It never ceases to amaze me what the New York Times will devote thousands of words to.
But even the criminally verbose Gray Lady shocked everybody last week when it published an out-of-its-mind 4,764-word op-ed analyzing why Taylor Swift might be a lesbian or bisexual.
Yes, the equivalent of 13 pages of a novel was spent on a yucky wild goose chase to out a famous woman who has a famous boyfriend.
No, we’re not back in homophobic 1985. It’s still supposedly enlightened 2024!
If you read that highfalutin crock in the morning paper, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were still asleep — it was that bonkers.
As I cross-country skied through the endless article, many questions popped up.
How did a creepy, irresponsibly speculative analysis of years of pop lyrics, flamboyant costumes and out-of-context interview quotes wind up in a publication that once ran a lofty ad campaign proclaiming, “Truth. It’s more important now than ever.”?
How was the following sentence allowed to run in the New York Times opinion section? “What if the ‘Lover Era’ was merely Ms. Swift’s attempt to douse her work — and herself — in rainbows, as so many baby queers feel compelled to do as they come out to the world?”
Why are readers paying for the Times when they can get this “Is she? Isn’t she?” garbage on TikTok for free?
And most pressingly: Why is it not enough for Swift to be one of the best-selling music artists of all time, an unrivaled businesswoman in the entertainment industry and an unflinching LGBTQ ally? Why must she be wedged into some opinion writer’s head-in-the-clouds narrative that dreams Swift would come out and be a “hero” to queer people? What’s so wrong about her being a straight white woman who makes great music?
Why must Taylor Swift be everything for everybody?
Not only do you need a machete to hack your way through this overgrown opus — writer Anna Marks’ piece is offensive and socially backward for a newspaper that fancies itself the Vatican City of progressive mores.
Start with the headline: “Look What We Made Taylor Do.” Sure, it references Swift’s hit “Look What You Made Me Do,” but it also seems to recklessly conclude that the 34-year-old singer is “queer” even as she denies it.
Says the Times: It’s society’s fault for not letting Taylor be the person we have unilaterally decided she is!
Well, according to Swift, she’s not a member of the LGBTQIA community at all, although she supports them personally and artistically.
A Swift source told CNN, “There seems to be no boundary some journalists won’t cross when writing about Taylor, regardless of how invasive, untrue, and inappropriate it is — all under the protective veil of an ‘opinion piece.’”
Too right.
By the way, Lady Gaga is also a gay ally and wrote and performed an LGBTQ anthem called “Born This Way,” but she is not yet the subject of a ridiculous, 4,764-word Twitter thread about her private life in the New York Times.
A woman’s insistence is, apparently, not enough for the crackerjack investigators over on 40th Street.
As the op-ed jabbers on, it becomes weirder and weirder, like a thriller movie scene that takes us into a conspiracy theorist’s basement with walls plastered in a celebrity’s photos and scribbled-on newspaper clippings.
Marks mentions instances of “dropped hairpin” imagery in Swift’s music videos and concerts, saying that is a coded message for queer identity: “They suggest to queer people that she is one of us.”
OK. Elsa lets her hair down during “Let It Go” in “Frozen.” Is Elsa also a lesbian who befriends a talking snowman?
The writer adds such incontrovertible bombshells as that the pop star once dyed her locks the colors of the bisexual pride flag and that she often wears rainbow outfits. Call the Pulitzer committee.
The whole kooky thing is written in the tone of somebody trying to refute the John F. Kennedy assassination “single bullet theory” in the corner of a bar at 3 p.m.
And yet, as the Times so often does, the writer pretends that the piece is much more important and intellectual than trashy whispers in a supermarket gossip rag.
This part had me in stitches.
“Feverish discussions of her escapades with the latest yassified London Boy or mustachioed Mr. Americana fuel the tabloid press — and, embarrassingly, much of traditional media — that courts fan engagement by relentlessly, unquestioningly chronicling Ms. Swift’s love life.”
Um, what do you call this 4,764-WORD dissection of her sexuality? A doctoral thesis? Please.
Most bothersome is that op-eds like these don’t arrive in a publication via the stork. They are pitched to an editor, get approved, take a long time to write (Marks’ last piece for the Times ran in September) and undergo rigorous editing. There are many steps before you actually read it.
So, even if Marks’ article is not the official editorial stance of the Times, giving her the go-ahead to try and out a celebrity as gay in the guise of “the conversation” is damning enough.
In 2023, Swift’s Eras Tour grossed more than $1 billion in ticket sales. The movie of that concert did an additional $250 million at the worldwide box office — a record for a film of a live music performance — and Time magazine rightly named her their Person of the Year.
Remarkable achievements, all.
But over at the New York Times, who cares? They just wish she was gay.