When I mentioned - for reasons that presently escape me, probably that I was caught up in her whirlwind - that Taylor Swift was dating "some football guy", I had my consciousness raised; he was a high profile celebrity, my truly-male friends told me.
We all weathered the information orgy that followed. And, too, the reactionary energy it seemed to propagate from both haters and defenders.
Imagine how little I know about the Chief's place kicker. He's got to be a hell of an athlete if he's on a professional team. But I can't explain (and I guess if I was really interested I'd go look it up) why he would be giving a commencement speech. Is he from that school? Is he from that state? Is it because he's on Taylor Swift's team? Why would anyone care what he thinks?
Whatever the reason, he's entitled to his opinion, no matter how goofy I might think it be. What does strike me though is that, again, the roles are reversed. The defenders are now the haters and vice versa.
Excoriated and villainized, what he says has been exaggerated and extrapolated, characterized into something akin to his calling for women to wear a hijab. The folks that had their panties in a twist over all of the attention that Taylor Swift was getting can't shut their yap about him. He's a regular Albert Einstein. Hell, they're even buying the team shirt of a place kicker.
Maybe it's just a much needed diversion from the real horrors that are before us, here, and there. Or, it's these pressures making us emotionally fatigued and less considerate of each other. Whatever the reason, the reality it that it's just three young people - Harrison, Taylor, and Travis - living their lives and making their mark while the rest of the world falls too easily into the cesspool of umbrage and bathos.
