Stupidest news story of the last few days has been the one about the guy who bought at auction a guitar signed by Taylor Swift, which he then immediately proceeded to smash to bits.
Gary Estes, 67, says he paid $4,000 for the instrument at the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner in Waxahachie, an annual charity event that benefits agricultural-based education efforts for local youths.
When he went to get the guitar, Estes took a hammer to it in a moment captured on video that has gone viral — but he insisted he has no will against Swift.
“There was nothing malicious or anything about it,” Estes told NBC News on Tuesday. “It was just a joke at an auction that we had to raise money for kids, right? And that’s all it was. There was nothing mean about it, nothing bad about it. It was just a joke that they were making up on the stage, and we just followed through with a joke.”
uctioneer Craig Meier, a spokesperson for the event, said the guitar-smashing played well in the room.”It was a funny, light-hearted thing. I know maybe it seemed to be malicious, but everybody was laughing,” Meier said. “There were people there, at the time, who joked around that he’s mad because he doesn’t know how to play the guitar.”
But after having talked to the man, Meier said it was an obvious political statement.
“Taylor Swift, it became a political thing, and that was kind of the gist of it, just a light-hearted bit of a dig at Taylor for coming out politically and entertainers using their influence to influence politics,” Meier said.
Obviously the only people laughing at this bullshit are laughing at brother Gary, of course. Especially now that there appears to be a twist in the tale:
The guitar supposedly signed by Taylor Swift that was sold for $4,000 to a Texas man who immediately smashed it with a hammer wasn’t authentic, a source close to Swift’s merch company told HuffPost on Tuesday.
The source said an authentic Swift-signed guitar would have come with a certificate of authenticity, which Swift’s team doesn’t believe the auctioned guitar has. In any case, they said, Swift didn’t sign it.
Good grief. There is, of course, a kind of magical thinking at the heart of this sort of idiocy, I’ve noticed it for a couple of decades now; it’s like particularly stupid conservatives (I can’t think of any comparable left-leaning examples) think there’s some sort of cosmic balance they can affect with moronic shit like this. As if this actually affects Swift in any way. Oh well, at least the charity got four grand, and Taylor got something to laugh at if she was paying any attention at all…
