something like

00:13:40.400 that but like sort of like person on the street cutaways is that a common thing in football it

00:13:45.000 depends i will say for when there are celebrities in the stands that happens more but like the famous

00:13:51.280 courtside pictures are always basketball right like that's like oh here's al pacino sitting

00:13:54.780 with jake gillenhall like at the nets game or something like that that'll be because they're

00:13:59.620 right there there's also a the fact that football is a sport played in the winter outdoors right so

00:14:08.200 So I think it tends to attract, you know, when celebrities go to football games, and

00:14:15.040 they do, but they are in boxes that are farther away from the actual players, whereas a celebrity

00:14:22.200 at a basketball game is right next to the player on the court, as Jack Nicholson.

00:14:27.960 Yes, exactly.

00:14:28.620 So that's one factor.

00:14:29.740 But, you know, they do cut away.

00:14:31.580 An arrowhead field where the Kansas City Chiefs, their sort of home stadium, they have a tradition wherein the crowd specifically tries to like jeer and scream and make a lot of noise while the opposing team is trying to strategize while they're on the line so the opposing team can't hear what they're trying to say to each other.

00:14:52.880 so that winds up being a frequent cut in these broadcasts specifically in kansas city they cut

00:15:01.040 away to the crowd who are all making this loud noise to try and throw the game towards their

00:15:06.000 chiefs but you know this is kind of a situation in which football fans who i'm going to use as

00:15:14.240 a shorthand like they're men overwhelmingly they're men like women watch football football

00:15:18.680 is a massive american cultural product but the national football league considers itself by and

00:15:25.740 for men right right and they understand men as their primary viewership and men understand

00:15:31.200 themselves as the primary consumers of football right now football has women in and around it

00:15:37.080 the sort of like wags characters are you know they're famous in like british soccer but they're

00:15:42.720 also a fixture of american football and basketball they tend to be not very like professionally high 1.00

00:15:50.320 status women in their own right right like a wag will be somebody who is a college athlete with 1.00

00:15:55.980 the you know the guy from the eagles or actually one of the eagles was married to a prominent 0.93

00:16:02.480 member of the women's national soccer team for a while that you know i think he retired i think

00:16:07.660 they both retired but you know there was there's status asymmetry between these men and their wives

00:16:12.980 it is very typical and so those wives command sort of less attention and then there are cheerleaders

00:16:19.680 who are like purely ornamental and in fact are often we know from some investigative reporting 1.00

00:16:23.880 like the subject of sex trafficking right uh so like those are women whose status is unquestionably

00:16:30.020 lower than the players and like by sort of proxy that's lower than the audience right and what

00:16:36.840 Taylor Swift's relationship to Travis Kelsey 1.00

00:16:38.860 did was inject a higher status woman 1.00

00:16:40.600 into this male 1.00

00:16:42.740 space where she is commanding

00:16:44.820 attention. She's also bringing 0.82

00:16:46.740 a lot of young girl fans 0.89

00:16:49.020 to football because the 0.69

00:16:50.720 little girls, especially like Gen 1.00

00:16:52.720 Alpha, I'm talking girls in high school

00:16:54.840 and younger, have started to watch 0.98

00:16:56.900 Kansas City Chiefs games so they can

00:16:58.900 see Taylor Swift and see Taylor Swift's

00:17:01.040 boyfriend play, which also means that there's

00:17:02.920 an injection into the fandom.

00:17:04.880 The number of TikToks recorded in

00:17:06.760 uh western missouri just like shot through the roof or like you know um i'm sorry i'm assuming

00:17:12.880 that arrowhead stadium is in missouri is in the missouri part of i believe it's kansas city

00:17:17.140 missouri yeah um okay i would don't quote me on that but i think it's more like you know the guy

00:17:22.600 you know i'm a i'm a white man and i'm watching my football on sunday and now it used to sort of

00:17:30.200 be this me time or time i spent with my white man friends and now my like nine-year-old daughter is 0.91

00:17:34.380 at my elbow and she won't shut the fuck up and it's annoying i think that's kind of what's 0.79

00:17:37.960 happening right so there is like a substrata of anti-taylor swift resentment among this kind of 0.96

00:17:45.420 white-leaning right-leaning sector of american men who are football fans right but for the most

00:17:52.660 part and i need to emphasize this like it's a very wholesome story that people are pretty

00:17:58.860 pleased about right like these are good looking people who are very successful and seem to like

00:18:05.320 each other and that is wholesome and then it gets weird yeah i think this is the part this is where

00:18:11.980 i started taking note i was like um so like there's kind of like a substrata of like misogynist

00:18:18.380 resentment about this but it's really not the main thrust of this celebrity gossip story right

00:18:24.660 The main thrust of the celebrity gossip story is like, isn't this cute?

00:18:28.720 Most people are being normal about it.

00:18:30.640 And then the right wing sort of has a has a like a flicker.

00:18:34.180 Like you see like in a movie, like a scary movie when things go wrong and you see like the TV screen sort of like cuts out to static a little bit.

00:18:41.640 Right.

00:18:41.820 So a couple of weeks ago, Fox News host Jesse Waters starts talking about Taylor Swift.

00:18:47.360 Friend of the pod.

