OPINION: Humor/Satire - Remind Me, Why Should We Care About the Whole Kelce-Swift Thing?

PixabayPhoto byQuinceCreative

I’m sorry but are we supposed to care about the Kelce-Swift romance?

In the interests of maintaining humanity’s momentum through the current space-time continuum, does this event actually matter?

If it happens, if both slip off into each other’s embrace at some multi-million-dollar retreat in Telluride or West Palm Beach will it impact anyone’s electric bill?

Or lower the price of gasoline in California?

Will those eking out their next payment for insulin, food, or life-affirming liposuction give a hoot about what happens behind closed doors - real or imagined?

Why do we care and more importantly, why is it on my sports feed?

Are print journalists pondering how this relationship will impact the price of a Kansas City Chiefs football game ticket and if maybe he’ll appear on her next album, as a backup singer or as the subject of a breakup ballad, because there’s nothing else to amuse them?

It’s noteworthy that average people seldom make it into the news. If this story was about a pipefitter from Bayonne and a pretty colorist from Schenectady, would we be as engaged?

And if not, doesn’t that say something about us; about what we think is important?

That we are willing to read and listen to almost anything in order to be distracted because we are otherwise engaged in the mundane. The pointless.

I don’t know.

Since I am writing and thinking about this have, I too been caught in the riptide of celebrity seduction and intrigue?

Perhaps. Ensnared in the belief that it’s something I should be interested in because it does have relevance even if it’s kind of hidden deep down - or because my life just isn’t all that interesting and that Instagram and Pinterest really are tapped into the national zeitgeist and that I should be paying closer attention?

I wonder.

And what bothers me most on several levels is that I don’t have a suggested alternative.

I’m lacking a comeback that will redirect our regional or national attention back onto more important things.

Like our government being shut down because some right-wing extremists would like to see Social Security reduced to a monthly payment of warehouse cheese or a few dollars to cover rent at an over 55 assisted living facility located somewhere in the Badlands or near Area 51. (Just kidding, those are already taken.)

But then that issue, the whole government shutting down and everyone going home for a few months, kind of thing, is actually no less engaging and mind-numbing than the whole romance angle.

Will the GOP score a “touchdown” on their last drive before time expires? Will the Dems cause a fumble and run with it 98 yards to their own winning TD and save the day? Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Maybe we’ve already seen it on TV or C-Span or on some late-night feed during the last election right before the impromptu party on the steps of the Capitol Building.

But back to love and football.

On second thought maybe we should all pay closer attention to what these star-crossed lovers/friends/participants are doing and take our attention away from the everyday things because the everyday things are kind of looking like what happened last year and in 2016.

Which is a problem. Not like global warming or anything but there must be a reason why there are a gazillion streaming services and ten times the amount of content floating around out there compared to say, 2019.

Maybe it’s because we really need the distraction. We really need to have the magician’s assistant off to one side doing a subtle sashay to catch our eye while something weird or nefarious goes on over there.

Or maybe not.

Maybe we’re just bored. Work, commute, sleep (often interrupted) raising families, more work is reaching critical mass and we need to do something else, and along came Kelce and Swift and 400 million followers, or thereabouts.

The perfect storm.

The “swift” and not-so-subtle, look over there. Why? I really don’t know.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory piece it’s opinion and humor. Hopefully in equal measure.

Kelce is a professional NFL player and Swift is a famous Country Western singer and perhaps that’s all that’s needed.

Will they, won’t they, that sort of thing.

It’s what print journalists did back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and so on, until they ran out of ink and paper and jobs. Now it’s all digital and much faster.

Take a photo. Upload. Push Enter and in seconds Kuala Lumpur knows all about it.

But if we stop looking and didn’t click. Didn’t comment. Didn’t engage with 10 million others maybe that space, those few million pixels would be swept away and replaced by something really important and relevant.

Like what happens when the threat to shut down the government for the 12^th time this year rolls up in the House (pushing aside Day 24 of the Biden Impeachment Investigation and Analysis Hearings - Part III) and we’re too busy watching the next couple climb into a helicopter during Super Bowl LVIII and fly off on their honeymoon.

But not before the halftime show is finished.