Roots, Toots n' Hoots Blog

Boehner can't shake off Swift

Jeffrey Remz  |  January 16, 2015

Whether she wanted to or not, Taylor Swift is now part of the debate about education thanks to House Speaker John Boehner.

Boehner - or more precisely his digital staffers Caleb Smith and Mike Ricci - put together a piece for Boehner's web site, "12 Taylor Swift GIFS for you."

Now, Swift has not been known to be particularly political unless her emphasis on building community qualifies. Well, she did perform at the Republican National Convention in 2008.

The 12 GIFS was in response to President Obama's call last week for free community college education for millions of Americans. In each of the 12 points, Swift is shown as part of the statement.

For example, in the first one, Smith and Ricci wrote, "It sounded exciting at first..." with the video beneath showing Swift dancing around like a whirling dervish with her mouth open.

The piece goes on from there to show Swift rubbing her chin with the line "But then, we got to thinking..."

" Turns out...when President Obama said "free" what he meant was "60 Billion dollars over 10 years." Not even all the Taylor Swift album sales in the world would cover that bill. "

The piece also referenced a few Swift songs. With a part of her "Shake It Off" video playing, Boehner's people wrote, "Still, 60 billion dollars is a lot of money...you can't just shake it off."

"And the president knows full well there's no blank space in the taxpayer's checkbook" with another video of Swift beneath that. (Boehner tweeted about there being no "blank space in the taxpayer's checkbook" and "$60 billion for 'free" college? Can't just shake that off" early Friday afternoon as well.)

Now it appears that Swift and sidekick Ed Sheeran are clapping in support of the comment, "Wait, wouldn't it be better if we just worked together to lower costs for folks across the board and improve our children's education? "

Somehow, I'm not so sure Swift is in agreement there.

This is not, not will it be the last time, that musicians have their likenesses and songs expropriated by politicians. There's no word on how Swift herself feels about this as she could not be reached.

Boehner, who heads one of the lowest ranked institutions out there - Congress - could do worse than align himself with Swift. But I suspect that Swift and her millions of followers ain't none too thrilled about it. The whole thing is actually rather silly, laughable and not very funny.

You can't shake that off either.