"Fans gathered as close as they could to the arena in the 37C heat, hoping for a glimpse of the invitees."

The London Times reports the news/"news": Taylor Swift got married, in "Taylor Swift gets married to Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden/The bride chose Christian Louboutin shoes and jewellery from Cartier and both wore Dior for the ceremony officiated by the comedy actor Adam Sandler."

I see that these days, "Any person eighteen years old and over can solemnize a Marriage Ceremony in New York State AFTER obtaining a One-Day Marriage Officiant License from the Office of the City Clerk."

So you too can have a comedian officiate at your wedding.

Well, by all means, cater to their sensitive feelings.

"N.Y.U. Students Object to Speaker Who Calls Their Generation Coddled."

That's a NYT headline, and of course, I suspect it of being intended to provoke the kind of sarcasm I put up there in the post title.

The person the students "object to" is Jonathan Haidt, who's been selected as the speaker at their graduation. As the NYT puts it: "the choice reflects a dismissal of their values at a moment they should cherish." He's getting the platform of their graduation ceremony.

In his breakout book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” he and his co-author, Greg Lukianoff, argued that schools cultivated a mentality of fragility, making personal safety paramount, while de-emphasizing problem-solving skills. Students, they concluded, were insulated from encountering uncomfortable situations and upsetting ideas, leaving them ill-prepared to handle difficulty as adults....

“Many students have reported feelings of disappointment, disgust, unenthusiasm, defeat, and embarrassment,” the letter went on, expressing regret that their celebratory moment had instead “become another instance of being misunderstood.”

The students' letter noted that a recent NYU graduating class got Taylor Swift as their speaker. Another got Sonia Sotomayor. Haidt is a professor at N.Y.U. Maybe the students wanted more of an exciting personality, but certainly not a scold! You can understand the disappointment, disgust, unenthusiasm, defeat, and embarrassment. You're asking your family to come to this big event for you, one where students 4 years ahead of you got Taylor Swift, and you have to tell them it's a business school professor who writes about how Americans are too fragile these days. Yeah, I see how "embarrassment" got on that list of feelings. 

"Knowing Trump responds best to visual stimuli, [Charlie] Kirk had coached [TikTok] to spin up four pages of infographics, 'Trump on TikTok'..."

"... showing his campaign's tens of billions of views on the now-threatened app. A chart... on the first page jumped out at Trump, who had backed a TikTok ban in his first term. 'I'm more popular than Taylor Swift,' he crowed. Many in Trumpworld heard he quickly called Barron, his youngest son, to savor the stat...."

From "How Trump saved TikTok: Backstory of a 2-year campaign" (Axios).

"Quite apart from this post marking the couple’s coming out on social media, it has broader cultural significance on two counts."

Writes Polly Vernon in "Trudeau's going all Travis" (London Times)(about this Katy Perry Instagram post). The 2 counts:

1. "[I]t’s a flagrant challenge to Vogue magazine’s recent diktat regarding how embarrassing it is to have a boyfriend nowadays; a viral article that made specific reference to how 'no one' is doing precisely the thing Katy Perry, in fact, just did, ie sharing images of their boyfriend on social media."

2. "[T]he 'Travis Kelce-fication™" of romantic male partners. Travis Kelce... All photographic evidence suggests Kelce is even now incapable of so much as glancing at [Taylor] Swift without his entire facial expression melting into a mush of captivated swoony wonder that she could be interested in him… I would be so bold as to suggest that early signs are Trudeau has been, or is in the process of being, Travis Kelce-ficated by Perry...."

From the linked Vogue article:

"When Cher went off the air on TV and started doing movies, I said, 'Oh God, I don't have to do anything like that again.'"

"And then all of a sudden, it all started coming back, because the children were looking on the internet and seeing pictures of people dressed like that, and all of us, we started getting phone calls. So I'm like, okay!... I love it."

Said Bob Mackie, quoted in "Bob Mackie on Taylor Swift, the Spectacle of the Showgirl, and Causing a Rhinestone Crisis/The legendary costumer tells Vanity Fair about the surprise of seeing his archival pieces on the cover of Swift’s newest album, and why showgirls are forever" (Vanity Fair).

"Overly online social media critics of Swift apparently instantaneously decided the new album is rife with racism and homophobia, as well as..."

