to involve the Olympics, presidential politics, and Taylor Swift.

Today's guest unpacks the recent convergence of those cultural phenomena and what they portend for American politics.

She's Joanna Weiss, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) Hello, and welcome to a "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Joanna Weiss, a Boston-based writer and editor.

She's also a contributing writer for Politico Magazine.

She's covered culture and politics for the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, and others, and is contributing to an album-by-album coffee table book about Taylor Swift, due out in 2025.

Joanna, it's so great to see you again.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- Well, I mentioned this to you when we chatted yesterday, but when I heard that Taylor Swift had endorsed Kamala Harris, and then former President Trump had responded by saying, "I hate Taylor Swift," I immediately thought of you.

(everyone laughing) - I think I'm honored.

- We had you on last year to talk about the phenomena that you had observed where there were some similarities you thought in the culture around Taylor Swift and the culture around Donald Trump.

Just to recap that very briefly, what were those similarities that you saw in 2023?

- Yeah, my theory at the time was that support for Donald Trump went a little bit beyond the standard political support and the left-right political support we think about, and had kind of crossed over into the realm of fandom.

There were just a lot of elements, and when you talk to people, professors, who study the culture of fandom, you could see a lot of similarities and parallels between the way people latch onto celebrities and public figures and develop a relationship not only with the public figure, but with other fans.

You think about the Trump rallies and the communities that have been formed around Trump support and the tokens and emblems of Trump support like the MAGA hat.

And you can sort of see a parallel between that and the way, say, Taylor Swift fans put on their friendship bracelets and dress up in different eras and come together as a community to celebrate this public figure who they love.

- So now here we are in 2024 and we have this endorsement and we have this reaction by the former president.

Are these two cultural phenomena, is the fact that they're in conflict, what does that tell you?

- Yeah, it tells you for one thing that the country is divided, and that people are tribal in the way they approach these divisions, that they really think of themselves still as not just individuals thinking about policy, but as members of a community and a tribe who are collectively part of a movement behind a particular person, a particular idea.

And I think that that's where Taylor Swift is trying to assert herself.

She understands the relationship that she has with her fans.

She understands the power she has in that relationship, the platform she has, the ability to influence people, and she has made a very conscious decision to use that power and try to influence the election.

Some of what she says, she hedges a little bit in her statement on Instagram that came out where she announced that she was supporting Kamala Harris.

She said something about, "It's important to vote, I made my choice, you make your choice," but it's very clear where her loyalties lie and what she wants other people to do.

- Can you think of another moment in American politics that is comparable to this?

- Ooh, that's a great question.

I mean, I think that over the years there have been popular and populist figures who have commanded, particularly charismatic figures who have commanded that kind of excitement.

I wouldn't draw an exact parallel, but you think about when Barack Obama first ran in 2008 and the excitement about him was beyond just, "He's a politician and I agree with him."

There was something, he symbolized and represented for a lot of his supporters, something more, something bigger, something historic.

So I think over the course of history, you can probably point to politicians, celebrities, public figures who filled that role, but it doesn't happen in every cycle, and it's not every politician.

- Well, and I think too about just sort of the size of a celebrity and a star that Taylor Swift is right now.

And I have a hard time, in 2004 I was working for John Kerry, and I can remember massive rallies in Wisconsin with Bruce Springsteen, a week or two before election day.

But Springsteen, as giant as he is, was not at the peak of his fame the way Taylor Swift is at this moment.

And so I really struggle to think of any sort of analog that gives us any insight about what kind of impact she might actually have on the election.

Do you have a sense?

- I mean she's huge, you're right, this year, and I think that's part of why her endorsement has brought so much attention, because you're right, celebrities have endorsed politicians for a very long time and they still do.

Kamala Harris just had a big fundraiser with a ton of Hollywood people, and it doesn't move the needle or get people excited the way it has around Taylor Swift.

And Taylor Swift herself has inched into politics.

I mean, she started really after the 2016 election.

She had really held everything close to the vest before that.

And had, I think, because she came through Nashville and the country music scene, she saw what happened to the Dixie Chicks, if you remember, during the time of the Iraq war, they came out, they now call themselves the Chicks, but at the time they were the Dixie Chicks.

They came out very publicly against the Iraq war and they were kind of blackballed.

I mean, they were really ostracized within country music and lost a lot of their support.

So Taylor Swift saw that I think and thought, "Hmm, not a good idea," and probably got advice that way.

2016 changed something for her, and she started to dip into politics.

She started to make endorsements in Tennessee races.

She did come out in 2020 and say that she endorsed Joe Biden or she was voting for Joe Biden.

But it was really in this last year with her tour, with her incredible records, with the recognition of what a cultural and economic force she has become, it means more this time around.