00:18:48.860 Yeah. 1.00

00:18:49.820 You know, meaning a huge piece of shit. 1.00

00:18:52.160 Anyway. 0.99

00:18:52.340 jesse waters speculates that maybe taylor swift is i'm quoting here a pentagon asset yes a psyop

00:19:00.260 or something like that this is what first drew my attention to this i was like i'm not a big

00:19:04.100 football watcher i am not a big part of the taylor swift cinematic universe i am however an 0.58

00:19:09.640 inveterate collector of the most insane shit fox news says so this came on my radar i was like oh 0.93

00:19:16.420 so this is where i enter the story yes go on yeah so that's that's jesse waters as fox news 0.98

00:19:23.040 there's also weird comments from jack pasobiak i might be pronouncing his name yeah i don't know

00:19:30.100 how to say his name but yeah that's that takes me back that guy where has that guy been i'm he

00:19:35.660 i'm not happy he's working but like i think he's self-employed he's got like a podcast he's got

00:19:41.320 like a youtube show he's in this sort of like right he was sort of an early sort of like one

00:19:45.560 of those like semi-celebrity white nationalists that sort of popped up sort of around the unite

00:19:51.380 the right rally in 2017 and then kind of disappeared again right he was like he's of the 0.93

00:19:56.100 milo yiannopoulos wave where like the new york times couldn't fucking stop sticking a microphone 0.69

00:20:01.540 in his face until they suddenly stopped doing it or something like that yeah right he's like an

00:20:06.340 alt-right uh like tv guy he does like youtube he does like news maxi things and he's got uh oh

00:20:18.940 i'm not news max excuse me i just looked it up it's o-a-n-n o-a-n-n yeah he's a uh turning point

00:20:25.180 guy it's like he's got a think tank position you know he's like one of these cranks according to

00:20:30.020 wikipedia it's pronounced pasobic pasobic yeah i guess okay i guess i can i can do him the

00:20:35.420 Courtesy of getting his name right, Pasobek.

00:20:37.120 I mean, no, please don't. 1.00

00:20:38.100 No, I mean, you can get it right while you say that he's like a racist asshole. 1.00

00:20:40.980 Not so that we can avoid it. 1.00

00:20:43.640 It's like, what's that woman's name?

00:20:45.740 Tommy, Tommy Loren, whose name you're never supposed to get right.

00:20:51.100 But Jack Pasobek recently went on, he was interviewing Roseanne Barr for some reason.

00:20:58.100 Oh my God.

00:20:59.020 It's like a 2016 reunion.

00:21:00.340 And he speculated that the Democratic Party and, you know, the nefarious, ill-defined forces of the deep state were going to try and use Taylor Swift as an asset in the 2024 election.

00:21:18.120 Right.

00:21:18.740 And then that was sort of picked up again by Vivek Ramaswamy, the erstwhile presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist who speculated, I wonder who's going to win the Super Bowl next month.

00:21:32.900 He said this in January.

00:21:34.300 And I wonder if there's a major political endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped up couple this fall.

00:21:40.900 Just some wild speculation over here.

00:21:42.900 Let's see how it ages over the next eight months.

00:21:46.400 We will age as well as your candidacy.

00:21:48.500 yeah he's i'm not a fan of the word cuck i think it like you know it re-inscribes a bunch of

00:21:53.860 horrible gendered you know stereotypes on the other hand like if ever there was a person that 0.99

00:21:59.320 it was appropriate for is vivek ramaswamy i'm sorry i mean it's he he did the kind of thing

00:22:04.220 that a lot of these guys are doing where he tried to be sort of like diet trump but i don't think

00:22:09.420 vivek ramaswamy was ever really running for president i think he was running to get uh more

00:22:14.260 he was like running for more youtube subscribers right yeah yeah and he is now responding to those

00:22:22.960 incentives by saying a lot of crazy shit right but um so like this sort of vibe that taylor swift

00:22:30.660 is an asset for biden that perhaps she is even in the more conspiratorial forms of this being like 0.96

00:22:37.260 controlled by the biden campaign in the deep state right george soros i'm guessing is somewhere in

00:22:42.840 background he's got to be somewhere in there yeah he's always he's a recurring figure like

00:22:47.260 Forrest Gump he's just everywhere in history right yeah and so that's kind of a recurring theme and

00:22:54.700 it should be said that like Taylor Swift for as anodyne a figure as she is she is not a person

00:23:02.380 who is like very strictly apolitical right yeah right like she I sort of picked up on her having

00:23:08.400 vaguely progressive politics right yes or she's not she's not cool with reactionaries i guess is

00:23:13.060 another way of putting that she's she's a human being well this is a little bit of taylor swift

00:23:17.040 lore that i can fill you in on which is that when taylor swift and i were in our mid-20s

00:23:22.740 the far right sort of latched onto taylor swift the alt-right uh that was ascendant right around

00:23:28.840 the 2016 election around like unite the right kind of vibe they started proposing her as their 1.00

00:23:34.660 like arian princess right i mean fair enough she looks uh yeah she is a uh she is a blonde 0.71

00:23:41.700 haired blue-eyed exceptionally light white woman she's like weirdly tall she's like 5 10 or 5 11 1.00

00:23:48.680 or something and she's skinny as a rail and she's very beautiful and she's very unquestionably white 0.94

00:23:53.960 right she is somebody who is whose image is a useful vessel for this kind of uh like racist 0.67

00:24:00.980 misgendered aspiration. And she started voicing very tentatively her kind of blandly liberal

00:24:09.900 political commitments specifically to reject that, right? So in 2018, she endorsed a challenger to

00:24:19.760 Tennessee Senator Marshall Blackburn. The challenger's challenge went absolutely nowhere.

