Emily is out, so you are once again left in the gay hands of me, Zach Schiffman. My hands actually don’t read as gay, though. I have really bad cuticle issues that I probably should figure out.
I’VE GOT A BLANK SPACE [IN THIS NEWSLETTER], BABY
The Life of a Showgirl Is Here to Disrupt Your Non-Showgirl Life
The Tortured Poets Department may be winding down, but Taylor Swift class is very much still in session.
If you are receiving this newsletter, you are online enough to know that last week Taylor Swift went on her boyfriend’s podcast for two hours to give one of the most revealing interviews of her career — but more importantly to announce her upcoming album, The Life of a Showgirl. Disclaimer: I am a rabid Swiftie who will slurp up anything Miss Americana serves; however, I believe it is irresponsible to completely ignore Taylor Swift. You may find her annoying, her singing voice weak, her lyrics overwrought, etc., but to turn a blind eye to her is to turn a blind eye to national news. Along with Beyoncé, she is the most enduring piece of monoculture we have other than, unfortunately, Donald Trump. If you are paying attention to our nation’s most famous fake blonde, then you have a civic obligation to pay attention to the most famous natural one.
As one of this magazine’s devoted Taylor Swift scholars, I am here to give you a syllabus of materials to delicately prepare yourself for the onslaught of discourse we will all endure until October 3, the release date of The Life of a Showgirl. Before we begin class, please be up to date on the already-published materials from New York’s distinguished faculty of Swiftologists.
Professor Jennifer Zhan watched all two hours of the New Heights episode so you don’t have to.
Professor Fran Hoepfner on whether or not Taylor Swift has even seen the movie Showgirls.
Now that you have read all of these accredited, authoritative sources, it’s time to jump off the deep end à la Taylor plunging into the stage after the surprise song section of the Eras Tour.
As I said above, ignoring Taylor Swift is like ignoring a national election. If you follow the Republican Party’s antics, you are familiar with conspiracy theorists like Laura Loomer and how QAnon created the Trump administration’s ongoing Epstein headaches. There is a Swift-adjacent phenomenon I like to call T-Anon. This is when Swifties use their entire collective brainpower to examine Taylor Swift’s words, posts, and actions — and then post bizarre guesses on the internet. This afternoon was an exceptional example: Taylor put a shimmering purple countdown on her website until 2 p.m. ET. My timeline exploded with theories: Could it be a lead single (something she hasn’t done since the nightmare of Lover’s ‘ME!’)? Could it be a sister album (The Death of a Showgirl)? Could it be the long-rumored Eras Tour documentary? Or does the purple somehow relate to the Super Bowl? Swifties from across the globe ignored their school responsibilities and day jobs to theorize only for it to be … a limited-edition The Life of a Showgirl vinyl issue called … “The Shiny Bug Collection.” Capitalism sure is a shiny little bug!
In the New Heights episode, Taylor Swift discussed her passion for numerology (despite oversimplifying it to just basic addition for her Neanderthal boyfriend) and Easter eggs (despite blatantly lying when she said, “I’m never going to plant an Easter egg that ties back to my personal life. It’s always going to be towards music.”) Her fans have been trained to pore over her content like professional investigators. The writer Ethan Judelson has been parodying this well. The mind of a rabid Swiftie works harder than a Texas data center processing ChatGPT requests during high-school-finals season — but, like AI, they tend to create things out of thin air.
Below, I have gathered some of my favorite theories from the past week of Swift discourse as further reading material. I share these out of utmost respect for the brightest minds on the internet, who have chosen to do this instead of working on AGI.
➽ @DownbadDannii, finding the word karma in this speckled pattern.
➽ Gaylors (a faction of fans who believe Taylor Swift is a lesbian) thinking that Taylor Swift’s font choice is a nod to the cover of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
(Note: No one should ever read into Taylor Swift’s font choices because no one is meant to read them. Taylor Swift has a religious commitment to picking the ugliest, most illegible fonts in the history of typography. It’s a genuine miracle that the font used for TS12 is a readable sans-serif.)