- So she surely has Donald Trump supporters among her fans.

What impact do you think her endorsement will have with them?

I'm guessing they're not gonna stop liking her music and going to her concerts, but in terms of the politics, what impact do you think that will have on them?

I don't know what size group that would be.

I'm sure it's never been really analyzed, but what impact?

- Yeah, it's gonna be up to those individuals to decide how much it matters to them.

And that's been kind of a constant question when celebrities do get involved in politics is how much do people care, how much are people going to vote based on what a celebrity tells them to do?

I think probably not much.

How much is the celebrity's esteem in their mind going to change because they disagree on something really fundamental?

Yeah, I think Taylor Swift probably made this calculation herself, thought through, "Is this going to cut into my fan base in any major way?"

And decided probably not.

You've gotta think about also her fan base, while it's broad, it's very young and kind of up and coming.

Young voters and particularly young women tend to align with the Democratic party more anyway.

So I think the risk for her felt minimal.

But I think she, probably, as a shrewd and calculating, and I say that with all respect, business woman, I think she thought that through and decided she was gonna come out fine on the other end.

- I think the question that I'm gonna ask you here, it's just an expectation that this is speculation, right?

But when I look at her music, her body of work, I would not classify her her songs as necessarily socially conscious.

Certainly the way songs were in the '60s around the Civil Rights movement, or even in the 1980s with bands like U2 that had a clear social justice message in a lot of their songs.

What do you think the calculation is for her to wade into American politics in this way when that's really not her brand, for lack of a better word?

- Yeah, it hasn't been her lane, you're right.

And it's been, I think, a big part of her popularity is the fact that her songs are really very personal.

They're about her life, people connect to them, her fans see parallels, or they see things in their own lives that they can relate to in her songs.

And that personal nature really has brought her a lot of that success.

She has though, dipped in a little bit more recently when the album "Lover" came out in, I think 2019, the song Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince was widely viewed, and I think she kind of confirmed that in a couple of interviews that part of the, "You can interpret those lyrics in a lot of different ways," but the one strong interpretation is that it was her reaction to the 2016 election and to the way American politics had felt divided and changed her.

Her song, "You Need To Calm Down," if you ever watch the video of that, it's very explicitly in favor of LGBTQ rights.

She's come out as a public figure in support of the Equality Act in Congress, which codified rights and non-discrimination for LGBTQ people.

So she's dipped her toe farther and farther into those waters in the last few years and after 2016.

So I think everything is kind of a progression since then.

- It's fascinating.

You also wrote a piece for political magazine last winter about the political classes' reaction to the Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce relationship.

Travis Kelce all pro tight end for the world champion Kansas City Chiefs.

And you found a mix of doubt about not just the relationship, but doubt about love and truth and a reaction to her politics.

Can you unpack all of that for us a little bit?

- Oh boy, yeah.

(everyone laughing) - [G.] Well, you've got 15 minutes if you need that long.

- If you recall, when Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce started dating and she started showing up kind of flying, she was still on tour at the time, and she'd leave her tour and fly out to wherever the Chiefs were playing and show up in the box and cheer him on, and the country went haywire.

All of a sudden all these people were watching NFL games who hadn't been before.

And I think partly, or maybe largely opportunistically, some folks on the political arena started to try to spin some conspiracy theories around it.

One guy in particular who I recall was Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for president on the Republican side, then wound up endorsing and really getting behind Donald Trump and started spinning these very complicated grand unified conspiracy theories about, "Well, Taylor Swift endorsed Joe Biden, and then the Chiefs are gonna win the Super Bowl, and then she's gonna come out on the field and she's gonna endorse Biden."

This whole complicated, many things would have to line up to make this true, but it got some purchase and I think part of the reason it did was because people enjoy being partisan.

But part of it was that people really questioned the authenticity of that relationship.

And I think they questioned the authenticity of every relationship that's sort of blown up on TV right now.

I mean, look at Ben and Jen, the whole Bennifer thing that just recently... First they were declaring their love, and then quickly it was over.

There are so many examples of that that I think people are inclined to be cynical about these relationships that pump up and are blown up as some kind of great public pedestal thing to admire.

And then once you start getting politics involved with that, people are that much more cynical.

So I think it was an idea that got some purchase because we were inclined to be like, "I don't know about that."

- So in 2023, you moderated a round table for Politico Magazine about whether Democrats have a "man" problem.

Some of the most recent polling shows headwinds for Vice President Harris, particularly among male voters.

Is the problem simply because Harris is a woman or is it something deeper than that?

- Yeah, that was such an interesting conversation that Politico convened and asked me to moderate.

I really enjoyed doing it.

