Dick Hubert’s Worldview: Taylor Swift’s 2024 tour stops: visiting an ideal friendly world
January 3, 2024 at 11:55 p.m.
Calling all pessimists: is there anything to look forward to in 2024?
YES!
We should all be cheering Taylor Swift’s 2024 international ERAS concert tour—the best example of American world cultural influence today.
How so, you ask?
Here’s my cultural/political analysis of each of Swift’s 2024 tour dates (as listed on her web site).
*Feb. 7, 8, 9, 10 at the Tokyo Dome. Japan is America’s most important Asian ally. Japan (through Nippon Steel) is now the owner of our most valuable industrial core company, US Steel. Japan is also an American military base location of immense strategic importance. A great location for the 2024 tour to begin.
*Feb. 16, 17, 18 at Melbourne Australia’s Cricket Grounds; Feb 23, 24, 25, 26 in Sydney Australia’s Accor Stadium. Australia is our most historic Asia-Pacific ally, through the 20th and 21st centuries. They’re a key military and trading partner and now share through AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) nuclear-powered submarines.
*March 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 at Singapore’s National Stadium: How can I not cheer this? Singapore is the business capital of the Asia-Pacific region and a longtime American friend (we’ve trained and protected their Air Force from the year Singapore became an independent country). Swift will have a wonderful reception there, and her fans throughout Asia will be able to fly to the best airport in the world, Changi.
*May 9, 10, 11, 12 at Paris, France’s La Defense Arena. What else can I say except “Lafayette, we are here!” (With a credit to U.S. World War I Colonel W.H. Allaire).
*May 17, 18, 29 at Stockholm, Sweden’s Friends Arena. Taylor will LOVE Stockholm and the Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and Finns who make it to her concert will love her! And they’re all now part of NATO!
*May 24, 25 at Lisbon, Portugal’s Estadio De Luz. Another NATO stop.
*May 30 at Madrid, Spain’s Estadio Santiago Bernabeu. Again, a NATO stop.
*June 2, 3 at Lyon, France’s Groupana Stadium: There’s clearly a huge fan base to be satisfied in France, and they can’t all get to Paris. France is a NATO stop and friend of Ukraine.
*June 7, 8, 9 at Edinburgh, Scotland’s Scottish Murrayfield Stadium. The Royals summer at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Will Prince William and Princess Kate (let alone King Charles) make their way to Swift’s concert? Edinburgh is also the UK’s top NATO naval base. Great booking.
*June 13, 14, 15 at Liverpool, England’s Anfield Stadium. How fitting that the Beatles’ hometown will be cheering an American pop icon.
*June 21, 22, 23 at London, England’s Wembley Stadium. That’s where the NFL has the occasional league game. Fill Wembley and you rock the UK. Will Travis Kelce be there? (The BBC will go nuts.) The UK is our 20th and 21st century #1 ally.
*June 28, 29, 30 at Dublin, Ireland’s Aviva Stadium. That’s a Swiftian salute to President Biden’s ancestral country.
*July 4, 5, 6 at Amsterdam, Netherlands’ Johan Cruijff Stadium. How fitting that Swift would celebrate July 4 in the Netherlands, one of the United States’ oldest and best friends. A NATO member and more. Donating their fighter planes to Ukraine. And at a stadium named after one of Holland’s biggest soccer stars. (Will Travis be jealous? There’s not yet a Kelce Stadium!)
*July 13, 14 at Milan, Italy’s San Siro Stadium. (Swift ignores Venice and Rome and Palermo?) Italy is a NATO partner and supporter of Ukraine.
*July 17, 18. 19 at Gelsenkirchen, Germany’s Veltin’s Arena. Go ahead. Look up Gelsenkirchen on the map. I did. And I still don’t understand why Swift chose this site. It’s 63 miles north of Cologne. According to my Google search, “Gelsenkirchen is a municipality of superlatives, many of them negative: These days it's known as the city with the lowest average income anywhere in Germany (€16,203), greatest unemployment (15 percent) and highest percentage of children living in poverty (41 percent).” At least Germany is in NATO. Any devoted Swifties who read this column may be able to tell me why Swift chose three dates there.
*July 23, 24 at Hamburg Germany’s Volksparkstadion. Big city. Big fan base. NATO partner.
