Everyone’s in a tizzy over a photo of Taylor Swift dancing next to a dude sporting a swastika.
Last weekend, Swift attended singer Katy Perry’s birthday paint party where guests splattered their clothes with various words, squiggly lines and symbols. Somehow, the squeaky clean Swift found herself dancing next to a guy with a bright red swastika painted on his chest.
“Taylor Swift Parities With Nazis,” read one headline at Celebjihad.com. To add insult to injury, the Web site referred to Swift as a “blond hair Aryan super race beauty.”
But Blackbook put it best when they described the incident as deliciously shocking because Swift is “who we love best as a victim and not as a woman who can probably hold her liquor.” At last month’s MTV Video Music Awards, Swift was famously upstaged—and insulted—by Kanye West, who jumped on stage during her acceptance speech for Best Female Video and blurted out that Beyonce deserved it more.
“It’s backlash season for Swift now,” Rohin Guha wrote on the Blackbook blog. “As a celebrity whose star is sparkling especially brightly following some incident that we’ve long forgotten that left her looking a lot like those wounded kittens on those Sarah McLachlan-ASPCA commercials, any measure of swastika-proximity is not advisable.”
So why was Swift dancing next to a parading paint Nazi? And who is this guy?
One blogger speculated that it was all a silly, let-the-good-times-roll joke: “This guy looks Jewish, so I’ve decided he’s Jewish and therefore is just some nerd who does stuff like this for attention.”
Sadly, judging by this photo, the Nazi in question does look a lot like a Jewish boy.
Someone ought to call the “Inglourious Basterds” and tell them someone needs a skinning. Or at least, a paint lesson.
UPDATE:
A reader drew my attention to a TMZ update on the Swift swastika scandal. Turns out, swastika guy is A.J. English, and he says Swift couldn’t possibly have noticed the chest-encompassing symbol on his shirt when he pulled her close for a pic. English says the swastika started as an “X” but told TMZ it was “perverted” throughout the night. Either Swift needs glasses or she can’t hold her liquor after all. What do you think?
ANOTHER UPDATE: A colleague just emailed that some people are saying the “JH” on Swift’s dress stands for “Jew Hater.” Outrageous! As much as the world loves to aggrandize Jewish victimhood, this is ridiculous. In all likelihood, “JH” stands for Julianne Hough, Swift’s friend and fellow songstress, whom she was photographed with at the party. But like my colleague says, “It’s Hollywood! Why let truth get in the way?”
