Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
Whether they loved or hated it, no one could deny this week that pop star Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris for president was important.
Certainly, the new and traditional media outlets wasted no time in, depending on their bent, finding innovative ways to explain away the announcement or celebrate it like they’d won the lottery, found the fountain of youth, and picked up the biggest prize in the claw game all at the same time.
Slate.com captured the spirit of the moment, at least for the left, with a headline that read “Sweet Relief: She did it, you guys. She finally did it.”
Granted, Slate’s headline was tongue-in-cheek, and it ran over an article that primarily addressed the fact that the endorsement was long-expected and noteworthy mostly for its timing.
Various outlets spun themselves in circles exploring how Swift’s directive to her followers would impact the election. Newsweek quoted one academic as saying Swift ranked among the most influential people in the world.
“While it was expected, it will still have a big impact as she is currently one of the most powerful people in the world (and far more powerful than she was in 2020),” Georgia Carroll a researcher from Australia, told Newsweek. “Her childless cat lady sign-off will go down in election lore.”
Swift certainly appreciates her standing as her endorsement came in the form of a short-story-length Instagram post and, in a clear indication of how Swift assesses her comedic prose skills, was signed “childless cat lady.” The latter was an apparent dig at Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who famously referred to Democrats as the same.
CNN featured a more pessimistic read than Carroll. Political analyst Harry Enton argued that Swift would steer many people to Harris, but “not as much as some would hope.”
Analytics suggest that some 330,000 people clicked a Vote.gov link Swift shared in her Instagram post, a number that had analysts around the political spectrum asking how many of these people registered. How many were in swing states? How many were American?
Others asked how Republicans should or did respond. Much of the rhetoric on the right was to downplay the importance of the endorsement.
“We admire Taylor Swift’s music,” Vance said during an appearance on Fox News, “but I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music, are fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.”
Yet no one bothered to ask why any of this should matter or, even more unsettling, what it says about us as a people that it matters who any celebrity endorses.
AMERICA’S ADDICTION TO CELEBRITY
Make no mistake, celebrity endorsements of any sort make a difference in elections. But, in the walk of Christians or just mature humans, they shouldn’t.
Swift is a single blemish on a metaphorical face marked by countless celebrity-shaped zits. Republicans have their go-to famous people, too.
Lest we forget, Hulk Hogan was the most popular speaker at the most recent Republican National Convention and Mike Lindell, perhaps better known as the “MyPillow guy”, attracts quite the crowd when he walks through the halls of any CPAC.
Donald Trump grabbed as much attention as a candidate precisely because of his celebrity status. Had he not spent decades in the limelight, it’s unlikely meaningful numbers of conservatives would have flocked to Donald the outspoken real estate broker even if his policies aligned with theirs.
Democrats, of course, have the market well-cornered on celebrity endorsers. They can trot out two dozen singers for every Lee Greenwood the Republicans can muster.
But, again, the question isn’t who endorses which candidate, it’s why do Americans show any fealty to the political whims of people they see on various flickering screens?
The Bible contains numerous versions of the answer, and it’s unambiguous. We are guilty of idol worship. Crossway offers 10 of many verses about the danger of making gods of anything or anyone who isn’t God.
The Israelites of the Old Testament had their high places. Americans have their influencers.
God’s chosen people were all too happy to offer sacrifices to dumb idols who neither breathed nor thought. Americans routinely give millions upon millions of dollars to idols who breathe and think but who are often still dumb.
Imagine the work that any ministry could do if even just Christians gave as much money to God’s missional work as they do the latest influencer-backed hokum. Imagine the social needs that could be met if solving drug, hunger, housing, or debt crises ranked as high on the American citizen’s radar as who will belt out profanity-laced lyrics during the next Super Bowl halftime show.
Far better, the modern American says, that we fund the exorbitant adventures of people whose lives and rhetoric are in direct opposition to the basic moral standards upon which our nation was founded.
And when one of these modern, thinking, breathing false idols deigns to tell us to vote one way or the other, far better that we rush to appease them. After all, we fear an army of Swifties and their online hectoring than we do the wrath of a just God.