Swifty’s shame of silence

These days politics is everywhere— it permeates every crevice of our lives– littering our social media feeds, emblazoned on egregiously overpriced ‘designer’ T-shirts and spewing forth from the lips of every award-winning actor given a microphone. There is no escaping it, no matter how we may try. Everybody’s gotta have an opinion. (So long as it’s the right one.) Given the current saturation of sanctimony, it can be refreshing sometimes to say nothing at all. Not so according to a recent interview with actress Lola Kirke, (I know. Who?) who takes political posturing by the celebrity elite to a new level, not only holding up the well worn celebrity soap-box, but boldly claiming famous people have a responsibility to get on it, or else. Right. And it’s here she takes aim at the one and only Taylor Swift’s shame of silence, who in choosing not to be ‘nasty’ alongside her crusading comrades in arms commits a calamitous affront to the cult of celebrity. “Taylor f*cking Swift may as well have voted for Trump.” Charming. Well, she told her.

So I wonder, since when did not offending become an offence?

Reading the interview on Vogue.com– part curious, part amused and by the end embarrassed for said interviewee’s toe-curling, inflated sense of self-importance– she plods gracelessly wanting to avoid ‘self-aggrandising’ in that humble-braggy way only a thespian can master, whilst simultaneously declaring her worthy contribution to the world.

Of course.

I sympathise. Sorta. In twenty years’ time she’s going to read that again and realise what a twat she was. Well, maybe. And then it’s so clear, she must have missed the memo, the one highlighting in big BOLD type face us mere mortals are bored stiff being lectured from on high by Hollywood luvvies hogging the moral high ground. What’s the air like up there, anyway? What escapes Mademoiselle Kirke, is the virtue in NOT virtue signalling. It’s something la Swifty has perhaps sussed in her tenured and far more successful career in the spotlight, ahem.

And no wonder she’s kept schtum- when being offended has become a national pastime. We’re offended by what people say, what they don’t say, on behalf of others who really should be offended or even if someone’s not offended enough. It’s exhausting. Maybe, (gasp!) Swifty’s views clash with the rest of the celebrity establishment? YIKES. Stand back. It’s not apathy, but self-preservation. But then again, sometimes it’s ok to be ‘bovvered’, and leave saving the world to others. It’s not for everyone. Not everything has to be a crusade. We have jobs to do, kids to nag, boilers to service, dishes to wash, sheets to change and DNA tests on Jeremy Kyle to watch. No? Well, some of us. And so Miss Kirke, if you can hear us from way up there, sometimes silence really is golden.