00:24:25.280 So the Taylor Swift endorsement didn't really do him much good. But she reasoned in this

00:24:30.380 endorsement announcement that she wanted to endorse a democrat both because of her support

00:24:36.720 for abortion rights and her support for the violence against women act right so you know

00:24:41.080 i am a democrat for uh sort of like predictably standard issue feminist commitments right for the

00:24:46.520 absolute basics i do not in fact think of myself and people like me as objects so i have taken the

00:24:53.880 bold step of arranging my politics to reflect that basic belief right which is like probably

00:24:58.340 kind of a little infuriating for the, like, alt-right sphere that needs her to act as an

00:25:03.820 object, not just like an object of sexual desire, but an object of this sort of like racially 0.90

00:25:07.940 gendered aspiration, right? The things that they want white women to be, the things that they 1.00

00:25:11.640 imagine white women will give them in this, like, sort of racially stratified future, the things

00:25:18.140 that they imagine white women can aspire to be, right? So this was a rejection of that. And she

00:25:25.000 subsequently endorsed Joe Biden in 2020. So this sort of churn of alt-right anti-Swift hate

00:25:35.200 gets exacerbated the last weekend in January. And there are a couple of things that happened

00:25:41.380 the last weekend in January. This is the 27th and 28th. One, the NFL playoffs happen in which

00:25:49.560 the kansas city chiefs including tight end and famous boyfriend travis kelsey advanced to the

00:25:55.480 super bowl so they will be playing in the super bowl on february 11th against the 49ers by the

00:26:01.000 way i had no idea i had no idea that san francisco's football team was in the playoffs until i got

00:26:06.980 woken up by fireworks and i was like oh yeah do we see do we have a football team here um

00:26:13.740 well they they play in santa clara right so um we get the public urination and the parade but we

00:26:18.920 don't actually get the traffic maybe not even the prey we get the public urination yeah they're

00:26:22.740 gonna lose because this was the exact same super bowl that was in 2020 2020 super bowl was also

00:26:28.740 the chiefs versus the 49ers uh and the chiefs won and i'm pretty sure they're gonna win again

00:26:33.300 because they are a stronger team well because because george soros launching a deep snake

00:26:38.380 kelsey the you know swell conspiracy and so i guess we're now wait are is the far right now 0.62

00:26:48.500 rooting for san francisco i know the far right has a choice between fellas is it gay to root

00:26:57.060 for san francisco they have a choice between like a team from missouri with a racist name

00:27:02.660 or the san francisco 49ers so that was sort of one item that maybe like ticked towards this 0.99

00:27:14.800 explosion of ire right is that this high profile woman is probably going to be physically present 1.00

00:27:23.200 and probably getting a lot of attention at the super bowl where in she will distract from this 1.00

00:27:30.080 like you know virility violence masculinity festival that it normally is right not to be

00:27:35.140 like too reductive about it yeah but i mean like i'm sorry of all the football games in the world

00:27:40.200 the super bowl is really more about the hyundai ads the halftime show and the celebrities like

00:27:47.160 that is like a very non-purist right i mean like i feel like it's you know if you're just gonna

00:27:52.860 watch some football like the super bowl has far less than the fda approved amount of football in

00:27:59.480 it it's a lot of other horse shit it's like crypto ads like there's probably more crypto ads in the

00:28:04.660 super bowl or were until recently then there's like actual like moving the line of scrimmage 0.98

00:28:10.480 is there for me the super bowl is really about fried foods eating fried foods in the apartment

00:28:18.400 of your friend's boyfriend at a party where they've got the projector playing the game like

00:28:25.500 that is what the super bowl is about to me yeah yeah and i think i'm gonna do that it's gonna be

00:28:29.080 really fun i'll let you know how that like i'm gonna spend a lot of time thinking about seven

00:28:33.680 layer dip but that was one thing right like she's advancing to the super bowl oh no yeah those of us

00:28:38.980 who like have this like weird resentment that are like you know weekly masculinity ritual is now 1.00

00:28:46.540 dominated by like cuts to this very like high achieving high status woman who we resent because 1.00

00:28:51.840 we can't have her you know etc etc so that's one thing right another thing that happened is that 0.90

00:28:57.140 the new york times broke a story that same weekend that the chiefs advanced that said that the reported

00:29:03.180 that the Biden campaign is once again seeking Taylor Swift's endorsement. I have some suggestions

00:29:08.540 for other things the Biden campaign could be spending its time doing, but this is something

00:29:12.060 that they are spending time doing, is courting Taylor Swift. So that was another one. And then

00:29:17.180 there was reporting from Rolling Stone that Donald Trump is personally kind of annoyed at

00:29:25.400 how much media attention Taylor Swift is getting, that I suppose he thinks should go to him instead,

00:29:29.860 that says he said that, you know, I'm more popular than she is. You know, she's stupid, 1.00

00:29:37.100 whatever. Right. So Donald Trump personally just dislikes her. Biden is seeking her endorsement 1.00

00:29:41.320 and she's going to the Super Bowl. We should say for our listeners who might have any doubt,

00:29:46.620 Taylor Swift is much, much more popular than Donald Trump. A recent survey, I think that

00:29:53.440 was taken last year and found that a majority of American adults, including both men and women

00:29:59.560 and including both Democrats and Republicans

00:30:01.400 identify as Taylor Swift fans.

00:30:02.820 Something like 44% of American adults

00:30:04.660 identify as Swifties,

00:30:06.400 which strikes me as something

00:30:07.680 that like implies a degree of commitment.

00:30:09.820 Yeah.

00:30:10.000 There's just no-

00:30:11.220 I like her, but I would not call myself a Swiftie.

00:30:12.960 So I'm not even in those 44%.

00:30:14.420 And I like her more than Donald Trump.

00:30:16.100 I mean, also we don't have to like guess around for this.

00:30:20.000 Biden is seeking her endorsement 0.96

00:30:21.100 because she's more popular than Joe Biden.

