Will Rhode Island homeowner Taylor Swift, who in 2020 endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket, throw her noteworthy support to Harris’s presidential run?
It’s a question high on the minds of many Swifties, not to mention political wonks who appreciate the reach of her celebrity.
Some of the singer’s fans believe she hinted at a Harris endorsement during a recent concert, massaging lyrics she wrote several years ago for her widely acclaimed song, “The Last Great American Dynasty.”
The pop icon has a personal connection to the song’s heroine, fast-living Westerly socialite Rebekah Harkness. In 2013, Swift paid nearly $18 million for Holiday House, the 11,000-square-foot Watch Hill mansion that Harkness cavorted in decades ago.
Swift’s lyrics celebrate a rebellious heiress – a patron of the arts and medical research who annoyed her old-money neighbors with decadent outdoor dance parties. Not to mention that she allegedly cleaned her swimming pool with champagne and reportedly demanded that when she died (at 67 in 1982) her ashes be placed in a $250,000 Salvador Dali urn.
One biographical sketch notes that Harkness, future heiress to the Standard Oil fortune, as a young woman was shipped off to a finishing school where she and her friends “disrupted debutante parties, performed a strip tease at a social event, and put mineral oil into the punch bowl at a coming-out party.”
Yarns about Harkness, apocryphal or not, abound: She was banned from a cruise ship after swimming nude in its pool; she struggled with booze and drugs; after a feud she dyed a neighbor’s cat lime green (Swift’s lyrics mistakenly say it was a dog, but, close enough).
The flip side of Harkness, as told in her New York Times obituary, was gentler: She gave millions to medical research, helped establish the Joffrey Ballet and other dance troupes, and poured $5 million into renovating a Manhattan theater so it could be used by small- and medium-sized companies.
Swift’s original lyrics in Dynasty were well received by the music industry, especially, in the words of one critic, because the song “celebrates society-defying women.”
A New York Times critic weighed in on the song’s story line by describing its portrayal of Harkness as “a classic Swift heroine – purposeful, disruptive and misunderstood.”
Some Kamala supporters sensed a message from Swift during her recent concert in Germany, where she blended some lyrics from Dynasty with those of another of her songs, Run.That resulted in this:
There goes the loudest woman
This town has ever seen
“She had a marvelous time ruining everything
Darling, let’s run
Ruining everything.
“Ruining everything?” Words to ponder, if you’re a Trump operative caught flat-footed by the intensity and robustness of the unexpected Harris candidacy.
And if you’re put off by Trump’s crudeness and lies, you might say of Swift’s enigmatic reference to ruination:
So far, so good.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
Goldstein is not a journalist. He is just a wannabe political influencer, in my opinion.
Jerry Plumb