They were actually doing a masculinity issue and really exploring the way masculinity and ideas about masculinity intersect with politics.

And so they convened a group of democratic political operatives to talk about.

And at the time, if you recall, Josh Hawley and some other prominent Republican and conservative figures were out with books about manhood and podcasts about being a man.

And so how did the Democrats fit into that?

And it was a really fascinating conversation about how the Democratic party is thinking about combating that really manly man Americana idea that's being promoted in politics.

And it's a really different calculation for Democrats, and for certain non-white communities, there were a couple of Latino operatives who were talking about how the conversation within the Latino community often is about being a provider and how are you a provider and what's the model?

And how do the democratic policies affect men's ability to provide for their families?

There are conversations about gender and how to approach gender in a way that crosses political boundaries.

So there's this fascinating moment where the Democrats are trying to decide, "Well, do they combat that, "We're tough" with candidates who are sort of equally tough and, "I'm the Navy steel jumping outta the plane and I'm a Democrat," or do you posit forth a different alternative vision of what it means to be a man, what it means to be manly, what it means to be a provider?

- Well, and so, to tie that back into the Taylor Swift phenomena, it would almost seem in that context that a Swift endorsement is not necessarily what candidate Kamala Harris would need if she's trying to shore up support among men.

- I mean, there's so many things that Kamala Harris wants to and needs to do in order to get over the edge in this election.

So yes, one of them is winning over men because I think there's still a gender gap there.

And yeah, whether Taylor Swift is the banner person for that or not is a good question.

She also though wants to shore up her own base and she wants to bring people out to the polls, and I think that's where Taylor Swift's endorsement, if it does help her, could help her.

There's already been signs when Taylor Swift goes out on Instagram and says, "Hey, go to vote.gov and register to vote or consider registering to vote," traffic to vote.gov spikes tremendously.

So if she can bring more people into the political arena and get people engaged in politics and get people out to vote, that's where her value is to Kamala Harris.

- So what else does Kamala Harris have to do to get support?

You mentioned one thing, but there are others obviously.

I mean, what are the tasks awaiting her in the few weeks until the election for her to have victory?

- Oh boy, well she's gotta walk that tight walk that she's been walking right now between defining herself to a public that really is being introduced to her, and been introduced to her over the last couple of months for the first time.

She was somewhat in the shadows when she was vice president for most of the Biden administration.

So she's gotta define herself while at the same time, maybe not defining herself too much so that she alienates people with any positions.

She's also got to, and you can see her doing this, back off from some of the positions that she took when she was running in the primary for the 2020 election that are now seen as, particularly in some of these swing states, a little too progressive, a little too far left for the general electoral electorate.

So she's really got to assert who she is and she's gotta decide also how much she's going to play gender in this election.

I mean, if you recall in 2016, I feel like the elections are blended together in my mind.

In 2016 when Hillary Clinton was running for president, it was very explicit that she was running to be the first woman president.

There was really a lot of talk about history, there was that bumper sticker that said, "I'm with her."

It was really a part of her brand is, "I'm a woman, it's our time."

And you see the Kamala Harris is not waving the banner of I'm a woman all of the time.

I mean, it's apparent to anybody.

It's not like she has to point it out anyway.

But the fact that she's not over emphasizing the historic nature of her candidacy in any way really tells you a little bit about who she's going after and the kind of figure that she's trying to be.

- So one of the most fun pieces that I've read this election season is a piece you wrote that likened the dynamic between Vice President Harris and her running mate, governor Tim Walz to a sitcom from the 1980s.

Explain that for us.

- Well, first of all, that's going back to my era, right?

- My era too, yeah.

- Of the '80s.

- I grew up as Chad of the '80s, gonna give a shout out to my uncle in LA who was a writer for "Mr. Belvedere" and "Charles in Charge" and "The Golden Girls" and some of those classic '80s sitcoms, so I really grew up steeped in it.

It was my time.

It was sort of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz's time as well.

They're a little older than me, but not too, too much.

So I think they were born there too.

And but really what it goes back to is what we were just talking about, about how that ticket, how those two politicians are defining themselves to the electorate.

And when they came out in the summer and introduced themselves, they did some things like some kind of cute videos with a little bit of banter, them sitting in a restaurant trading jabs.

She's teasing him for his choice of what he puts on tacos.

(G. and Jim laughing) They introduced some humor and some personality into the campaign.

I think, in my interpretation, borrowing some of the dynamics that you used to see in those '80s sitcoms where it was this loving couple and they supported each other, but they ripped each other a little bit.

And sometimes the guy was a little goofy and the woman was a little bit more of a straight person.

And but there was also, I think, an aesthetic to those sitcoms.

