\n<\/p>\n
Taylor Swift, you may have noticed, is everywhere: packing arenas on the Eras tour<\/a>; filling theaters with her concert film<\/a>; popping onto your TV screen<\/a> from a luxury suite at Kansas City Chiefs games, cheering on her boyfriend, Travis Kelce.<\/p>\n And now she\u2019s living rent-free in Fox News hosts\u2019 heads.<\/p>\n After reports that the Biden re-election campaign was angling for an endorsement<\/a> from the superstar (who backed President Biden in 2020), commentators<\/a> on the network strapped on their culture-war helmets. \u201cDon\u2019t get involved in politics!\u201d Jeanine Pirro urged her. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to see you there!\u201d Another commentator, Charly Arnolt, pleaded, \u201cPlease don\u2019t believe everything Taylor Swift says.\u201d Sean Hannity addressed the issue <\/span>in prime time: \u201cMaybe she wants to think twice.\u201d<\/p>\n Fox\u2019s anxiety attack follows months in which MAGA opinionators have spun baroque conspiracy theories<\/a> about the power couple: that Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce\u2019s romance was staged; that the N.F.L. was rigging the Super Bowl for the Chiefs; and that it was all an unholy plot to supercharge an eventual Biden endorsement. The Fox host Jesse Watters even flirted with the speculation, floating the idea that Swift\u2019s success was a psyop<\/a> masterminded by the Defense Department.<\/p>\n In retrospect, \u201cPaul is dead\u201d<\/a> lacked imagination.<\/p>\n Of course, people are entitled to their opinions on celebrity political speech or the possible existence of a secret Pentagon diva lab. But if Fox News\u2019s hosts truly believe that it\u2019s irresponsible and dangerous to invite celebrities to weigh in on politics, they might want to turn their attention to \u2026 Fox News.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Over the years, Fox has invited Gene Simmons<\/a>, the bassist of Kiss, to talk about the handling of an Ebola outbreak. It had the fashion model Fabio<\/a> on to blame crime in California on liberalism. It gave us Kid Rock on cancel culture<\/a>. Last year, the actor Jim Caviezel declared<\/a> Donald J. Trump \u201cthe new Moses\u201d on \u201cFox & Friends.\u201d<\/p>\n And let\u2019s not forget that Fox was instrumental in the entry into politics of a certain TV celebrity, whom you might know better as the candidate Mr. Biden will likely be running against.<\/p>\n In March 2011, the network announced a new weekly segment on \u201cFox & Friends\u201d: \u201cMondays With Trump.\u201d Every week, the host of NBC\u2019s \u201cCelebrity Apprentice,\u201d a frequent network guest for years, would deplore Obama Administration policies and fill in the hosts on why he\u2019d fired the likes of Gary Busey and LaToya Jackson on that week\u2019s episode.<\/p>\n Through his birtherism<\/a> crusade, through his tweeting<\/a> that Mr. Obama\u2019s 2012 victory over Mitt Romney was \u201ca total sham and a travesty,\u201d Mr. Trump\u2019s attachment with Fox and its audience only grew deeper.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Trump did not appeal to the Fox viewership in spite of his celebrity; he appealed, at least in part, because of his celebrity. For years, they had heard liberal speeches at the Oscars; they had been told, not least by Fox, that Hollywood celebrities disdained their beliefs. Now, here was a genuine prime-time network celebrity who spoke their language and was on their side.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s not simply that Fox has welcomed celebrities that aligned with its politics. (Its hosts also tend to speak well of Ronald Reagan, who knew his way around a movie set.) It has done as much as any force to celebritize conservative politics and infuse them with entertainment values.<\/p>\n Fox, from its earliest days under the talk-show producer turned political operative Roger Ailes, cultivated a sense of razzle-dazzle. A Fox executive once described \u201cFox & Friends\u201d as \u201can entertainment show that does some news\u201d; Glenn Beck, its star of the early Obama era, called his show \u201cthe fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.\u201d<\/p>\n More broadly, Fox has long embraced a kind of pop-politics cultural warfare that made a martyr of Roseanne Barr<\/a> and a demon of Kathy Griffin<\/a>, and that encouraged its viewers to question whether their beer was too liberal. Like the right-wing publisher Andrew Breitbart (adapting an idea from the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci), it believed that politics is downstream from culture.<\/p>\n But it has been selective about which celebrities should stay in their lane, and which get to merge. After LeBron James criticized then-President Trump in a 2018 interview, Fox\u2019s Laura Ingraham told him to \u201cshut up and dribble.\u201d<\/a> The endorsements of Mr. Trump by the former quarterback Brett Favre<\/a> and the golf champion Jack Nicklaus<\/a>, for some reason, were unobjectionable.<\/p>\n Much of the criticism of Ms. Swift, meanwhile, seems tinged with condescension, suggesting that a 33-year-old female pop star is a gullible na\u00eff, ripe for bamboozling by political operators. \u201cDoes Taylor realize the guy that they want her to endorse is a kind of stumbling, bumbling mess?\u201d asked Mr. Hannity, raising a concern he has not voiced when interviewing, say, the right-wing rocker Ted Nugent<\/a> (\u201cnever shy about sharing his opinions!\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Do Fox\u2019s conservatives really have anything to worry about? There\u2019s a good argument that celebrity political endorsements are rarely meaningful. Academic researchers have postulated<\/a> that Oprah\u2019s blessing was good for a million Obama votes in 2008; then again, in 2018 Ms. Swift endorsed<\/a> a Democrat in a Tennessee Senate race who lost handily<\/a>. Since 2020, it\u2019s true that her fame level has risen from \u201cstar\u201d to \u201cmolten cosmic supercluster from which galaxies are born.\u201d Still, it\u2019s only a guess that her clout might translate into votes.<\/p>\n Another celebrity principle may apply here, however: The Streisand Effect<\/a>. Just as Barbra Streisand\u2019s attempt to suppress photos of her home only drew more attention to them, Fox\u2019s opposition could magnify any Swift endorsement. It could even create blowback if it manages to turn the perception of the story into the G.O.P. vs. the Swifties, conservative scolds against a wildly popular millennial woman, Red America vs. \u201cRed (Taylor\u2019s Version)\u201d<\/a> America.<\/p>\n But bashing celebrities, warring over culture and playing into the fear of cultural marginalization may be too deeply wired into Fox\u2019s sensibility for the network to do otherwise. As Ms. Swift might sing: Look what they made themselves do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n