Hey listeners, please indulge this break from our normal programming, while I share with you

my current preoccupation, the politics of the latest Taylor Swift album. And don't worry,

we'll still have a regular episode for you tomorrow.

The Life of the Showgirl is one of Taylor Swift's most polarizing albums.

And it's also a really interesting cultural document for the Trump era.

I say this as the designated driver for our family minivan, which means that I've been a

longtime Taylor Swift listener and appreciator, at least by proxy.

But I'm also a conservative dad, personally, not just professionally, which means that I'm not

really an appreciator of the new album's coarseness, which requires explaining to a car full of kids

why we won't be listening to Wood, in which Swift sings

about the awesomeness of her fiancée's reproductive organ. But life of a showgirl isn't

merely coarse. It's also a little bit conservative. And I think that combination, raunch with just a

touch of reaction, holds up a really interesting mirror

to the weird condition of right-wing culture in America today. To be clear, I'm not saying that

Taylor Swift, proud Kamala Harris voter, has suddenly become a Republican. But I'm not the only one to

notice the conservative turn. There's a lot of very

disappointed progressive Swift fans talking about it on TikTok right now. Is Taylor Swift using her

music to red pill you? In short, yes. It's missing a feminist anthem, which is something that

we've gotten so used to with Taylor Swift. I'm only a feminist anthem, which is something that we've gotten so used to with Taylor Swift.

I'm only a feminist when someone is mean to me.

If you listen to Wish List, say, you'll get an explicit vision of white picket-fence suburbia.

Or with Elda's daughter, you'll get a rhapsody about marital commitment.

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