"... secret messages of support for the patriarchy, eugenics, and Donald Trump. Forensic 'investigations' have uncovered 'dog-whistles,' but only woke detectives themselves are capable of hearing them. Either Swift is a covert alt-right influencer, or her young critics have been taught to see oppression everywhere, including where it quite clearly is not...."

Writes Rikki Schlott, in "Is Taylor Swift’s album really full of white supremacy and homophobia, or has everyone lost their minds?" (NY Post).

I don't really care, but I still felt engaged enough to listen to one of the songs, and isn't that the point? But how dumb it is to listen to songs and occupy your mind with the question whether the artist might be right wing. I'll just say what I said back in 2005: "To be a great artist is inherently right wing."

The song I listened to from the new album was "Cancelled!," which some listeners say is MAGA propaganda. Lyrics here, at Genius. Key words: "I like my friends cancelled.... At least you know exactly who your friends are/They're the ones with matching scars." Cancelled people make better friends. That could be a right-wing or a left-wing idea... at least if you get your left-wing ideas from half a century ago.

Decorating your front lawn for Halloween in an election year.

I laughed but somebody else might be truly horrified (and by what, exactly?):

"Vote preferences haven't moved meaningfully.... Each is within a percentage point of its pre-debate level in ABC/Ipsos polling."

I'm reading "Harris seen as debate winner while maintaining slight lead over Trump: POLL/Taylor Swift's endorsement of Harris shows little impact, the poll found" (ABC News).

ADDED: ABC has Harris at 51% and Trump at 47%. In its previous poll, at the end of August, Harris had 50% and Trump had 46%. They remained exactly the same distance apart in percentage points — 4. That's less obvious when you say "Each is within a percentage point of its pre-debate level."

"A campaign has been constructed around a mood, rather than the other way around. The mood is Obamacore..."

"... the outburst of brightness and positivity that took over pop culture upon the election of our first Black president in 2008, and that continued until the wheels fell off eight years later. This was the age of Glee, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and Hamilton, seemingly disparate art born out of the same impulse: the feeling of a new dawn, a generational shift, a national redemption.... ... Obamacore positioned itself as sensitive, non-threatening, and relatable. It was Aziz Ansari writing a book on modern dating alongside a Berkeley-trained sociologist, porn star James Deen talking about bacon, Louis C.K. playing a cop on Parks and Recreation.... The fandom that had sprung up around Obama’s presidential campaign expanded to embrace New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and later, Hillary Clinton. For a moment, bodies as hidebound as the Supreme Court and the papacy looked as if they might be rehabbed into vehicles for social justice.... This summer’s sudden reappearance of hope and positivity has spurred split reactions. Do you embrace your inner cringe, or try to tamp it down?... The optimistic case is that, against all odds, we seem to have heeded the lessons of Obamacore. Generation Z is willingly climbing the coconut tree."

Writes Nate Jones, in "That Feeling You Recognize? Obamacore. The 2008 election sparked a surge of positivity across pop culture. Now hindsight (and cringe) is setting in" (NY Magazine).

See also "100 Pieces of Pop Culture That Defined Obamacore/You know them when you see them — whether they were genius or, well, not," by Nate Jones (in NY Magazine). Just to select one:

What did Trump do wrong lately that's getting the most attention right now on X?

He said that Taylor Swift is beautiful — and he repeated it too many times and with a weird intensity:

Trump gets weird talking about Taylor Swift and how beautiful he thinks she is.

But this is way less weird and creepy than when he talks about his own daughter.

At least he doesn’t say he wants to fuck Taylor Swift.

pic.twitter.com/PRp1A9lgaL

— Peter Henlein (@SwissWatchGuy) June 27, 2024

Collection of commentary, here, at X.

The pause before the last "beautiful" is — essence of creepiness? — Woody-Allen-like.

American/British royalty. Ours is better, right?

Happy Bday M8! London shows are off to a splendid start 🇬🇧🇺🇸🤝 @KensingtonRoyal pic.twitter.com/VlD6V0PiEL

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) June 22, 2024

"I think she’s beautiful — very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually — unusually beautiful!"

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Donald Trump Calls Taylor Swift ‘Unusually Beautiful’ but ‘Liberal’ in New ‘Apprentice’ Book" (Variety).

Also from the book, he says, "She is liberal, or is that just an act? She’s legitimately liberal? It’s not an act? It surprises me that a country star can be successful being liberal." By that time, Swift had transitioned to being a pop star. With pop stars, it would be surprising if they can be successful without being liberal... or just acting liberal. 

