Breaking news: Taylor Swift has made it

When you make it onto the shelves at Office Depot in Thomasville...

I cannot confirm this but after a weekend exploratory visit to our national barometer of cultural events — the Office Depot in Thomasville, Georgia, of course — don’t let this get out, but I think singer/songwriter Taylor Swift is on the rise. This kid is going places.

I guess Beyonce is, too. She made it onto the Office Depot shelves, too, for that one book. But Taylor has four separate books, including one about crocheting, I mean, this is more one-sided than the Super Bowl, isn’t it? Taylor rules.

Why the Office Depot? Where else can you find 29 different types of scissors, more folders, calendars, notebooks, pens, chairs, files and every possible kind of office need — even water! So if Taylor can break into a field like that, there’s no stopping her. You heard it here first.

Now, if she could get herself a good man, let’s say an American football player, who’s already pretty wealthy and famous, she wouldn’t have to worry about him just glomming onto her for her money. I don’t know, for example, if she has a lot of money now but you know, she probably could do, like a World Tour or something and make a lot of dough.

To be honest, I’ve sort of lost track of her music once I left the classroom. Her song and really cute video for “Shake It Off” were always fun to use, especially when somebody was ticked off about something. And being high school kids, particularly the girls, they were always upset about something, somebody else’s eyelash length or a comment about an old boyfriend or the Dow Jones Exchange, there was always something that riled them.

I remember once two girls were really arguing with one another — well, it was more bickering, I suppose because you have to make a point in an argument. And it was getting heated so the teacher, good ol’ Mr. Nogo, he called up “Shake It Off” on the White Board and turned the volume up so loud, neither of them could hear the other. I wonder if that would work in Gaza?

I loved her video “Blank Space” as well. The dog, the carving on the tree, the wrecked car, using elements of her own life — or so we suspect — to create her own music, cool.

I haven’t kept up with her music — I’ve been pretty busy and since not being in the classroom, I really didn’t have much reason to listen since being happily married for so long and all, I find myself traveling in different circles than going to luxury boxes at football games. But I know she’s good. A teacher I know really studied her songs, her writing and came away super impressed. She wanted to use them in her class but the kids weren’t all that interested. They preferred rap. Kids, today…

But I thought she was pretty talented, too. If she can just find a way to connect with the young women of America, I mean, we’ll have to see how it goes because we’re a pretty divided country right now.

If she can do it, though, it could really help us out — as a nation, couldn’t it? But you’ve got to read the signs, folks! Hey, if you’re getting four books and a calendar inside the OFFICE DEPOT in Thomasville, Georgia, doesn’t that tell you a lot.? Hasn’t she crossed the Success Equator? It’s just awesome.

And, you know, one thing about America, we support our women! True, it did take us 133 years to give our women the right to vote but heck in some countries, like Iran, they can’t even go out on the street and show their face. We’re way ahead of them. And you know, in America, women almost make as much per hour as men do, working the same job. That’s pretty great, isn’t it? We do let them work, right?

So when you see a young, attractive, intelligent, progressive, kind-hearted, independently wealthy woman who writes her own songs, performs her own concerts, reaches out to her fans the way I’m told she does, you can’t help but root for her. And seeing her getting stuff in Office Depot, I bet she never dreamed of that, being born in Pennsylvania, the state where they have The City of Brotherly Love.

What if Taylor started dating a football player, say one who plays for a team that might have to play the team from The City of Brotherly Love in like some really big game, the fans of The City Of Brotherly Love’s team would probably cheer and root for her, right? Being a young woman doing such great things, right? Who would boo that? A Chiefs’ fan? Shame on you!

Someday, I’m not sure when, we’ll see a woman run for a high office, maybe even President. And geez, what would that say to countries like Iran?

Ooops! Correction! I just read somewhere that we already had two women run for President. I must have missed that. One of them got, like, way more votes than the guy who won. But she didn’t win? That doesn’t sound like the way we do things in America, does it?

There was a long time ago that this singer, little dwarfy guy, was kind of concerned the way the country was going. We were mad at the government and there was corruption and we were in a war instead of helping another country stay in a war, and he wrote a song where he reached out to this legendary old-time baseball player who he thought could be a symbol to bring the country together.

“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”

And I guess the dwarfy guy misread his symbol because when the symbol heard it — not sure he actually heard the song, not his kind of music — when he heard OF it, his first instinct was to sue. Really.

There is a movie out now about another guy, not as dwarfy as the DiMaggio guy, but a guy who genuinely seemed to get a lot of the country to go along with or like or support the kinds of things he said. He wasn’t like overthrowing the government or anything, just getting people to think for themselves and to truly believe in freedom and justice and fair play, the kind of country you’d want to believe in.

And the movie’s gone over big. Really big. Like people really miss those days and want to go back. And the guy is alive but really old now. He can’t really do anything to grab us again.

But, you know, maybe this Taylor Swift could? It seems like there’s not much we all can agree on. Maybe we can agree on her.

It only makes sense that some day, America is going to say, “We need to give women a chance. Let her run for President or something.”

She could give concerts in the Rose Garden instead of pardons. That’d be cool.