The Real Story Behind Taylor Derangement Syndrome

How silly is it that the NFL, Kansas City Chiefs, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are all in on a plot to rig the Super Bowl and endorse Joe Biden? Maybe it’s not that farfetched. Here's the real story.

Welcome to my Life Its Ownself newsletter. Please support us by 1) hitting the Like button at the bottom of this installment, 2) subscribing to this newsletter, and 3) recommending it to others. Also, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

CORRECTION: The original version of this newsletter misnamed the Kansas City quarterback as “Tommy Mahomes.” His first name is “Patrick,” and the post has been edited to reflect that. Thanks to Alert Reader Susan Morris for catching the error!

Thursday, February 1, 2024, 9:00 a.m.

         I enjoyed last Sunday with some friends watching the NFL conference championship games. Both games — Lions/49ers and Chiefs/Ravens — were pretty good contests, which is what you want. I’m not super into pro football, but I’m looking forward to the Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl.

         Then I awoke Monday morning to find the world had gone mad, or at least a crazed and noisy corner of it. Parents warn their children about wandering into the MAGA fever swamps on the Interwebz, once again with good reason.

         As you’ve probably heard, the MAGAts have uncovered one of the greatest psyops of all time: the rigging of the Super Bowl, and indeed of this entire NFL season, to allow the Kansas City Chiefs to win the Super Bowl so that K.C. tight end Travis Kelce’s girlfriend, a pop singer named (checks notes) Taylor Swift, can endorse Joe Biden’s reelection in a desperate bid by the Deep State to head off the Restoration of Donald Trump and his subsequent Retribution.

---

         There are some factual problems with this, of course. The Chiefs are legitimately championship caliber. They played in three of the last four Super Bowls, winning in 2020 and 2021. In 2020 they beat the 49ers, in fact.

         And Travis Kelce, like teammate Patrick Mahomes, is a sure-fire future Hall of Famer. He’s the only tight end to put up four straight seasons of over 1,000 yards receiving. He got to 500 career receptions in fewer games than any tight end in NFL history, and his 6,465 career receiving yards is the most by a tight end through 7 seasons in NFL history. On Sunday, with 11 catches for 116 yards, he set the all-time NFL record for postseason receptions, surpassing Hall of Famer Jerry Rice.

---

         Nevertheless, several prominent individuals in the MAGA Alternative Universe were quick onto the story, including failed congressional candidate Mike Crispi (R-Loser):

         He was joined by failed congressional candidate and renowned Islamaphobe Laura Loomer [who even Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Batshit Crazy) thinks is “mentally unstable and a documented liar”]:

         One could argue that these people are unserious. And I do. But then there’s Vivek Ramaswamy (R-Insufferable), who is just “asking questions:”

---

         I was at first dismissive of all this nonsense, but then I thought to myself, “Self, could there be a nugget of truth buried in all this merda?” So I called my friend Vinnie Lamponero. Vinnie, you may recall, works for one of those three-letter agencies tucked away in the bowels of the Deep State. My conversation with him is transcribed below, lightly edited for clarity.

LIO:          Vinnie, what’s the deal with the rigged Super Bowl and Taylor Swift and all that?

VLN:        Yo, nice to hear from you. I gotta be careful what I say. People around here are very nervous about leaks these days.

LIO:          About Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl? You must be joking!

VLN:        No, that’s the thing. We are trying to rig the Super Bowl. You saw the refereeing during the first half of Sunday’s Chiefs-Ravens game. It was so blatant we had to tell them to dial it back during the second half. Thank goodness Kelce had a good day or it would have looked even more suspicious.

LIO:          So, the Deep State is really trying to rig the Super Bowl? But why are you meddling in a football game?

VLN:        Wouldn’t be the first time. Don’t you get it? There’s billions in ad revenue and sports betting bucks at stake! Baltimore versus the Detroit Lions – two second-tier cities — who cares? But Middle American Kansas City versus those bougie bastardos from San Francisco – now, THAT we can sell to corporate America.

         Taylor Swift is just icing on the cake, but she’s very valuable icing. She’s worth $300 million to the Kansas City franchise.  She was on TV for 24 seconds during Sunday’s game, but she’s the only thing everyone was talking about on Monday.

LIO:          So, you got them together? Set all this up?

VLN:        Not so’s you’d notice it, but yeah. What, you think he makes his own friendship bracelets?

LIO:          How did you get him interested in Taylor?

VLN:        I dunno, you tell me – what would it take you to get interested in 2023 Time Magazine Person of the Year Taylor Swift? Besides, once we had the Pfizer mind control nanobodies in his system, he was very … amenable.

(Does this man look like he can think for himself?)

LIO:          And what about Taylor? How did you know she’d go for him?

VLN:        Taylor is under long-term contract with the Deep State, because of [REDACTED]. She’s learned how to play ball, know what I man?

LIO:          So, what’s all this about her endorsing Biden during halftime at the Super Bowl?

VLN:        That was a lucky break for us. It proved the leaker is not in on the full plan. Of course she’s not going to endorse him at halftime with Travis standing by her side. It showed us how paranoid and deluded they are.

LIO:          Wouldn’t Biden like her to do that?

VLN:        There you go, making the same mistake the MAGA idiots make. We don’t work for Joe Biden. Joe Biden works for us, same as Donald Trump did – and will again if he wins.

LIO:          So, will Taylor Swift endorse Joe Biden, like she did in 2020?

VLN:        That I can’t tell you. But I will say that, if she does, it will be at a time and place of our choosing.

LIO:          Well, thanks, Vinnie. Good to talk to you.

VLN:        Fuhgeddaboutit.

---

         I thought a lot about my conversation with Vinnie. All in all, it’s not that weird that the Deep State would rig the Super Bowl so that fan interest and ad revenues would be maximized. In a country consumed by capitalism, that’s one of the Deep State’s jobs.

         The amazing thing is the utterly unhinged reaction of the alt right media and groupthink machine. CNN’s Oliver Darcy put it well in a recent column:

Conservatives are going into self-exile.

The movement that once championed small, business-friendly government is now led by far-right media forces hoping to cash in on attention from raging culture wars, sealing off its adherents from the rest of society.

From a bird's eye view, the state of affairs among MAGA Media diehards as it sits today is remarkable. A subset of America actually purports to boycott Disney, the world's preeminent entertainment company; Bud Light, once America's most popular beer; Target, the quintessential brick-and-mortar shopping destination; Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company that produced life-saving Covid-19 vaccines; Major League Baseball, the nation's favorite pastime; and now Taylor Swift, a generational icon and one of the most successful musical artists of all time.

         The Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg had a similar take:

         Bless their hearts. I wish them well. For my part, I hope you enjoy the Super Bowl!