"Lola DeAscentiis, a sophomore, zeroed in on the song 'But Daddy I Love Him,' comparing it to the Sylvia Plath poem 'Daddy.'"

"She plans to explore the link in her final paper. 'I hesitate to say that the song was anywhere near the genius of Sylvia Plath — no offense to Taylor Swift — but I can definitely see some similarities in the themes, like sadness, depression and mental health,' Ms. DeAscentiis, 20, said.... 'The way that Taylor overlays her relationship with the significant other that she’s talking about in the song with the relationship that she has with her father — I think that was very Plath,' she added."

I'm reading the NYT article "Harvard’s Taylor Swift Scholars Have Thoughts on 'Tortured Poets'/The students taking Harvard University’s class on the singer are studying up. Their final papers are due at the end of the month."

In the Harvard undergrad course called "Taylor Swift and Her World" student compare Taylor  Swift song lyrics to the work of poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

The NYT article "Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA Meltdown" is a tad disingenuous.

The politics writer, Jonathan Weisman, informs us that Taylor Swift "is driving the movement behind Donald Trump bonkers" and then tries to explain why.

Just 3 days ago, I was blogging about a NYT article that went on and on about how fervently Biden supporters hoped for a Taylor Swift endorsement. I thought it was embarrassing and pathetic that the Biden people were resorting to stirring up hope for their failing candidate by touting the prospect of a pop star endorsement.

But now, here's an article about how Trump supporters are getting out in front of the potential endorsement with an effort that seems fine-tuned to serve either of 2 entirely rational goals: 1. Persuade Taylor Swift to withhold her endorsement, or 2. Minimize the value of any endorsement.

If the endorsement is as valuable as the NYT portrayed it in the article on January 29th — "Inside Biden’s Anti-Trump Battle Plan (and Where Taylor Swift Fits In)" — then there's nothing "bonkers" about the Trump preemptive strike.

I'd be inclined to advise Swift to stay out of politics. I'd quote Bob Dylan: "I think politics is an instrument of the Devil. Just that clear. I think politics is what kills; it doesn’t bring anything alive. Politics is corrupt; I mean, anybody knows that." You're an artist. Preserve your artist power. Don't squander it.

But there must be those much closer to her who are saying that another Trump presidency will destroy the world, and she could, perhaps, simply by saying one sentence, push Biden to victory. How can you not say that one sentence? How can you hold yourself aloof when you have the power to save us and all the world is crying out for you to say that one line?!

"After months of languid buildup in which he held only a single public campaign event, Mr. Biden has thrown a series of rallies across battleground states, warning that democracy itself is at stake in 2024."

"He sent two of his most trusted White House operatives to take the helm of his re-election campaign in Wilmington, Del., after Mr. Trump seized control of the Republican primary race more rapidly than Mr. Biden’s advisers had initially expected. And other Biden aides are drafting wish lists of potential surrogates, including elected officials, social media influencers and the endorsement of their wildest dreams: the global superstar Taylor Swift."

It took 4 New York Times reporters — Reid J. Epstein, Lisa Lerer, Katie Glueck and Katie Rogers — to come up with that — "Inside Biden’s Anti-Trump Battle Plan (and Where Taylor Swift Fits In)/Watching Donald Trump ascend, the newly energized Biden campaign is aiming to make the general election all about him. It’s also hoping for some big endorsements."

What insipid puffery! Biden has not done enough. He never had to justify his death grip on the Democratic nomination, and it's outrageous that the country is left with the Trump-or-Biden choice once again. But 4 New York Times reporters toss out the name Taylor Swift as a sop. Disgusting!

But it's not as though the 4 reporters generated the Taylor Swift plan themselves:

The chatter around Ms. Swift and the potential of reaching her 279 million Instagram followers reached such intensity that the Biden team urged applicants in a job posting for a social media position not to describe their Taylor Swift strategy — the campaign had enough suggestions already.

I guess all the job applicants were saying here's my brilliant idea: Get Taylor Swift to endorse him.

"One image shared by a user on X, formerly Twitter, was viewed 47 million times before the account was suspended on Thursday."

"X suspended several accounts that posted the faked images of Ms. Swift, but the images were shared on other social media platforms and continued to spread despite those companies’ efforts to remove them.... Researchers now fear that deepfakes are becoming a powerful disinformation force, enabling everyday internet users to create nonconsensual nude images or embarrassing portrayals of political candidates."

