Fox News suddenly wants to get celebrities out of politics. Well, one celebrity.

Taylor Swift, as you may have noticed, is everywhere: packing arenas on the Eras tour; filling theaters with her concert film; who appears on your TV screen from a luxury suite during Kansas City Chiefs games and cheers on her boyfriend Travis Kelce.

And now she's living rent-free in the minds of Fox News hosts.

Following reports that Biden's re-election campaign was eyeing support from the superstar (who endorsed President Biden in 2020), commentators on the network put on their culture war helmets. “Don't get involved in politics!” Jeanine Pirro urged her on. “We don't want to see you there!” Another commenter, Charly Arnolt, pleaded: “Please don't believe everything Taylor Swift says.” Sean Hannity discussed the issue in prime time: “Maybe she wants to think about it again.”

Fox's scare follows months in which MAGA opinionists have concocted baroque conspiracy theories about the power couple: that Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce's romance was staged; that the NFL was rigging the Super Bowl for the Chiefs; and that it was all an unholy plot to boost any eventual support from Biden. Fox host Jesse Watters even flirted with the speculation, floating the idea that Swift's success was a success psyop The initiative was taken by the Ministry of Defense.

In retrospect, 'Paul is dead' lacked imagination.

Of course, people are entitled to their opinions about celebrity political speeches or the possible existence of a secret Pentagon diva lab. But if the hosts of Fox News really believe that inviting celebrities to give their opinions on politics is irresponsible and dangerous, they might want to turn their attention to… Fox News.

Over the years, Fox has invited Gene Simmons, the bassist of Kiss, to talk about tackling an Ebola outbreak. It had the fashion model Fabio to blame California crime on liberalism. It gave us Kid Rock cancel culture. Last year, actor Jim Caviezel participated declared Donald J. Trump “the new Moses” on “Fox & Friends.”

And let's not forget that Fox was instrumental in the entry into politics of a certain TV celebrity, who you may know better as the candidate Biden is likely to run against.

In March 2011, the network announced a new weekly segment on “Fox & Friends”: “Mondays With Trump.” Each week, the host of NBC's “Celebrity Apprentice,” a frequent network guest for years, lamented the Obama administration's policies and told the hosts why he fired people like Gary Busey and LaToya Jackson on that week's episode.

By his crusade towards birth-ism, by his own tweet that Obama's 2012 victory over Mitt Romney was “a total sham and a travesty,” Trump's attachment to Fox and its audience only deepened.

Mr. Trump did not appeal to Fox viewers, despite his celebrity; he appealed, at least in part, because of his celebrity. For years they had heard liberal speeches at the Oscars; they had been told, not least by Fox, that Hollywood celebrities were disparaging their beliefs. Here was a real primetime network celebrity who spoke their language and was on their side.

It's not just that Fox has welcomed celebrities who align with its politics. (The hosts also tend to speak well of Ronald Reagan, who knew his way around a movie set.) It has done as much as any force to celebrate conservative politics and infuse it with entertainment values.

Fox cultivated a sense of razzle-dazzle from its earliest days under talk show producer turned political operative Roger Ailes. A Fox executive once described “Fox & Friends” as “an entertainment show that brings something new”; Early Obama-era star Glenn Beck called his show “the convergence of entertainment and enlightenment.”

More broadly, Fox has long embraced a kind of pop-political, martyrdom-making culture war Roseanne Barr and a Kathy Griffin demon, prompting viewers to wonder if their beer was too liberal. Like right-wing publisher Andrew Breitbart (based on an idea by Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci), it believed that politics is downstream of culture.

But there has been selectiveness about which celebrities should stay on their path and which should be allowed to merge. After LeBron James criticized then-President Trump in a 2018 interview, Fox's Laura Ingraham told him he “Shut up and dribble.” The former quarterback's endorsement of Mr. Trump Brett Favre and the golf champion Jac Nicklauswere indisputable for some reason.

Much of the criticism of Ms. Swift, meanwhile, appears to be condescending, suggesting that a 33-year-old female pop star is a gullible naif, ripe for deception by political actors. “Does Taylor realize that the man they want to support is some kind of stumbling block?” Mr. Hannity asked, raising a concern he didn't raise when interviewing, for example, the right-wing rocker Ted Nugent (“never shy to share his opinion!”).

Do Fox conservatives really have anything to worry about? There is a good argument that political endorsements from celebrities are rarely meaningful. Academic researchers have postulated that Oprah's blessing accounted for a million Obama votes in 2008; On the other hand, in 2018, Ms. Swift endorsed a Democrat in a Senate race in Tennessee, which she lost handily. As of 2020, it is true that her level of fame has risen from 'star' to 'molten cosmic supercluster from which galaxies are born'. Still, it's only a guess that her influence could translate into votes.

However, another celebrity principle may apply here: the Streisand effect. Just as Barbra Streisand's attempt to suppress photos of her home only drew more attention to them, Fox's opposition could increase any support from Swift. It could even cause a backlash if it manages to change the perception of the story in the GOP vs. the Swifties, conservative diatribe against a wildly popular millennial woman, Save America vs. “Save (Taylor's Version)” America.

But celebrity bashing, waging war over culture and playing on fears of cultural marginalization may be too deeply ingrained in Fox's network sensibility to do otherwise. As Ms. Swift might sing: Look what they made themselves do.