➽ @willnights1 thinking that the release date for The Life of a Showgirl is meant to coincide with the worldwide celebration of plaid.
➽ The day before the official art was revealed, @romaricharlz13 believing that the blurred cover image drew inspiration from this Vanity Fair cover from July 1921 of a showgirl riding a giraffe.
This theory is making T-Anon Swifties SICK!
For your homework, please come up with your own nonsensical theory related to TS12 and leave it in the comments. This is you trying.
EXCITING TV SHOW ALERT
Long Story Short, He Was the Creator of BoJack
[Sung to the tune of “The Last Great American Dynasty”] Is this the next great American Jewish comedy?
Rebecca Alter’s profile of BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg ahead of his new Netflix series, Long Story Short, elicited a number of audible “Yup, me too” moments from me while reading it. This quote was extremely relatable:
“My whole world was Jewish,” Bob-Waksberg says. He doesn’t think he met any non-Jews until he started doing Palo Alto children’s theater at age 9 or 10. “What was it like growing up in the Jewish community? It’s like asking the fish, ‘What’s it like growing up in water?’ It was what it was.”
Growing up in the northern suburbs of Chicago, I assumed Jews were the majority of the world until I was in middle school. I thought the word Gentile was a slur. This also rang true to me:
“As you might expect, the Jews are pitching the most antisemitic jokes, and sometimes some of the non-Jews are like, ‘Guys, my name’s going to be on this episode, too. Let’s scale it back a little.’”
All this to say I am extremely looking forward to Long Story Short.
BIG WASTE OF FEDERAL DOLLARS INCOMING
Will the National Guard Tanks Pay the Congestion-Pricing Tolls?
No, we aren’t talking about Taylor Swift’s collaborator, The National’s Aaron Dessner.
The inevitability of Taylor Swift discourse can be scary, but the likely prospect of National Guard troops marching through New York City as they did in Los Angeles and currently are in Washington, D.C., is obviously much scarier. As Intelligencer columnist Ross Barkan writes:
“As disturbing as it is to write this sentence, it seems inevitable that at some point in the next three years, President Donald Trump will dispatch the National Guard to New York City. After menacing Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Trump has come to revel in the spectacle. For the increasingly unpopular president, sending in the troops amounts to — in his mind, at least — a win-win. Democrats, especially big-city Democrats, are outraged. The Republican base is thrilled.”
When we posted this story on the New York Instagram yesterday, we received a number of comments curious why the image for the story was of Mamdani and not Trump or the troops. Ross argues that Mamdani is the “ideal foil” for Trump, “an African-born Muslim socialist.” The threat of a National Guard invasion could be a retaliation from the Trump administration for electing a candidate whom he did not bribe in some way. But as Ross writes, Mamdani may be able to fend off the threat as Bill De Blasio did in 2020.
“If Mamdani is able to forge a close relationship with his NYPD leadership, he could also use that to his advantage in a fight with Trump. A National Guard incursion is, above all else, a direct argument against the NYPD. Trump would be saying that New York cops cannot handle crime in their own city. A police commissioner, as well as the rank-and-file officers, would greatly resent that idea, especially as New York appears on track to post one of its lowest ever murder rates.
Click Your Way Out
Surprise, surprise, the Supreme Court could help the GOP gerrymander.
We have enough content from the set of The Devil Wears Prada 2, thank you!
In u-n-e-q-u-i-v-o-c-a-l-l-y good news, Jasmine Amy Rodgers (the sensational Betty Boop in Boop! The Musical) will be playing Olive Ostrovsky in the Off Broadway Spelling Bee revival. She’s joining fellow Jimmy Awards finalist Justin Cooley and Glee’s Kevin McHale in the cast. Let pandemonium ensue!
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Please keep track of all the crazy theories and re examine them when the album comes out. I don’t have the brain space for it, but would like to see if any of them are accurate! The Vanity Fair one was interesting!