From "Explicit Deepfake Images of Taylor Swift Elude Safeguards and Swamp Social Media/Fans of the star and lawmakers condemned the images, probably generated by artificial intelligence, after they were shared with millions of social media users" (NYT).

Combining a photo of the head of a famous person with a photo of someone else's body is an old trick. I remember when Jon Stewart did it to the Supreme Court Justices in his book "America (The Book)." From 2004:

"The New York Times is under fire for publishing a piece speculating on Taylor Swift’s sexuality."

"In a 5,000-word opinion piece titled Look What We Made Taylor Swift Do, editor Anna Marks listed references to the LGBTQ+ community overt or perceived in Swift’s music and theorized that the singer was sending coded messages that she was secretly a member of the community.... 'This was the least defensible op-ed I can remember ever seeing the NYT run, made all the worst by the fact that it was written by a staffer, who specializes in these speculations,' Chris Wilman, the chief music critic at Variety, wrote on Twitter. (In 2022, Marks wrote a guest op-ed essay for the Times speculating on Harry Styles’s sexuality, as well.)... Marks argued that since early in her career, Swift has been trying to secretly signal that she identifies as queer.... 'Every time an artist signals queerness and that transmission falls on deaf ears, that signal dies. Recognizing the possibility of queerness – while being conscious of the difference between possibility and certainty – keeps that signal alive.'"

Writes Adrian Horton, in The Guardian.

I clicked over to read the Marks essay. It's really long. Excerpt:

"At one point in his show, he said the real divide in the country was not between rich and poor, Democratic or Republican, but between 'the insane' and 'the insufferable.'"

"The insane include the people who stormed the capitol. He calls them nuts, before adding: 'but fun.' Then he grew more animated describing the insufferable by their 'NPR tote-bag energy' and 'hall monitor' tendencies.... Minhaj... repositions him[self] less as a righteous political comic than a more self-questioning, personal comic, a move he had already begun to make; this scandal may have accelerated the shift...."

Writes Jason Zinoman, in "Was a Scandal the Best Thing to Happen to Hasan Minhaj? At the Beacon, the comic took a different tack after posting a video rebutting a New Yorker article on fabrications in his work. The crowd went wild" (NYT).

Zinoman likes that Minaj isn't "playing the victim," like "seemingly everyone" these days, including Elon Musk and Taylor Swift. And Zinoman, in a sidetrack, praises the filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, and gives a tip about a new movie I might want to see:

They snubbed Oprah and invented a new category to lure in Taylor Swift.

I'm reading "Golden Globes 2024 Nominations: ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ in Front/'Barbie' led the nominations with nine, followed by 'Oppenheimer' with eight. In the television categories, 'Succession' had the most with nine" (NYT).

In one obvious snub, “The Color Purple,” based on the Broadway version of the story and backed by Oprah Winfrey, was left out of the best film, musical or comedy category. In a surprise, voters found a way to invite Taylor Swift to the ceremony, nominating her “Eras Tour” concert film in a new category for blockbusters....

"If you’re skeptical, consider... How many times did you see a photo of her while scrolling on your phone?... Did you double-tap an Instagram post..."

"... or laugh at a tweet, or click on a headline about her? Did you find yourself humming 'Cruel Summer' while waiting in line at the grocery store? Did a friend confess that they watched clips of the Eras Tour night after night on TikTok? Or did you?"

TIME magazine pleads inanely in support of its choice for "Person of the Year."

There are always pop culture stars. You can always select the most outstanding musical performer. But Time has never chosen an artist of any kind as "Person of the Year." Not The Beatles. Not Andy Warhol. Not J.K. Rowling. Not anyone in the arts, popular or lofty.

I'm not counting those who were in groups that were recognized for something other than artistry. Swift herself was included in "The Silence Breakers" in 2017. And Bono was included in "The Good Samaritans" in 2005. I mean, I've been included — in "You" (2006), "The American Woman" (1975), and "The Inheritor" (1966).

The only interesting question in this selection of Taylor Swift is not how many times did I, while scrolling, see her photograph but why did Time pass up all the world leaders and political contenders this time around? I'm thinking they're either mediocre or they're extraordinary people whom Time wishes would just disappear.

ADDED: "Never have the young been left more completely to their own devices. No adult can or will tell them what earlier generations were told: this is God, that is Good, this is Art, that is Not Done." — That was Time, in 1966, talking 'bout my generation.