Do you hear that, guys? Love is in the air! Because this past weekend, we just witnessed one of the biggest, most extravagant, most overblown budget weddings in the world, or rather, we didn't see that much of it, honestly. Kind of a private event for the wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, which, probably because we saw so little of the whole thing, is because Taylor and Travis are waiting for their opportunity to print this shit out on Blu-ray, or are waiting to sell the streaming rights to Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon, because apparently on the inside of this thing there was a no recording devices rule, you even had to sign an NDA.

Also, allegedly, Taylor and Travis had a small legal ceremony performed before this whole thing. So what just happened at Madison Square Garden over 4th of July weekend in New York City was just for kicks, apparently. But I'm not here to begrudge any celebrity their wish or desire to have a party around what is supposed to be one of the most beautiful days of anyone's life. Of course not.

That would be ridiculous. But in most cases, I would kind of anticipate that somebody of Taylor Swift's visibility would rather have or do something that was like maybe a little bit more private or out of the way, especially since she and everybody who was on the very celebrity-studded guest list for this wedding could afford to be at or take part in such an event. But instead, Taylor Swift and Travis decided to make this event something that would also impact the lives of many New Yorkers in the immediate area. Again, having this event down at Madison Square Garden and having to have a police presence on site in order to shut down numerous streets in the immediate area.

As a New Yorker, I genuinely don't care about this wedding. Congrats or whatever. What I do care about is them shutting down entire blocks and small businesses that rely on foot traffic being the ones to take the hit. Restaurants, bars, bodegas, these aren't large corporations.

A slow weekend will hurt their business. And again, let's not also ignore the fact that this had to be done on 4th of July weekend of all times. As if people wouldn't be out here going places and maybe celebrating other things. And as I said, they've been giving us the runaround and telling us the bar would be able to stay open.

And now, as of last night, we were shut and we were warned security would be even worse today, which it is now. There's more fences and more cops and more gates. I had to climb over barricades to get down the street to get to my own bar. We've got World Cup games.

I have reservations for people that are supposed to be here having lunch and dinner. And the only reason I'm here is to make phone calls to tell people they can't show up today. But look, there were still numerous things about the event that were pretty interesting or made it kind of seem like it went off without a hitch. Apparently, Paul McCartney was there not just to attend, but perform because I guess he played I Want to Hold Your Hand for the first time since the 1960s.

Man, he was really holding on to that for like the most important possible time. Interestingly, though, these names and also those in attendance such as Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, all of this isn't really what's been eating up the majority of the discourse around this event, shockingly. In fact, very little discourse has even been had around the millions of dollars that Travis and Taylor apparently donated in the lead up to the event. A bulk of the controversy seems to surround a Stephen J.

Dimitriou, an executive chair over at Amentum Holdings Incorporated, which is a Fortune 500 company that works apparently a boatload of different government contracts. On the front page of their website, you can see them talking about roles they played with NASA or in our nuclear infrastructure, which are cool and fine things that our government does. And it makes total sense that a contracting company like Amentum would be involved with them so long as they were hired to do so. But again, given that this company does pretty much work broadly across different sectors of our government, of course, the many contract agreements they hold with the United States also involve many of the bad things our government does.

Because, of course, Amentum is also doing ICE facility contract work for the U. S. government as well. This is pretty much like the number one problem with capitalism at the end of the day, because like there is truly no ethical framework to it as a system.

And the companies that function within it most successfully often don't really care about what they're profiting off of so long as they're profiting. So of course, a company with the background of Amentum would say, yeah, sure, throw an ICE detention facility contract on top of the pile. So what?

And even if in the grander scheme of things, this is just one single facility in a greater number of contracts this company holds, this particular invite and Stephen's presence seems kind of below somebody like Taylor Swift, whose audience constantly builds up her progressive bona fides, shutting down any conversation that dare question her status as a billionaire, as a member of the capitalist class portraying her as this down-to-earth feminist-minded empath who wouldn't dare align with the current administration in any way whatsoever. And yet, a capitalist ghoul like this somehow made it within the building of her wedding with his significant other.

Now, in light of photos of Stephen being plastered across the internet on platforms like Page Six, Swifties have been desperately debating and trying to tell people that he was not there at the wedding at all. And in fact, it may have instead been his son who was in attendance, Stephen J. Demetrio Jr., who is an Ohio state representative, a Republican Ohio state representative, which I'm not sure is much better.

Given his voting record, given his affiliations with the Trump administration, honestly, I don't really think that's an upgrade. On one level, I can try to be as charitable as possible and say, hey, listen, this is a huge, massive event spearheaded by two of the most famous people in America currently. Of course, this sort of thing is going to attract pretty much everybody and anybody who is able to get in the doors. But simultaneously, when you go over the list of those who were formally invited to this wedding, it does seem to be super duper purposeful in terms of like who was there and why they were there and what sort of connection they shared to Taylor and Travis personal or otherwise through the industries that they operate in.

And even if this connection happened at the end of the day, due to some kind of like personal connection or even a friend of a friend, again, it does sort of betray the portrait that Taylor's fans often try to paint of her on the Internet. And look, I'm not here to argue or try to make the case that Taylor is like actually evil or, a secret Republican or something like that. Personally, I don't think there's enough evidence there to make those claims currently. But what I do think is that her success and her money and her many connections through entertainment and otherwise pretty much shield her from the political realities of the world that we exist in right now.

And she really only truly cares about this stuff insofar as it impacts her personally or maybe impacts her PR image. Hence why Taylor was not so vocal when it came to her music being used in various ICE videos via the Trump administration, when honestly, it was not that hard for so many other artists to say something when their music was used in the same way.

Those are my thoughts on this currently. Let me know what yours are in the comments.

Y'all are the best.