Note to future guests of PBS NewsHour: Don't cite Taylor Swift songs to anchor your political analysis.
When the Washington Post's Karen Tumulty and NPR's Tamara Keith appeared on Monday's show to discuss GOP presidential hopefuls' criticisms of Hillary Clinton's campaign, Keith summed up Clinton's response to the attacks with "haters gonna hate" — an old phrase that was recently heard (repeatedly) by American audiences in Taylor Swift's popular 2014 single "Shake It Off":
'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off
Heart-breakers gonna break, break, break, break, break
And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off
Host Gwen Ifill (who some might argue was being a bit of a hater herself) told Keith in no uncertain terms to cut it out.
Here's how the conversation, which starts around the 4:50 mark of the video above, happened:
Karen Tumulty: The second thing is there were a lot of lines kind of mocking the rough spots of her rollout, lots of jokes about Chipotle, lots of talk about Benghazi. But you did get a sense that the Republicans understand that running against a woman is a little bit of a different endeavor, so they have to be tough enough to rev up their base, but not looking like they are piling on her in a way that is going to offend centrist voters and women who see this as sexist.
Gwen Ifill: And the interesting response this afternoon from Hillary Clinton, who decided to talk to reporters, knowing there would be questions about these questions. And her response was, I don't know what they would talk about if I weren't in the race.
Tamara Keith: It was sort of "haters going to hate," to quote Taylor Swift.
Gwen Ifill (laughing): Never do that again.
Her response was clearly all in good fun. But hopefully the "haters gonna hate" reference isn't really banned from the nightly news program, because there will no doubt be many more opportunities to make use of Swift's wisdom between now and the 2016 election.
If you managed to miss it, here's the video for "Shake It Off" (which Vox's Kelsey McKinney has argued is a "perfect" song):
