Amid all of the online squabbling over whether the relationship between singer Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is getting too much attention from the media and from NFL broadcasters, I held my tongue.
Whenever I felt the need to speak up or to voice an opinion on the matter, I looked at the silicone wristband I wear to remind me of whose opinion really matters.
No, my wristband doesn’t say WWJD, as it does for most Christians. I look to a higher power. WWLCD: What would Liz Cheney do?
And finally, at long last, the oracle of Wyoming has spoken. Her words? “Taylor Swift is a national treasure.”
For those of you who are unaware: Conservatives and/or those who want to watch a football game without constant cutaway shots to a cheering pop star in a luxury box during Chiefs games have been critical of the attention lavished on the liberal Swift and her current future ex-boyfriend, Kelce.
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This has even led to what The Hill described as “conspiracy theories” among online conservatives and “speculation that the NFL is fixing games so that Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, can go to the Super Bowl and win it, and endorse President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign while at the championship football game.”
Now, this “conspiracy theorizing” seems mostly half-hearted — they’re the same kind of “conspiracy theories” that pop up whenever there’s an upset in sports and the refs make questionable calls. But because Swift is identifiably liberal, it’s not just the usual fans of the Chiefs’ most recent foe — the Baltimore Ravens — claiming the whole thing was fixed.
Instead, people such as former Republican presidential candidate and conservative activist Vivek Ramaswamy are getting in on the action:
I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) January 29, 2024
Is Liz Cheney’s political career over?
Now, this is generally the kind of piffle you hear on social media after every big game, just in case you aren’t a sports fan and/or don’t know a lot of people who are and post about it incessantly on social media. In fact, there seemed to be liberals moaning more about conservative “conspiracy theories” regarding Swift and the game’s outcome than about actual conservative “conspiracy theories,” although I’ll concede there’s not really a metric to test that hypothesis.
But I held my tongue. Remember, WWLCD?
The former Wyoming congresswoman didn’t disappoint, finally clearing the air for me — and for all Americans who treasures the unvarnished truth — on Wednesday:
Taylor Swift is a national treasure.
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) January 31, 2024
Now, if you’re a Taylor Swift fan or someone who came to follow politics after January of 2023, you might be saying, “Wait, who the heck is this random woman calling TayTay ‘a national treasure?’”
Let me educate you, fellow Americans.
Way back in 2021, then-Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney was head of the Republican House Conference. But she also saw a higher calling ahead of her: as a career anti-Trumper. So she became one of the two token Republicans on the Democrats’ Jan. 6 kangaroo committee and as the semi-official GOP face of “Orange Man Bad” media hits.
This brave profile in courage was backed by the people who elected her in Wyoming, who, well, actually, they didn’t like the fact that their one member of the House of Representatives was singularly focused on her pursuit of the former president and/or publicity, leading to a nearly 40-percentage-point loss in her 2022 Republican House primary, a pitiful performance for an incumbent:
Liz Cheney is a national disgrace. pic.twitter.com/Zy5v1HNBmK
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) January 31, 2024
But Rep. Cheney was humble in defeat. She remembered what was important: Namely, that she was on exactly the same career trajectory as Abraham Lincoln was — and presumably in pursuit of the same ideals.
Liz Cheney: “Abraham Lincoln was defeated in elections for the Senate and House before he won the most important election of all…” pic.twitter.com/3bIFVv2Ch0
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 16, 2022
“The great and original champion of our party, Abraham Lincoln, was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all,” Cheney said in her concession speech. “Lincoln ultimately prevailed, he saved our union, and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history.”
Cheney, alas, doesn’t seem to have launched into contention as a presidential hopeful by her brave stand, and the popularity of her personal brand within conservative circles remains somewhere between the Boeing 737 Max 9 and broccoli-flavored Skittles.
But such bravery. Such honesty. Such integrity. This is the kind of person I needed to tell me that getting annoyed about the cutaways to Taylor Swift every 30 seconds during the AFC Championship Game between Kansas City and Baltimore was just my toxic masculinity talking. You have the definitive opinion you needed, America: “Taylor Swift is a national treasure.”
WWLCD? Root for the Kansas City Chiefs, of course, because they’re backed by “a national treasure.” And then root for Joe Biden in November, because she can’t root for herself.
The Abraham Lincoln of the Great Plains has spoken, and we all had better listen.