00:30:24.040 And, you know, if you're looking for people

00:30:26.080 who are famously less popular than Joe Biden,

00:30:29.180 we have a pretty good poll from 2020 that suggests it's Donald Trump. He's less popular

00:30:35.580 than Joe Biden by a couple of million votes. So that sort of leads to this explosion,

00:30:41.200 right? There's this confluence of factors in the last weekend of January that puts this crucible

00:30:48.360 of right-wing rage and focuses it onto Taylor Swift. And I think this is really interesting

00:30:56.240 because it shows a few things right one is it's sort of part and parcel of this broad 2024 strategy

00:31:06.580 of the republican party that's not just like an ideological shift that's come like integrator

00:31:11.960 focus over like the past 10 years for them but it's really like it quite explicitly a strategy

00:31:16.720 which is that they are trying to drum up male voters with misogynist resentment right this

00:31:21.260 was something that was said uh on television by matt gates the other day who said that you know

00:31:26.320 every time we lose a karen we gain uh jose and jamal right like sort of articulating in very

00:31:33.680 vulgar terms this republican party strategy to compensate for the white women who are there

00:31:39.360 are losing after jobs by courting men of color particularly black and latino men it's not really

00:31:44.920 working but it is an explicit gender grievance strategy that they are pitching right yeah and

00:31:50.220 it comes on the heels of like a lot of anger at the success of post Dobbs abortion mobilization

00:31:59.480 by Democrats. Right. I think like, don't hold me to this because it's the kind of thing where like,

00:32:04.320 I will look like I get a cream pie to the face. But I think that in November, we might see white

00:32:09.860 women finally flipped to the Democratic Party. That's a trend that's been happening very slowly

00:32:15.200 for a very long time. But I think Dobbs might accelerate it in a way that, you know, the

00:32:20.880 Republican Party doesn't quite have a contingency plan for besides, you know, like repealing the

00:32:24.880 19th Amendment. So they are really leaning hard into misogyny as electoral strategy,

00:32:29.780 both because they're embittered by the women who are abandoning them and their agenda,

00:32:34.200 and also because they think that is something that they can affirmatively use to attract more 0.88

00:32:38.280 male voters. Yeah. Well, and I mean, it helps them, I guess, that just by happenstance, the

00:32:43.360 many court cases currently tripping up Donald Trump are disproportionately, right, like have, 0.76

00:32:50.760 I mean, sometimes they tend to move women into these kinds of positions in order to hate on

00:32:55.880 them, right? Like they will like pick the woman in the group. But like, that doesn't just seem 0.70

00:32:59.880 to be the case. It is run by, you know, there are a disproportionate number of female prosecutors 1.00

00:33:04.040 involved by like eugene carroll just keeps taking him to the cleaners every couple of months it seems

00:33:09.400 like so he is literally getting his clock cleaned by women right now and like and i can imagine that

00:33:14.680 his fans like have responses to that too yeah you know there is a degree to which you know the legal

00:33:20.600 house of cards under trump is starting to fall down right so you alluded to the sexual abuse

00:33:26.700 and defamation damages that were awarded to trump right before the nfl finals uh awarded against

00:33:33.280 Trump to E. Jean Carroll, his rape accuser, who says that, you know, a jury agreed with her that

00:33:39.600 he attacked and sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in 1996. She was

00:33:45.700 awarded, I believe, $83.8 million by a jury in New York. You know, there are male judges like

00:33:52.360 Judge Kaplan in New York who presided over both the E. Jean Carroll case and one of Trump's civil

00:33:59.100 fraud cases. But, you know, he's being prosecuted by Letitia James, the attorney general of New York.

00:34:03.700 He is being prosecuted by Fonnie Willis, the district attorney in Atlanta, who the right wing

00:34:12.140 has launched like a quite gendered attack on in response to, you know, allegations about her

00:34:18.820 sex life. And Donald Trump is deciding, I think, partly out of strategy, but also just partly out

00:34:25.120 of necessity to make courtroom antics a cornerstone of his campaign, right? So in the E. Jean Carroll

00:34:33.100 defamation damages hearing, he was speaking over E. Jean Carroll's lawyers, the two who were doing

00:34:41.860 their presentation were both women. He was speaking over E. Jean Carroll while she was

00:34:46.720 testifying on the stand. He was, you know, sort of storming out theatrically. And then there was also

00:34:53.380 a sort of like weird like sexuality contest about the lawyers where trump fans were like posting

00:35:01.720 this bikini picture of his lawyer alina haba who's a like a millennial lawyer right wing

00:35:07.400 woman who owns a bikini and looks great in it you know and and like that was kind of another um

00:35:13.400 this is like johnny defting all over again right like he has a he has the prettier attorney yeah 0.93

00:35:18.360 he's like, oh, I'm, you know, my proxy in court is actually this woman who can be objectified to

00:35:26.960 serve as a symbol of my virility, right? And then he's also doing these like domination

00:35:30.520 exercises in the courtroom. So that's like a gendered element to his sort of like campaign 0.54

00:35:36.900 strategy. And, you know, I think they're really leaning into it on both sides, right? They're

00:35:42.460 leaning into it in terms of like the affirmative demonstration of Donald Trump's masculinity and

00:35:49.700 the sort of negative harnessing of resentment against like women in the public sphere. They're

00:35:55.980 doing kind of both sides. So that's one like sort of bucket of the reason for this Taylor Swift

00:36:00.580 weirdness, right? Is that Donald Trump has basically a campaign message that is all about

00:36:08.680 these demonstrations of masculine dominance and that's been more or less his like implicit message 0.99

00:36:14.940 and he just makes it really explicit like i feel like he's gonna take his dick out i mean that's 0.99

00:36:19.360 not a prediction but you know like metaphorically speaking that's kind of what he's doing all the 0.99

00:36:22.620 time yeah

00:36:23.480 the other bucket is that the right wing has really weird media incentives right now

00:36:47.900 where to a degree what's happened the right wing media is much better funded right like sort of

00:36:52.920 nonpartisan and left-wing media is completely collapsing and falling apart they've been this

00:36:56.740 like massacres of layoffs every quarter for a few years now and over the past like a couple weeks

00:37:03.740 it's been it's been particularly brutal and that doesn't happen in right-wing media right like

00:37:07.480 their money keeps coming because they're they've got these deep-pocketed and funders who are you

