Taylor Swift finally faces the woke mob

It’s been four years since pop superstar Taylor Swift went full lib. After years of speculation over her political leanings (her silence on issues led some to believe she was a secret Trump supporter), Swift urged her fellow Tennessee residents to vote against the “appalling” and “terrifying” Republican Marsha Blackburn for Senate.

“I will be voting for Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives. Please, please educate yourself on the candidates running in your state and vote based on who most closely represents your values,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post.

Since then, Swift has been outspoken about her pro-choice, anti-gun, and anti-Trump views. But unlike some of her fellow left-wing celebrities, Swift has somehow avoided being accused of not being woke enough. Katy Perry, a former foe of Swift and alleged subject of the song “Bad Blood,” has taken heat for cultural appropriation in her music videos. Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel apologized for past incidents of blackface. Demi Lovato was dragged for visiting Israel.

Alas, recent reports of Swift’s private jet usage finally suggest she’s not the woke hero she makes herself out to be. The digital marketing agency Yard discovered that Swift’s planes emit more CO2 in seven months than 1,184 average people would in an entire year. She apparently has two jets (how luxurious!) that took 170 trips in just 200 days this year, and the average flight time is just 80 minutes.

Yet rather than say she was sorry and promise to “educate herself” and “do better,” as the PR-crafted celebrity apologies usually go, a rep for Swift tried to pass the buck.

“Taylor’s jet is loaned out regularly to other individuals,” her spokesperson said. “To attribute most or all of these trips to her is blatantly incorrect.”

Ah, well, in that case everything is totally fine! The carbon emissions are offset, you see, by Swift’s generous lending of her private plane to her less wealthy friends. Isn’t charity great?

The hullaballoo about Swift’s lack of dedication to fighting climate change may open her up to all other kinds of attacks by the woke mob. Specifically, she may need to use her famous songwriting skills to go back and edit a few of her popular tracks.

Lizzo and Beyonce were just bullied into removing the word “spaz” from their songs “GRRRLS” and “Heated,” respectively, as critics claimed its inclusion was “ableist.” (While some members of the woke mob demanded the removal of “spaz,” others alleged that Lizzo and Beyonce were targeted due to their race.)

“The white disabled community needs to confront its racism,” one activist claimed on Twitter, earning more than 10,000 likes. “As a Black disabled woman, I see how Lizzo, Beyonce, and Black women artists are targeted and accused of ableism. The same criticism is not reserved for white artists who use ableist language.”

Several commenters then turned their sights on Swift, noting that she once changed the lyrics to her song “Picture to Burn” because they were deemed homophobic. Swift originally sang in the tune that if her ex-lover told his friends she was crazy, she would tell hers that he is gay. She later amended the line to say “that’s fine, you won’t mind if I say.”

If activists are now focused on removing ableism from songs, then Swift has plenty of objectionable material. In “Blank Space,” she says ex-lovers would describe her as “insane.” In “Me!” she says she “went psycho” during a phone call with a lover and duet partner Brendon Urie sings there’s a lot of “lame guys” out there. Back in 2019, a disabled fan zeroed in on the latter two examples, saying she was “disappointed” and had a “problem” with the “ableist” lyrics.

“While it’s trendy to use words referring to mental health terms like ‘psycho’ or ‘crazy,’ these words are often used negatively,” the fan wrote. “Using these words adds to the stigma that surrounds mental illness. This stigma is oppressive and makes people with mental illness feel like there is something wrong with them, which of course is not true.”

Now that Lizzo and Beyonce have promised to remove “spaz” from their songs, will Swift follow in solidarity? Will she apologize to the disabled community for her oversight? Or will a rep suddenly insist those lyrics were the brainchild of her co-writers, just like the private jet emissions were the fault of her poor friends?

However these controversies shake out, they’re likely to be even more entertaining than Swift calling out Jake Gyllenhaal for being a man-child and fake feminist more than a decade after the pair dated.