For alt-right web producers it's springtime for Hitler and Taylor Swift
Also in Tattle: Is Captain America the man for GLAAD, Hulk Hogan and Jon Stewart
AS READING native Taylor Swift has matured as an artist, there was no doubt she would one day outgrow her tween/teen fan base.
One of the groups seemingly adding to the multitudes of Swifties is the alt-right.
Yes, the alt-right (a/k/a witty, white supremacists for the social-media age, or the guys who wear white sheets made from 600-thread-count genuine Egyptian cotton) have chosen Taylor as their "Aryan goddess" icon, reports the Washington Post.
The Post says the elevation of Swift began three years ago when teen Emily Pattinson used Pinterest to combine pics of Taylor with quotes from Hitler.
BuzzFeed said the whole thing was a joke.
Team Taylor was not laughing.
Her lawyer J. Douglas Baldridge sent Pinterest a letter, saying in part:
"The association of Ms. Swift with Adolf Hitler undisputedly is 'harmful,' 'abusive,' 'ethnically offensive,' 'humiliating to other people,' 'libelous,' and no doubt 'otherwise objectionable.' "
Baldridge wanted the images taken down, but Pinterest refused, citing parody laws. From Pinterest, the Mein Taylor images made their way to the alt-right site, The Daily Stormer, founded by self-proclaimed white supremacist Andrew Anglin after he realized white supremacist web users had the same short attention spans as everyone else on the Internet.
Goodbye long, turgid prose extolling the virtues of whiteness. Hello short, pithy, bursts of anti-Semitism and racism and headlines like "Trump: No Plans to Go to Jew-Israel Because Voters Don't Want It."
"My ideology is very simple," Anglin told the Los Angeles Times. "I believe white people deserve their own country."
And obviously their own Judy Garland.
That's Taylor Swift. They love her almost as much as they love The Donald.
"Taylor Swift, Avatar of European Imperialism" is a Daily Stormer headline found by the Washington Post. There's also "Aryan Goddess Taylor Swift: Nazi Avatar of the White European People" and "Aryan Goddess Taylor Swift Accused of Racism for Behaving Like an Ape in a Music Video."
"It's incredible, really, that she's surrounded by these filthy, perverted Jews, and yet she remains capable of exuding 1950s purity, femininity and innocence," Anglin said. "She is the anti-Miley."
Actual Miley Cyrus was probably never so thrilled.
Actual Taylor has had no comment.
Except for "the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate."
GLAAD for a hashtag
Captain America snags a kiss from Sharon Carter in the latest Marvel pic, Captain America: Civil War, but some fans are wishing it was from someone else - specifically, a man.
On Tuesday, #GiveCaptainAmericaABoyfriend became a top trending topic on Twitter, which advocacy group GLAAD says is a sign that audiences are eager for significant LGBT characters in their superhero movies (and that men were mad #GiveElsaAGirlfriend beat them to the punch). This comes less than a month after GLAAD issued its annual studio responsibility index, finding that Walt Disney Studios, which owns Marvel and Pixar and Star Wars, included zero LGBT characters in its films last year.
Tuesday's trending was powered by both advocates and dissenters. Scores of Twitter users suggested that Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) be paired up with his old friend Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), who has been a significant player in all three Captain America films. But other tweets decried the rallying call, stressing that the character has never been gay in the comic-book source material.
Just because he's called the Star-Spangled Avenger don't expect Captain America: BrokeBucky Mountain any time soon.
Wouldn't it make more sense to make the Fantastic Four's Human Torch gay? He's already got the porn star name Johnny Storm and his catchphrase is "Flame on!"
TATTBITS
* A Florida judge on Wednesday denied Gawker's motion for a new trial in the Hulk Hogan sex-video case and won't reduce a $140 million jury verdict.
Judge Pamela Campbell did not elaborate on her decision, the latest development in a years-long legal fight between Hogan (a/k/a Terry Bollea), and the gossip website.
Hogan lawyer David Houston released a statement saying that the judge's decision reflects that "Gawker has failed and continues to fail in recognizing their obligation to Bollea for their reprehensible behavior and method of doing what they call journalism."
* Doreen Weston, the former owner of Lilly, a horse adopted by Jon Stewart and his wife, says the animal was not shot with paintballs but was instead used as a canvas at children's finger-painting parties.
Oh, OK then. Were the parties' piñatas actual donkeys?
-Daily News wire services
contributed to this report.
215-854-5678 @DNTattle