00:37:12.080 know investing in this ideological dissemination but what they do have in right-wing media in

00:37:18.000 places like Fox News, even like the Wall Street Journal, they've got this like weird new competition

00:37:24.160 from these upstart, even fringier outlets, places like OANN, places like Newsmax that are even

00:37:32.280 crazier. And then they've got competition from the like vast landscape of independent cranks on

00:37:40.900 YouTube, on Substack, on their podcasts. So they are like incentivized. The Fox news is of the

00:37:48.320 world. The Jesse waters of the world are incentivized to keep saying crazier and crazier

00:37:52.240 shit so that they don't lose their audience to these even crazier fringe outlets. That's kind of 0.99

00:38:00.300 a media incentive that is going against the political incentives of the Republican party,

00:38:06.440 right? Which like needs to win an election and can't be too out there. But to keep the right

00:38:12.080 wing media's viewership in line, they need to be pretty out there so they can like maintain those

00:38:17.260 eyeballs. So that's like a conflict, right? Because the other thing that we should say

00:38:21.540 is that this is like very weird and putting people off. Most people are like pro Taylor Swift. I think

00:38:27.200 most people have like, you know, pretty good feelings about Travis Kelsey, like sort of role

00:38:31.560 he plays in the taylor swift side presentation of their relationship which is the kind that's 0.94

00:38:36.740 like being presented to me as a millennial woman is that he's like her kind of dumb adoring 0.99

00:38:41.460 boyfriend he's like he's big he's stupid he's like good looking and he's sort of like mentally 1.00

00:38:49.940 gentle to her in this way that like doesn't challenge her domination in the outside world 0.99

00:38:56.680 but is kind of like wholesome right um so like his persona and hers are both like so rigorously

00:39:03.240 unoffensive it's like being against like literally like the football player and the cheerleader

00:39:08.120 or like you know mickey mouse or like you know a teddy bear and a barbie doll well it reflects

00:39:14.260 two things right like on the one hand taylor swift's identification with let's say biden and

00:39:19.080 liberal causes is that like part of what this reflects is that like what has become the mainstream

00:39:23.780 of that party and what's become the mainstream of that movement is just a bunch of freaks right

00:39:28.920 that like most americans don't recognize themselves in that and like like the number

00:39:33.300 of celebrities that will sign out to them it's like it's basically roseanne barr like you're

00:39:36.380 you know you're like sorry mate like you're kind of stuck with her yeah like you're not gonna get

00:39:40.440 like this night millennial nice millennial lady being like yeah take away my rights and like also

00:39:45.420 like jews are controlling the money supply right like they're not gonna do that it's like you know 1.00

00:39:49.740 like back when it was like oh lower taxes like fiscal responsibility i could imagine a celebrity

00:39:54.820 being like i don't have any problem being associated with this but like people like no

00:39:57.960 i'm not i'm sorry like you shoot up pizza parlors because of some cockamamie theory like why like

00:40:03.740 it's it's just like you you will have less you have fewer and fewer celebrities basically and

00:40:07.480 that's kind of what they're reacting to that like everyone they see on tv is basically like

00:40:10.440 you guys are kind of wild because you guys are kind of bizarre because like spoiler alert you're

00:40:15.360 kind of bizarre right they're getting too weird there used to be this meme on the internet that

00:40:21.460 was like don't say what you really think because you're scaring the hose the hose which is like not

00:40:26.500 a phrase i use but um it's what i keep thinking of is like they can't help themselves yeah and

00:40:32.440 they're scaring the normies they're scaring the people who should be their constituency and this

00:40:37.540 is something you can see a little bit in some like mainstream republican or like what counts

00:40:41.980 for mainstream Republican like frustrations with the anti-Taylor Swift turn. So like Ross Douthat

00:40:48.540 front of the pod had a like very funny and very revealing tweet and then a column that he wrote

00:40:55.480 about his tweet, which is basically like, you know, it doesn't matter that these people are

00:41:01.620 liberals. I should I should mention also that Travis Kelsey is I think he's like pretty

00:41:06.140 apolitical, but he did take the vaccine and was public about having to take the vaccine and did

00:41:10.820 like a commercial for pfizer about like you guys should all go get take the vaccine and blah blah

00:41:14.620 so like they don't they also don't like him personally for that see that's that's exactly

00:41:17.660 if preventable disease prevention is like makes you one of the enemies like yeah you gotta have

00:41:25.520 most of the enemies bro like that's like you're out there you're out there but ross duthat's point

00:41:30.820 was like these are just because these people are like maybe personally liberal doesn't mean that

00:41:36.480 conservatives should reject the quote-unquote primal archetype right and the quote-unquote

00:41:40.980 primal archetype is big strong masculine man white white woman he's like what we need them

00:41:47.640 to do is marry and breed and i think that brings us to the third bucket of taylor swift anxiety 1.00

00:41:55.380 which is too old to have kids isn't it she's 34 that's so that's something that they bring up a 1.00

00:42:01.980 lot there like when taylor swift turned 30 there was a lot of like right wing like speculation 0.59

00:42:07.280 about the declining quality of her eggs her remaining eggs uh and how that you know um

00:42:12.880 like these guys cannot be normal and and you know this is i think it's been like a slow burn on the

00:42:19.500 creepy taylor swift resentment by the right wing incel brigade for a while right so this is another

00:42:26.020 thing that i think is really like frustrating them about taylor swift is because she is an avatar 1.00

00:42:30.900 of millennial womanhood right she is like the most famous millennial there is she is famously

00:42:39.820 unmarried and she doesn't have any children and this resentment is coming at a time when 0.98

00:42:47.100 the right wing is really starting to freak out after this post-pandemic reckoning with

00:42:54.060 you know the failures of marriage and it's overburdening on on women and mothers this

