OPINION:
It’s obvious that some media members still haven’t fully processed President Trump’s victory a few months ago. One of the more ludicrous examples of an inability to cope was turned in by Glamour magazine, which sent someone to cover Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans on Sunday without anticipating that it would be attended by … football fans.
Glamour, not normally mistaken for a sports publication, posted a piece by senior editor Stephanie McNeal that was essentially a postelection tantrum with the game as a proxy. To understand how detached from reality it was, readers must first look back on Glamour’s coverage of the 2024 presidential race.
In the final two months of the campaign, Glamour published at least six stories about global mega-pop star Taylor Swift and her backing of Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. The pieces ran from speculation about a coming endorsement to the actual announcement of Ms. Swift’s support to the analysis of what it all meant politically.
In the end, the magazine marveled at the tight coordination between the Harris campaign and the billionaire entertainer. They noted that the campaign had immediately begun selling friendship bracelets referencing Ms. Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, like the ones Swift fans trade with one another at concerts.
“The Harris bracelets are blue and black, and say both candidates’ names on them,” Glamour reported, and then lamented, “Unfortunately, they are already sold out.”
The magazine gushed over the candidate and the musician and treated the entire situation as universally embraced.
So that brings us to the piece they published after the Super Bowl, where Ms. Swift’s boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, turned in a lackluster performance as his squad got flattened by the clearly superior Philadelphia Eagles. At one point in the game (not as frequently as normal because the Chiefs got trounced), Ms. Swift was shown on the Jumbotron and was greeted by a torrent of boos from the crowd.
As a publication, Glamour was beside itself.
“Why Taylor Swift Getting Booed at the Super Bowl was Even More Chilling Than You Think,” intoned the headline.
What Ms. McNeal failed to consider was that, while many people aren’t crazy about the brash Eagles fan base, there is widespread Chiefs fatigue nationally because of their success in recent years, and Ms. Swift has made herself the living symbol of it. Add the fact that there were clearly more Eagles fans in attendance at the game, based on crowd reaction to plays on the field, and it helps explain the response to the singer.
And, sure, there were probably a lot of Trump voters at the game because he did win the popular vote, after all. And those folks were probably aware that Ms. Swift had tried to defeat their candidate.
The result was that the enthusiastic welcome Mr. Trump received when shown saluting during the national anthem — especially contrasted with the boos for Ms. Swift — did lot land well at Glamour.
“Toxic masculinity,” Ms. McNeal declared.
You can write this off as election sour grapes, but it also revealed the left’s insecurities because they require total acceptance of them and their opinions, or else they fall to pieces.
“It was just a football game, people might say,” Ms. McNeal conceded, and, yes, rational people would say exactly that.
“But I was there at the game,” she continued. “As soon as [Ms. Swift] appeared on screen, the crowd seemed to delight in jeering and heckling her, and the mood shift was palpable. I watched in real time as Swift, alongside her friend Ice Spice, took in the response, her brow furrowing in confusion and then apparent discomfort.”
Oh, no, not apparent discomfort!
“Looking at the camera, she distinctly said, ‘What is going on?’” Ms. McNeal wrote. “And girl, same, because we were all wondering what the hell was happening.”
This is an accidental admission that the left simply cannot handle anything that does not affirm their own worldview. They want their favored idols to be able to insert themselves into politics or major cultural moments like the Super Bowl, choose sides, and then demand no reaction from opposing camps.
That’s an expectation based on liberal fantasies about “safe spaces.”
Naturally, the author blamed “misogyny,” although she acknowledged that actress Anne Hathaway and entertainer Lady Gaga were also shown on the screen without any discernible reaction from the crowd.
So, really, the boos were specifically for Ms. Swift. That’s pretty selective misogyny, isn’t it?
If Ms. Swift and her fans want total adulation, there are certainly places they can find that, but it isn’t at the Super Bowl. And that’s pretty much the whole story.
Except at Glamour magazine, where it represents the end of civilization.
• Tim Murtaugh, a lifelong fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, is a Washington Times columnist and founder of Line Drive Public Affairs. He served as a senior adviser on the 2024 Trump campaign and communications director on the 2020 Trump campaign.
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