UPDATE: Jo Koy is responding to the backlash that steamed from a joke he made at Taylor Swift’s expense.
“There’s no ill intent in that joke,” Koy told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m not saying anything that no one’s saying, and it’s obvious what that joke was.” He went on to add that the anger as a result of his joke is something he doesn’t understand and that it was a joke he and his team worked on for days.
“What hurts the most is me just supporting Taylor. I support her, I love her work. I got nieces that I bought tickets for. […] Mind you, that one was just getting rewritten 50 million times, never ran it through, all the way up until we had to walk out,” Jo, who previously shared he only had 10 days to prepare, noted. “It’s just weird, where do you place it, and we kept hammering it and cutting it down.”
Do you think Swift fans are overreacting?
Fresh off the oped from The New York Times, Taylor Swift fans have set their sites on Jo Koy, who is currently hosting the Golden Globes, which Swift is currently attending.
As most award shows go, the host often attempts to make their opening monologue funny, unfortunately for Koy, his monologue fell flat for many, including the joke he made about Swift.
Before introducing two presenters, Koy targeted Taylor, saying, “We came on after a football doubleheader. The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL… On the Golden Globes we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift.”
Host Jo Koy calls out Taylor Swift at the #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/f4IYuI9jA2
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) January 8, 2024
Swift’s reaction went viral as she slowly picked up her champagne glass to take a sip with little to no expression on her face. While Taylor is often a good sport about situations like this, her fan base called the joke uncalled for.
For years, there has been a group of people who have publicly speculated whether or not Taylor Swift is a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.
These conversations have no real facts attributed to them, just people from the outside looking in and making assumptions about a famous person’s sexuality.
For the most part, Taylor and her camp never paid the conversations any mind. Despite Taylor’s dating history, Taylor let the rumors be just that, rumors.
But now, it seems as though the conversation has gone too far. While the majority of the conversations about her sexuality have mostly stayed on social media and message boards, two days ago, The New York Times made the decision to publish an op-ed speculating on whether or not Taylor Swift is a closeted queer person.
The opinion piece caught the attention of Swift’s camp and her well-known publicist Tree Payne.
A source with knowledge of the situation told CNN that The Times’ decision to publish the piece was in poor taste and unethical. “Because of her massive success, in this moment there is a Taylor-shaped hole in people’s ethics.”
The source continued, saying, “This article wouldn’t have been allowed to be written about Shawn Mendes or any male artist whose sexuality has been questioned by fans. There seems to be no boundary some journalists won’t cross when writing about Taylor, regardless of how invasive, untrue, and inappropriate it is – all under the protective veil of an ‘opinion piece.’”
The opinion piece essentially uses Taylor’s songs, words, and performances to argue whether or not the songwriter has been using her work to tell her fans that she identifies as queer rather than simply a person using her work and her platform to be an ally to a marginalized group of people.
Swift herself briefly addressed those speculations earlier in 2023 when she released 1989 Taylor’s Version. In the prologue, Taylor wrote, “If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that — right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.”
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