00:42:59.640 post Dobbs reckoning with just how invasive and exhausting and uncomfortable and dangerous

00:43:05.860 pregnancy really is. And, you know, this economy that has allowed a lot of women to be independent

00:43:13.900 so that they can choose to opt out of marriage and motherhood, these things that they are

00:43:19.400 increasingly seeing as unappealing, right? Yeah. Plus, there might be some anxieties there,

00:43:24.120 about i don't know about uh how there might be a uh i'm just spitballing about like a replacement of

00:43:30.580 other people having children who they have less good associations with i mean like who who could

00:43:39.000 possibly say whether that's the background for for any of these columns yeah like taylor swift

00:43:43.620 and the section of millennials who are most interested and willing and interested willing

00:43:49.640 and able to like avoid marriage and motherhood right are white you know this is like a white

00:43:55.060 middle class phenomenon exactly not exclusively but you know in large part and those are the those 1.00

00:44:00.180 are the women who you know the Roth do thoughts of the world really want to breed yeah and so

00:44:04.900 there's been this kind of anxiety that the right has about the family right there's been a lot of

00:44:12.660 like sort of structural contradictions in the family in the family form in the marriage model

00:44:18.780 that have been exposed like really vividly over the past like five years and that have failed to

00:44:25.980 persuade the women who can no longer be forced right and that is i think what taylor swift

00:44:31.500 represents like the possibility to opt out so even as she is frankly opting in like this is a person

00:44:37.220 who you know we could talk about the gaylers but i think she's about as heterosexual as anybody has

00:44:42.080 ever been i think she's like maybe our like avatar of heterosexuality right right she's no she's no 0.95

00:44:46.840 case to no um she is somebody who is uh like not like positioning herself as opposed to these

00:44:54.660 structures right but they see her as somebody who could reject them who could reject the family life

00:45:01.080 the gender role model that they are proposing yes the queerness of spinsterdom right like there's

00:45:06.620 a there are women who are not queer coded but they become queer with time because they

00:45:10.780 opt out of the maturation process that compulsory heterosexuality is supposed to set you on and

00:45:16.040 right like it's like these cool aunts you have like where you're not sure like are they doing

00:45:20.340 it or is it just like they no longer need men right and like she's i guess at 34 jesus christ

00:45:25.620 for them she's on their way to that yeah um and so this also brings me to something that i wanted

00:45:31.120 to talk to you about which is that a few of these guys have been like look taylor swift

00:45:36.300 i'm gonna try and find the tweet because it's oh is this that weird podcaster owen benjamin

00:45:43.180 Owen Benjamin, I guess.

00:45:44.160 I have that here.

00:45:44.680 He's like, yeah, you read it.

00:45:46.480 So Owen Benjamin, for context, he's exactly my age, it turns out, almost.

00:45:51.320 A sort of podcaster, stand-up comedian in the loosest sense of the word.

00:45:57.340 And kind of, also, is he OANNN already?

00:46:00.160 Is he?

00:46:00.600 No, I think he's on the Daily Wire or something like that.

00:46:04.200 He has some kind of like, he's an all right guy.

00:46:07.120 So anyway, so here he is. 0.99

00:46:08.540 this tweet is from january 30th at 2024 has 1.1 million views because fuck you elon excellent 0.97

00:46:15.440 yeah and then it's a big picture of taylor swift in lighting that i'm guessing is supposed to be 0.92

00:46:19.840 unflattering she looks amazing but i guess it's like it's kind of sharp so like you can see that

00:46:25.980 like i don't know her skin does that thing that skin does under like very strong lighting and

00:46:29.680 then it has 34 years like you know oh you know what he did he googled taylor swift age oh and

00:46:36.000 And that is a screenshot from what came up when he did it.

00:46:39.520 Oh, my God.

00:46:40.060 So it says, why would a rich, famous guy marry a 34-year-old woman? 0.99

00:46:45.960 That's already good. 0.83

00:46:47.180 If you started immediately, you might be able to have two kids. 1.00

00:46:50.700 And she's publicly had sex with a ton of guys.

00:46:53.740 This is sort of low-value stuff, isn't it? 0.98

00:46:55.780 Despite her wealth, she's very low quality for any successful male. 0.99

00:47:00.340 Just seems weird and almost like he's a gay guy. 1.00

00:47:02.900 why would a successful man want a middle-aged woman who's always on tour is it could it be 0.90

00:47:08.660 because he's gay i mean fellas i mean this is when it showed up on my radar again i was like

00:47:15.700 this is awesome why is it awesome tell me about it so because it's just like it's this form of 0.50

00:47:22.520 communication of political communication from these hyper masculine and this is a big alt-right

00:47:27.480 thing right like partly because it's all through youtube and through all these channels where

00:47:32.500 where their audience frankly hasn't had a whole lot of sex yeah where they like twist themselves 0.98

00:47:37.920 into these weird pretzels where suddenly it's like isn't sex with women kind of gay and you're 0.98

00:47:43.700 like okay like say more about that right like so that's beautiful and then this whole like weird 0.82

00:47:50.120 kind of low value system it really kind of it becomes i mean like what's scary is that apparently

00:47:55.100 a lot of young men are going in for this right and especially you know the teens and whatever

00:47:59.280 like that is scary like the andrew tate disciples etc etc but like it is on the face of it absurd

00:48:04.880 right because it's like this value system by any measure of any value system taylor swift is a bit

00:48:10.540 of a catch for just about any person on this planet you may need to recalibrate your your

00:48:16.520 value system if being with her is somehow like suspect right it's a little bit like you know

00:48:22.320 you're marrying you know the queen of england and people are like feels like a step down it's like

00:48:27.180 i don't know i feel like i'm gonna have more castles than i did before right like it's just uh

00:48:33.160 it shows like how these kind of online swamps create these kind of systems that are internally

