Lovely Couple, Why Not?

They Make Vivek Feel Excluded

A Fairy Story. Red Lips and Tight End. I am happy for that couple. Never bumped into either of them, in person. (The closest combination I can come up with, from people I have bumped into, though never together, would be Loretta Lynn and Muhammad Ali, which would never have happened, though who knows.) But I have no doubt I would like them both, Travis and Taylor. Maybe her a little more. But I think I speak for my wife and I both when I say we would welcome a double-date, our treat, some time when we're all a little less viral.

            Who doesn't like a big-time fresh-retro love story? Cheerleader and football hero. Extrapolate that to where she provides cheer to all the women in the world, and he is, at least arguably, the best pass-catching tight end of all time. Which is to say, she is golden, forget about it, and he is no brawny blocker (as tight ends used to be) but a snatcher of pigskin by dint of athleticism and imagination: finds a way to make a play. Football people back in the day said Muhammad Ali would have made a great tight end. If he'd been more team-oriented. Which -- wait a minute -- we can't be sure he wouldn't have been. A great defensive back, rope-a-dope-on-the-run . . .

            Sorry. If we can find our way back to "finds a way to make a play" --  Travis  apparently found one, coolly enough, in this relationship -- a relationship now visibly endorsed, in a beyond-cool, jumping-up-and-down-in-a-private-box way, by family and friends. You can see them jump up and down in video. Can you say you wouldn't like to be there?

            I'm not sure he's good enough for her. In post-game interviews, he seems a little . . . I don't want to say "thick." Certainly less than lyrical. But let us remember that a football player right after a game is on the verge of sinking down into "OH FUCK I hurt."

            She seems to be sure. And that is what counts. So let's don't let my paternal instincts kick in here.

            Nor, most certainly, should we let anybody's MAGA instincts kick in.

            Vivek Ramaswamy, formerly a marginally real person, calls Taylor and Kelce "an artificially culturally propped-up couple."

            Silver-tongue devil, that one. "An artificially culturally propped-up . . . "

            If I may state a principle:

            If you're trying to cast doubt on a love story, don't jam together two -ly words and an ed-up one.

            "An artificially culturally propped-up . . . "

            That is the least effective counter-romantic expression I have encountered recently -- and I say that after having watched, for some damn reason, the movie Saltburn.

            In fact I would toss Vivek -- not ethnically -- into the Saltburn universe instead of the universe I home into in, in which Ms. Shake That Everything has every right to hit it off with Mr. Touchdown.

            And you know both Taylor and Travis see Donny Trump as the asshole bully who has some kind of problem -- what is his problem? -- that makes him want to interfere with just regular kids by banging their locker doors shut on their heads.