The Super Bowl Trevails of Taylor Swift

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/why-taylor-swift-getting-booed-223652523.html

Since Donald Trump took office, there have been several
times I felt chilled by the rapid increase in misogyny
seeping into our culture, but watching Taylor Swift at
Super Bowl LIX booed by a crowd of thousands on
Sunday night was a new low.

It was just a football game, people might say. Or Swift--
who is famously dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end
Travis Kelce-- got heckled by some rowdy Eagles fans
excited to be at the biggest sporting event of the year.
So? Don't take it so seriously.

But I was there at the game. When Swift's face appeared on
the Jumbotron, an almost instant-- and distinctly male-- dissent
erupted from around me. Swift, of course, was there to
support her boyfriend and was far from the only celebrity in
attendance. In fact, the screen showed a new famous person--
from Paul McCartney to Anne Hathaway to Lady Gaga-- nearly
every time there was a break in the play with virtually no
response from the crowd.

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And that shows you that far from the source of the booing being 'misogyny', it
was something else. As you note, there was no booing for Hathaway or Gaga,
both women last I checked.

No, in addition to the Eagles fans just hating on her because of her
connection to the Chiefs, the reason Swift was booed is because football fans
(mostly men) resent her intrusion into their game. Since she started sleeping
with Kelce, we've been forced to endure endless fangirling by the NFL, which
has forced long, lingering camera shots on Swift dancing with her girlfriends
after every other play at all the Chief's games, along with TMZ-like
commentary and speculation from the announcers about their relationship. This
isn't the fucking BACHELORETTE, it's a football game. We don't care about the
pop tart in the skybox. Focus on the damn game.

That's why she was booed. Not because of 'misogyny', but because we're sick of
this *particular* woman and what she's brought to the Sunday football
experience.

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Swift was different. As soon as she appeared on screen,
the crowd seemed to delight in jeering and heckling her,
and the mood shift was palpable. I watched in real time as
Swift, alongside her friend Ice Spice, took in the response,
her brow furrowing in confusion and then apparent discomfort.

Looking at the camera, she distinctly said, "What is going
on?" And girl, same, because we were all wondering what
the hell was happening.

Perhaps the moment would have felt less visceral if not for
the fact that less than an hour earlier the crowd had exploded--
this time with applause-- to see Trump on that same screen.
As an image of the president, stone-faced and standing in a
salute, was shown to the crowd during Jon Batiste's national
anthem performance, the roar of approval and cheers was
deafening (of course, there were those in the crowd who
booed the president and cheered for Swift as well, but from
my vantage point, it was clear what the overall sentiment was).

To me, the disparate reactions felt like a message. That the
Super Bowl, one of the biggest cultural events in the country,
has been reclaimed by Trump and the type of toxic masculinity
he appears to be the beacon of. And he and his supporters
seem to be living for it.

Just look at the president's response shortly after he left the
game. Not only did he acknowledge that Swift was booed by
the crowd, he delighted in it. As he had many, many times
before (including saying he "hated" Swift after she endorsed
his 2024 rival Kamala Harris), the president weaponized his
massive following against her.

"The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City
Chiefs was Taylor Swift," Trump the president wrote on Truth
Social. "She got BOOED out of the Stadium. MAGA is very
unforgiving!"

It's worth calling out how gross-- and frankly ridiculous-- this
sort of conduct is. And when the Twitter rant becomes real
life, in the form of a stadium full of thousands and thousands
of people, it's chilling. The online bullies of 2016 are now,
in 2025, very real.