“F you, Taylor Swift!” shouted Megyn Kelly, “and f all of the people who want to see these children have body parts chopped off.”
For those not fluent in Republican crazy-speak, Kelly’s meltdown was triggered by Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris the night before, barely one hour after Trump all but face-planted on the debate stage. Kelly was especially triggered by Swift highlighting her appreciation for vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s support of LGBTQ+ rights.
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Other right-wing commentators, like Ben Shapiro, took another approach: making fun of Swifties. “Note: if you vote for a particular candidate because your favorite singer is doing so, please don’t vote. You are too stupid to vote,” wrote Shapiro on X. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, threatened to impregnate her.
I half agree with Shapiro. It is stupid to vote for someone because a celebrity or anyone else famous that you like endorses someone.
However, people do, so it does indeed get votes.
I disagree. Celebrities are paid for movies, music, tv, ads, etc, and at any time, they can say they only did that one thing you didn’t like because someone paid them money. They take a chance by endorsing a candidate because they could potentially lose lots of money, jobs, friends, or more. The type of people that do vote for candidates based on endorsements are also the type of people that don’t generally follow politics, but when you talk to them, you’ll find they are for the same issues as the candidate.
That endorsement could be the one that made some 18-21 year old go and look up the endorsed candidate. When they look up the candidate, they may not be really interested, but then they may find something that the candidate supports, and that makes them want to vote. They never would have voted if they didn’t find that information, and they wouldn’t have looked up the information without the endorsement.
Have you ever bought something that you saw an influencer endorse on social media? Have you ever gone to a new place because someone else recommended it? Have you ever found a new friend because one of your friends was friends with them? What about dropping thousands of dollars into a stock because someone said you should? All of these are just other forms of endorsements from people you pay attention and listen to. Maybe someone recommended a show on Netflix that you passed on previously but decided to watch because of the endorsement, and you really loved it?
Don’t forget, Shapiro didn’t just say you shouldn’t base your vote off of an endorsement. He said that people who do should have their rights stripped. What does that mean? Does he want your Google searches to be checked to see when you started looking things up? He also wants to raise the voting age to 21. He wants voters to be tested to even qualify.
Look at what conservatives scream about during elections. Voters where their signature is slightly different, when their name matches a dead person, when purged voters try to vote because they haven’t voted in awhile, illegals voting in mass, voting by mail, voting at the wrong location, etc. They’re trying to stop people who most likely won’t vote for them. They push wild conspiracies, but if you believe their conspiracies, they think you are good to vote. Problems exist on both sides, then again, if two cars caught fire in opposite sides of the same city on the same day and one of them was a Tesla, which one would be all over the news the next day?
The moral here is never let anyone tell you that your inspiration is wrong. Ordinary individuals are inspired to do extraordinary things every day, and all it takes is that spark of inspiration. Now, go out and do something cool or something!
I would agree if she were a vapid pop star. But she’s very clearly an intelligent business woman who also has musical talent. There are worse public figures to take cues from.
Unless you are yourself an intelligent billionaire business woman, why are you taking advice on who to vote for from her?
What I’m getting at is people shouldn’t behave like sheep. Think for yourself and make your own voting decisions instead of listening to other people’s decisions.
A solid chunk of the population always behaves like sheep, even with the opportunity to educate oneself and form one’s own opinion, as well as people warning them not to behave like sheep. I certainly don’t know how to stop this from happening on a mass scale. So, when some chunk of the population takes a cue from a famous person, if that person has intentions that seem benevolent and point people towards what I consider to be a wise choice, I can at least be glad about that.
Yeah, I’m not mad about it in this instance because it lines with my vote, but what about when it doesn’t?
It’s bad! I just don’t know what to do about it
At scale everyone behaves like sheep, but these are all independently thinking beings making their own decisions.
Your opinions don’t really matter as, like all sheep, they are ultimately irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
This sounds a lot like you’re telling people that the way to not be a sheep is to only listen to people who are just like you.
And yeah you have to make your own decision and not just be told that to do. However, I’d also throw out there that it is an extremely natural thing for us as social creatures to consider the breadth of outside opinions available to us when making a decision.
We model good decisions based on what people we respect tell us all the time. Maybe Taylor Swift isn’t the ideal role model, but she’s certainly not the worst one I can think of.
Politics is not something most normal people think a lot about or have coherent views about. I don’t think it’s all that crazy to think that an important role model could work as a heuristic for figuring out what their own values are.
It’s less stupud to listen to Taylor Swift than it is to Ben Shapiro.
Choose who you listen to wisely. And no, her being a singer has little influence on that decision.
Ben Shapiro has zero qualifications to say anything