This was well before "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

And some of those really cynical, kind of hardcore, cringey sitcoms that I think we've become accustomed to in the last 10 or 15 years.

There was just a gentle sweetness and wholesomeness to the '80s sitcoms and this idea that here are all these people who are a little bit different, but they all love each other in the end.

"Here's the model for conflict resolution.

We're all a family."

And I really think that that consciously or unconsciously was something that they were tapping into.

- So you're definitely bringing Jim and me back.

What were some of the shows from the '80s that came to mind or come to mind now when you were writing this?

- Oh my gosh, I went back and watched some of the family ones were the first ones I went to.

I went back to watch some "Family Ties" episodes, some "Growing Pains" episodes.

- Great show.

- I know, I know.

And you kind of understand why they hook people in.

I mean it was a very different joke aesthetic.

It was really that, these were multi-camera sitcoms with studio audiences, so it was like punchline-setup, punchline-setup, and very different again from those single camera, more film-like comedies that we're used to, but the family dynamic that kind of, "We're gonna hug at the end feeling, really brought me back and kind of resonated with me as something.

It was a nice thing we were experiencing back then in some ways.

- Well it's interesting that you sort of view this through the lens of sitcoms, because one of the things that has struck me about certainly the rollout of Harris-Walz as a campaign ticket was the embrace of joy and the embrace of laughter.

And her ability to laugh sort of in public settings in appropriate times is kind of new and certainly is not something that I associate with candidate Trump, or even President Biden for that matter.

It's sort of an exceptional talent.

- Well, and think about where it lands in our culture today.

We are a culture that's very much based on anger.

And I think that social media drives that.

I mean, social media algorithmically is built on people being engaged and what gets people the most engaged and gets their most attention and gets them riled up so they're gonna go back more and more and more, it's anger.

It's not joy, it's anger.

And so we've really been steeped in this culture that just... And honestly, you watch some of the cable news, if you're a TV junkie and you're gonna watch the cable news shows, that's kind of built up in anger and anxiety and tension as well.

Sometimes I watch those panels and my blood pressure, I can feel it going up because that's what's gonna keep me watching.

The producers behind those shows are very wise, they're smart, they know what's gonna keep me watching.

Donald Trump knows very well how to exploit that feeling.

And he's constantly mad, and he's constantly trying to make people mad.

So you're right to sort of step back and say, "Hey, I like Venn diagrams and I'm gonna laugh about it."

It's really interesting.

"You know, I like Venn diagrams too."

It's a really interesting way to land in the political arena, and it's a really different aesthetic to drop into this conversation, this broad national conversation that we're having.

- So you referred to NBC's coverage of the Summer Olympics in Paris as the odd exuberance of fandom because there are lots of celebrities and other people who are on those broadcasts.

What did you mean by that?

And break that down for us, please.

- Sure, yeah, I wrote a piece for Politico during the Olympics.

We were just struck by the ratings, just how well the Olympics were doing in terms of ratings and how many people were tuning in to NBC, to their streaming service Peacock.

And part of the reason was just, it was a great games, there were these great individual athletic stories and people to jump onto.

But part of the reason, and NBC has acknowledged this, is that they took an approach where they were going to bring celebrities into their broadcasting and they were gonna use them as interviewers and they were gonna sort of spot them along the way.

So you had some unusual pairings for sports coverage.

You had Colin Jost from Saturday Night Live, and they sent him out to Tahiti and he was doing commentary on surfing.

And you had a really well-known among the kind of Gen Z and Millennial group, a podcaster who was out there doing these kind of live watch shows, sort of live-streaming shows, kind of watching gymnastics and other events, and narrating as it went.

And then of course you've had Snoop Dogg who was everywhere.

I mean every time I turned on anything, there he is at beach volleyball, he's at track and field, and of course he's at gymnastics.

And so these people were stand-ins for fans.

The other thing that really struck me to get back to politics was that they were very wrapped up, sometimes literally wrapped up in a flag, like wrapped up in Americana.

And I think sometimes in politics, particularly on the left, there's been this feeling of, "Well, the right has appropriated the American flag or this is a country with problems," and to be too exuberantly patriotic is looked at as xenophobic or gauche.

There's been, I think, in some portions of the left, a movement to kind of back off from really embracing patriotism and Americana.

It's hard not to do that at the Olympics.

You are literally rooting for your country against other countries, but to see some of these celebrities on NBC wrapping themselves, either metaphorically or literally in the American flag and cheering American athletes on felt very different from the way our culture's been and felt very, very pointed.

And I think probably very popular.

- Joanna Weiss, you are a tremendous guest and people can find your writing in Politico.

Thank you so much for spending some time with us.

That is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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