Taylor Swift and Trump Culture

Taylor Swift’s new National Anthem “Look What You Made Me Do” is pure Trump-era pop art.

- Mark Harris

After Hurricane Harvey made landfall but just before the floodwaters began to rise in Houston, a large portion of America gave its attention to a boxing match unsentimentally dubbed the “Money Fight.” Even in different times and under better circumstances, the pay-per-view face-off between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor was never going to be the kind of event that would inspire sportswriters to wax poetic about the “sweet science” or move Joyce Carol Oates to add a new chapter to On Boxing. Mayweather is a convicted abuser of women, McGregor a preening race-baiter, and they walked away from the weekend with at least a combined $130 million. It simply wasn’t possible to celebrate their showdown except in the most nihilistic, “lol nothing matters” way. But the news from Texas—not just what was happening but the certainty that it would only get worse— lent an additional while-Rome-burns quality to the spectacle. Actually, Rome always feels like it’s burning if you install an emperor whose sole delight is fiddling with his phone. (And in fairness to Nero, some historians say that after the fire, at least he allowed his palace to be used as a shelter for the displaced, so he wins this round on points.)