We Got the Numbers

How the Liberal Media Use Taylor Swift to Confuse Us

If you follow mainstream media or even independent/conservative outlets that cover culture and entertainment, you’ve been inundated with coverage about Taylor Swift—her Eras tour, her unfortunate football-player boyfriend, and her legions of teenage Swifties. You’ve no doubt heard how she is a savvy businesswoman who has just become a legit billionaire. You maybe even know some of her tunes; she has a knack for writing catchy songs. But what you likely didn’t know is that on June 15, 2024, a new record was set for the largest ticketed non-festival concert in the United States.

This record wasn’t set in one of those entertainment and celebrity mecca cities like Los Angeles or Las Vegas or New York’s Madison Square Garden.

It was set in Texas. In a town you probably never heard of. The record was set in College Station, Texas (population ~128,000).

And, no, Taylor and her Swifties were not the headliners.

The performer was George Strait. The media didn’t bother to pick the story up, but George Strait sold 110,905 tickets for his one-night College Station concert, selling more tickets for one concert than the previous record-holder (the Grateful Dead, Raceway Park, New Jersey, 1977).

George Strait is a quiet Republican, 72 years old, and plays country music.

Nobody in U.S. history has sold more tickets to a single show than George Strait. It happend this month.

Since Taylor Swift is on a nonstop international tour and she’s making bank through cross-promotional merchandise, royalties, and streaming deals, it’s a little hard to figure out how many people attend her performances. Most of the industry outlets that report about Swift tend to focus on the dollars and not the tickets. Concert Pulse said she sold 166,000 tickets for three concerts, which would average at about 55,000 people per show. Billboard wrote about Swift’s “biggest crowd” in Australia as being 80,000 people. Guinness World Records says that on average, Swift draws around 72,000 to an Eras concert. In Los Angeles, she performed for 70,000 people, slightly below average.

Strait sold 110,905 tickets in College Station, Texas.

Ironically, when Taylor Swift was starting out, she opened for George Strait. Now she’s a bigger name than he is—but is it media bloat that’s making her so popular or is it genuine public interest? The fact that Strait endured a Trump-worthy media blackout when he just broke the record for ticket sales tells us something about the dichotomy of the country.

Lefties get the media. Conservatives get the results.

George Strait is very reserved about sharing his political opinions but it has leaked out that he is a Republican. It would be hard to imagine he was anything but Conservative. He was raised Baptist. He’s been married to the same woman for over 50 years. Taylor Swift is young, hip, the woman of a thousand boyfriends who can’t seem to get engaged, and she is running around on social media endorsing Joe Biden. She’s not just a Democrat, she’s a Biden activist. Swift gets the media adoration, but more people will trek out to College Station, Texas to hear George Strait than will ever attend one of her Eras concerts, even when Swift plays glamorous venues in big cities.

This suggests to me that we outnumber them. By “we” I mean people who will vote for Trump and “them” are the folks who will show up to vote blue, no matter who.

The media pumps up the Biden-loving crowd, but Strait is the one who fills the auditorium.

Today (June 27, 2024), George Strait was notified that he will get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2025. Another notable event that won’t make entertainment news. Taylor Swift has not yet been given this honor, although that’s not to say it won’t happen. Instead of reporting on George Strait’s record-breaking ticket sales or his new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the media is telling us that Swift is in London (CNN), that Travis Kelce joined her on stage (Today Show), and that she has a billion dollars (MSN.com). If you want to find out about Strait setting the new record for largest concert audience, you have to go to the Dallas Morning News. You can learn about his star on the Walk of Fame if you follow KKCO, a station in Colorado.

The media adores Swift because she embodies what they like: she’s young, she’s rich, and she has no plans to settle down and start a family. She is vehemently pro-abortion, and she’s had more boyfriends than we can count. A good portion of her music is about falling in love with jerks. Speaking of which, she loves Biden and she is staunchly pro-Democrat. She’s one of those climate change proponents with her own jet. These are the limousine-liberal core values.

Tickets for a Taylor Swift show can run around $250 a pop, about double what George Strait charges. She has the shark-like business instincts of a hard-core capitalist wrapped in the pretty trappings of an elitist Democrat. This likely explains why she’s worth at least $1B and a significant chunk of that has been strategically invested in real estate. Never married and with no children, Swift says that she’s in “no hurry” to get engaged to her current beau. She’s 34 years old and her biological clock does not seem to be of much interest to her. Besides, she doesn’t stay with a boyfriend for more than a year or two, so Kelce’s the one whose clock is ticking.

George Strait, on the other hand, has been married to the same woman since 1971 and he’s worth perhaps $300M. These are not values that liberals can endorse. Why, George Strait even has children and grandchildren. How reckless!

And that brings me to politics.

Why has Taylor Swift swamped news coverage? Even if you don’t really care about her one way or the other, you cannot help to see on-screen images of her jumping and gyrating and prancing around. I’m waiting for Hollywood to launch the All Taylor Swift Channel with 24/7 coverage of her, so that she has her own outlet and can leave me alone. The Eras tour is played up as if it’s the biggest most expensive most amazing concert tour ever to occur. You’d think she was the most popular performer in America.

But you’d be wrong.

She’s richer than George Strait, but she’s not more popular. She just gets way better press because she’s an elitist liberal.

This suggests to me that Conservative people are more numerous than we imagine. Sometimes we let the media deceive us into thinking we’re a small group of people, we’re centered in a few isolated godforsaken outposts in the country. We are few in number, we are weak.

Just because they gag us and turn off our microphone and shout us down does not mean we have no voice.

We’re everywhere. And don’t think Strait’s popularity is limited to Republican states. Strait sells out concerts in uber-liberal Chicago as quickly as in deep-red Texas. But the lefty bias of the mainstream media keeps chasing Taylor Swift and telling us she’s the entertainer who best reflects current American values.

George Strait proves that we’re not the odd people out. We’re not just a handful of old-fashioned individuals trying to hold onto our outmoded values in a world turned radical. We’re not few and far between. We’re everywhere.

We have the numbers, even if the mainstream media prefers to report on the cringy adventures of Travis and Taylor rather than the George Strait blockbuster concert.

We got the numbers.

And if we have the numbers … we have the votes.