00:48:42.600 kind of consistent right like they are like a lot of the creeps and weirdos we've been reading right

00:48:47.280 like weininger does this kind of thing nietzsche can sound like this schopenhauer certainly sounds 0.87

00:48:53.180 like this right he's like that's the wrong hip size right who the fuck made r2 schopenhauer boss

00:48:57.760 right and they decided what the hip size had to be but like the skull measurers the you know the 0.50

00:49:03.660 evo psych guys the dilbert dude right like it's got this sort of sheen of scientificity but it

00:49:09.720 only barely covers that what it is is like absolute pure and unalloyed lunacy right yeah

00:49:15.360 i'm glad you bring up the this like lineage intellectually of how these guys are getting 0.98

00:49:21.660 to this idea that fellas is a gay to have sex with taylor swift because from my lineage from 0.70

00:49:28.440 like a radical feminist perspective right we're like i'm decoding a lot of masculinities like 0.95

00:49:35.860 trump masculinities right and and to his you know i guess credit maybe or at least it's notable that

00:49:41.240 trump himself is not the mouthpiece of this it's you know people who are taking cues from what he's

00:49:46.900 doing in private, or maybe trying to impress him. But you know, it's not Trump going in for this.

00:49:52.820 But I decode Trump, like masculine sexuality as being kind of like, boorish, libertine sexuality, 0.97

00:50:01.120 wherein masculinity is proved via the sexual domination of women, right? Their domination, 0.99

00:50:06.460 their humiliation is what makes me a man. And that's kind of what you see if you're like,

00:50:10.860 taking as I often do the sort of like Andrea Dworkin approach decoding like men's behavior.

00:50:15.280 And it won't lead you astray that often, right? But it cannot lead you to fellas is a gay to have sex with Taylor Swift. That's this other more like fascist intellectual lineage that understands sex with women not as something by which men can like sort of dominate, control, humiliate women, and thereby prove themselves as men. 0.99

00:50:33.800 it almost like proceeds from a fear of women and a fear of contamination by women right like 0.99

00:50:41.580 like proximity to women even in this like masculine coded activity of fucking them 0.99

00:50:46.900 can be seen as like implicating you that's right because you might have to cuddle afterwards you 0.99

00:50:52.000 might have to like have conversations you might watch a taylor swift concert with her um yeah and 1.00

00:50:57.580 i mean like the other thing of course is this is a form of controlling women of systematization

00:51:02.560 right to sort of say oh i understand women better than they could ever understand themselves right i

00:51:07.580 can like write that this wasn't it this weird like sort of stacy system among the incels and

00:51:12.560 whatever right like there's this kind of this kind of absolute need to like over theorize right like

00:51:18.300 the thing that you can't do is like ask a woman what she might do or want like you need to be the

00:51:24.000 expert for them right like like the pickup artists are all about this right like it's basically for i

00:51:30.520 think for a lot of pickup artists it would be kind of gay to have a woman be like hey you're

00:51:34.140 actually kind of interesting i'm gonna go home with you right it's like no you have to trick her

00:51:38.240 right like even if she might go might be like hey you're not that bad looking and honestly i'm i

00:51:43.800 wouldn't mind but like no no no like you have to work your system to like pick them up right like

00:51:49.520 it seems to me it's about kind of projecting knowledge onto women and sort of imagining

00:51:54.840 domination that way right because it's often like behavior that like if experienced irl will lead to

00:52:00.440 the absolute absence of sex right with anyone but like the most delusional desperate or

00:52:05.680 misinformed and famously like these are not spaces like they're all like why were women

00:52:10.560 dated like i don't know man like like check out anything you've ever said tweeted or written right

00:52:16.360 like that would give you a first five million clues right but like so there is this kind of

00:52:20.640 like control through knowledge right which is which is also like a super old misogynistic trope

00:52:27.440 right like it's men's job to understand women better than they understand themselves but here

00:52:32.040 it becomes almost this like kabbalistic thing right where it's like it's a system where you're

00:52:35.940 like i'm sorry so like what are we doing here like it's very obscure right and it's a it's a line of

00:52:41.960 thought whereby like frankly rape becomes not just acceptable but kind of the only acceptable

00:52:48.520 way to have sex right there cannot be mutuality yeah of desire and i wonder if there's something

00:52:55.740 about like being seen by women and interpreted by women that is anathema here because like this is

00:53:06.600 like you mentioned earlier this is like a subset of viewership these like sort of online right-wing

00:53:13.680 misogynist communities that are producing these kinds of like discourses and lines of thought

00:53:18.840 they're not people who seem to know a ton of women right i mean they're mothers you know they're not

00:53:23.740 people who seem to be like dating very much and there's something about the idea of a woman like

00:53:31.060 assessing them at all regardless of what she what she finds when she makes that assessment

00:53:35.900 that is like communicating with other women about you also uh famously something they don't like

00:53:41.140 ask me how i know um but you know it's a uh it's a fear of being seen right which of course like

00:53:47.940 women sort of like also struggle with we have to sort of like reconcile yeah ourselves in the

00:53:52.560 system of being surveilled and assessed like very early but like now this is something where

00:53:58.140 you know economic conditions have made it so that like men might also have to subject themselves to

00:54:03.100 like a desiring and assessing gaze and that's like something they're really not fans of yeah

00:54:08.880 yeah anyway we've gotten really into the weeds about taylor swift do you have any final thoughts

00:54:13.460 or closing arguments yeah i mean i thank you for taking me down this rabbit hole because i did see

00:54:19.260 sort of like some of the highlights of this course are like, what is happening right now?

