There was a time when I thought Country-cross-over singer Taylor Swift could do no wrong. She seemed to instinctively make all the right career choices: her music was innocuous and fun, her taste in clothes almost continuously spot on, and she carried herself particularly well in public; always recognizing her status as a teen role model. Suddenly, in one moment, Swift brushed all that away. At the televised New York City Victoria’s Secret “Fashion” Show, Taylor sang, while remaining barely dressed herself, as a bevy of depilitated and silicone-pumped models cavorted on stage. Historically, over the past few years, this event has become the splashiest main-stream incursion of soft-core pornography into the American popular consciousness. It’s essentially a big dirty book come to life. And, in the middle of the whole spectacle stood Swift; at one point striking the most tasteless cord of the night: reenacting a faux lesbian embrace with an embarrassingly exposed model. While it didn’t reach the level of crudeness displayed during the recent antics of Miley Cyrus, on that point, its all the more dangerous - because, the pornographic imagery co-opted by Swift is less erotically aggressive while veiled in an imaginary mask of legitimacy and corporate infrastructure.