*July 27, 28: Munich, Germany’s Olympiastadion. Again, big city. Big fan base. American troops and their families based in Germany, and not on duty, may be able to make these concert dates.
*Aug. 1, 2 at Warsaw, Poland’s PGENarodowy. That’s about as close to Ukraine as you can get without being shot at by the Russians, unless there’s an errant missile. NATO country. Ukraine supporter. Credit Swift with a gutsy booking.
*Aug. 8, 9, 10 at Vienna, Austria’s Ernst-Happel-Stadion. Next door to Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia. Great location to raise the American pop star flag. Will Melania be unhappy that Taylor ignored her native country?
*Aug. 15, 16, 17, 19, 20: Back to London’s Wembley Stadium. Rocking the UK again. If the Royal family couldn’t make Edinburgh, now’s the time to motor over from Buckingham Palace. Travis Kelce may be there, too.
*Nov. 14, 15, 16, 21, 22 at Toronto, Canada’s Rogers Centre. Swift listened to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who appealed to her in a Tweet: “It's me, hi. I know places in Canada would love to have you. So, don't make it another cruel summer. We hope to see you soon." As explained in a Google search, “If you're not in the know, those words are references to lyrics from Swift's songs "Anti-Hero," "I Know Places" and "Cruel Summer."
*Dec. 6, 7, 8 at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada’s BC Place. PM Trudeau has street cred now with Canadian Swifties, not to mention those just across the border in the USA Pacific Northwest (hello, Washington State!).
And what about the rest of the world in 2024?
Here’s where Swift decided NOT to go:
*Early reports had her going to Thailand, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates. They didn’t make the cut (I have reasons, all speculative.)
*Swift totally avoided getting near the Indian sub-continent (Pakistan and India, where women are still second-class citizens); the Arab world (ditto on the treatment of women); the entire African continent; and the Middle East (too dangerous—Swift would be a target for anti-female terrorists).
*Just for reminders, in the Western Hemisphere, Swift’s tour stopped in 2023 in Mexico City, Mexico; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo in Brazil.
Not commenting so far on Swift’s world tour: US Secretary of State Tony Blinken. He must be jealous of the countries she can afford to ignore. In his portfolio, he must be ready to go—everywhere.
The Harrison supervisor’s election:
a gigantic legal mess
The voters in Harrison must be infuriated.
When last I wrote about the supervisor’s race in our Dec. 15, 2023 issue, State Supreme Court Judge Lewis Lubell had examined all the absentee ballots, counted them, and declared Republican Ron Belmont had 2,119 votes to incumbent Republican Rich Dionisio's 1,987 votes.
That should have been the end of the discussion.
But peculiar legal challenges remained.
Incumbent Rich Dionisio has been elected Harrison’s supervisor for now while the appeals process drags on, potentially for weeks.By File Photo
Dionisio’s attorney John Ciampoli claimed a 2022 Town law aimed squarely at Belmont prevented anyone from being supervisor more than five terms.
Belmont’s attorney Jeff Binder claimed the law could not be applied retroactively but only in a forward fashion, meaning that Belmont would be starting the first of what could be five terms in 2024.
Plus there was the whole question of name stamps (see my Dec. 15 column for an explanation of that).
Then everyone went home.
BUT, on Dec. 22, just before Christmas, Lubell delivered a surprise.
He said the Harrison Town law mandated Dionisio the winner and ordered the County Board of Elections to declare him the supervisor. He also declared that Mark Jaffe, the Democratic candidate, who came in third in the vote count, was not eligible for a head-to-head new election with Dionisio if all the Belmont votes were disqualified.
And now come the legal challenges.
Belmont’s current attorney Adam Bradley (Binder went on vacation to Argentina over the Christmas-New Year’s holidays and turned off his cell phone) confirmed to me that he is filing an appeal of Lubell’s decision with the Supreme Court Appellate Division, Second Department, on Jan. 9. Dionisio’s response is due Jan. 16.
As for Jaffe, his appeal for a fresh election (if Belmont’s appeal is turned down) is based on his demand that those 2,119 Belmont voters who didn’t want Dionisio have the right to have their voices heard in a two-person (Jaffe-Dionisio) race.
So right now, Dionisio is Harrison’s elected supervisor as the appeals process could drag on for weeks.
And the real losers so far? Harrison’s voters.
How awful is that.
Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.
Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.
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