00:54:23.780 It's so fascinating to think about. It is an interesting snapshot of masculinity

00:54:28.160 here in the sense that like this kind of conspiratorial conspiracy, you know, you and I,

00:54:33.800 I think as gender scholars tend to think that patriarchy has really strong reserves of support

00:54:41.720 in the population. And you and I got to hang out with Professor Anita Hill last week, right? Like

00:54:46.860 the recalcitrance the ability of patriarchy to strike back it's really just like this constant

00:54:52.360 but then i think one sometimes forgets that like while there is a kind of patriarchy that can sort

00:54:57.000 of camouflage itself as just quote unquote common sense as like you know the way of things have

00:55:01.420 always been as tradition there is always also this kind of whacked out like prong of it where

00:55:07.000 it's just like i'm sorry what right like uh that just kind of you know it's sort of perfectly

00:55:14.280 teetering between the demonic and the absolutely hilarious and i i hope i didn't make too light of

00:55:19.200 this like this is these are troubling people like and it's definitely not a surprise that like

00:55:23.740 this is basically a re-tread of like our 2016 2017 i mean the fact that you mentioned the word

00:55:30.440 normies right like it's a word i haven't heard for a while but like it was everywhere with that

00:55:33.880 angela nagle book like in 2016 17 right like jack prosopiak i hadn't thought about it since like

00:55:39.180 2017 like i'm surprised milo hasn't come out of the woodwork yet right like didn't like didn't

00:55:43.860 Tommy Loren do something about that it's like it was like a total like it was a total reunion of

00:55:49.760 like the this kind of bullshit from like 2016-17 it has conduits it has ways of persisting and one

00:55:58.980 place I do think it persists very strongly is TikTok is YouTube we're at Klayman now sort of 0.85

00:56:04.200 going through a bunch of stuff as you know yeah a bunch of videos about the Johnny Depp Amber Heard 0.89

00:56:08.380 trial and like a whole lot of that shit is basically sort of skull measuring to mcgee 0.93

00:56:14.440 right like where it's like you know like you can see her eyes are going there or she's looking 0.94

00:56:19.560 like that right like and it's this like physiognomy that like you know sort of was briefly popular

00:56:24.760 among the all right and then kind of people just kind of forgot about but like these things have

00:56:29.720 a nasty way of persisting in our online spaces right especially as you say because of these

00:56:35.300 perverse incentives for the media ecosystem, right?

00:56:37.600 That like, if it's not uterine enough for TikTok, you can put it on your YouTube channel

00:56:41.180 or whatever and monetize it there.

00:56:42.680 And like, it's just waiting there for the under-informed, the bored or the terminally

00:56:48.580 adolescent to discover it and turn it into their life philosophy.

00:56:52.860 Yeah, I think, I think it might be one, I mean, this might be a optimistic note to end

00:56:58.500 on is that I think one reason that the right might be so weird is that, you know, they

00:57:04.160 do rely on as you said it's like an internally consistent but kind of hermetically sealed

00:57:10.160 like logical worldview yeah that needs to be continually reanimated with these like minor

00:57:18.100 outrage cycles right and that this is getting weirder and more alienating and also kind of

00:57:24.580 repetitive at the same time i think it indicates that they're kind of running out of juice repetitive

00:57:28.340 and arcane right like we have not spoken since you know meatball ron himself uh suspended his

00:57:34.660 presidential campaign uh rip meatball ron but ron de santis's campaign like had a terminal case of

00:57:40.500 being too online right like he was always name checking whatever he saw on x whatever he saw on

00:57:46.240 in the conservative echo chamber and like it turns out even republican primary voters right

00:57:52.120 who you know no offense are probably you know among the freakier people in this country right 0.98

00:57:57.380 like we're like what the fuck are you talking about like this feels like work like i need to 0.93

00:58:02.380 like how much do i need to know in order to understand what this is a reference to right 0.96

00:58:06.800 he'll have these like jokes where it's like i'd like end up going down like 20 minute google and

00:58:11.720 wikipedia like holes and be like i think this is what this is about right like and like it would

00:58:17.740 be these like grievances from like 2016 where like like an ad featured a like trans person in the 0.98

00:58:24.100 background or whatever and like it's just you know you're like what the fuck like who has time 0.97

00:58:29.240 for all this shit and like i think people just like bounce off of it because they're like i mean 0.98

00:58:33.040 i i feel vaguely mad about what you're telling me but i don't understand what what i'm actually 0.97

00:58:37.020 yelling about yeah i think this brings us nicely maybe to a place to land which is what i was

00:58:42.360 saying earlier that the right wing is kind of stealing the left's bit this is a point that um

00:58:47.740 right john gans made in his newsletter the writer john gans really i mean a smart guy uh and he was

00:58:53.540 like listen esoteric decoding of mass culture that other people sort of like anodynely accept

00:59:01.460 and the finding of like obscure nefarious meanings in it he's like no no that's our thing

00:59:07.320 that's a left-wing pursuit um and this is why i'm like you know i did put on my tinfoil hat with you

00:59:13.960 a little bit talking about you know dominance versus like almost separatist masculinities

00:59:19.600 here but yeah this is stuff that most people are just kind of enjoying most people are like well

00:59:26.580 you know taylor swift is pretty and her songs are catchy and travis kelsey runs fast and he seems

00:59:33.580 to like her and isn't that lovely and you know what you get sometimes you got to be normal um

00:59:39.740 so i want to congratulate uh anybody who made it to the end of this episode you are definitely the

00:59:44.920 most normal of them all, our beloved listeners. The one man who listens to this podcast. Thank

00:59:51.320 you so much. And Adrian, thank you for coming along on this journey with me.

00:59:55.320 Thank you so much. In Bed with the Right, we'd like to thank the Michelle R. Clayman Institute

00:59:58.940 for Gender Research for generous support. Jennifer Portillo for setting up our studio.

01:00:03.600 Our theme music is by Katie Lau. Our producer is Megan Kalthus.

In Bed With The Right - February 13, 2024

Episode 15： Taylor Swift

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