So do we blame Kanye West, or the people who encouraged him? West is a rapper. That, in and of itself, isn’t bad. There are plenty of what might be called erudite rappers, although I know the phrase must sound like an oxymoron to quite a few people.
But West is a rapper who, by his own admission, doesn’t read. So he just might not be the most well-informed guy in the world.
Actually, I’m being much too kind in my assessment of West. President Obama probably pegged the rapper more accurately, when he dismissed West as “a jackass.”
That was after West interrupted country singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at an awards show. The award, West trumpeted, should rightly have gone to singer Beyonce.
So what’s West’s latest contribution guaranteed to make him a charter inductee into the People Who Made the Worst Quotes Ever Hall of Fame?
People hate him like he’s Adolf Hitler, West contends. (See Obama quote above before you roll your eyes.)
West was performing in England. You know, the country that Hitler’s Luftwaffe decimated during that thing called World War II. Probably not the best place to dredge up references to Der Fuhrer.
“I walk through the hotel and I walk down the street,” West lamented to the limeys, “and people look at me like I’m [bleeping] insane, like I’m Hitler.”
The reaction to West’s rant was quick and predictable. “Foot in Mouth Disease Strikes Again” read a headline on the Web site eonline.com. West also took quite a bit of heat after he inappropriately interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech.
Oh, what a difference six years makes! Does anyone remember such a reaction after West blurted out in 2005 that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”?
Yeah, I kind of thought not. Actually, West’s comment implying former President George W. Bush is a racist — made in the wake of Hurricane Katrina — was actually praised.
“That young man spoke truth to power,” I heard one commentator on a talk radio show that targets an African-American demographic say.
Ah, that cringe-inducing, infuriating, annoying phrase “spoke truth to power”! Is there anybody else as sick of hearing that as I am?
It was especially nettlesome in regard to West’s remarks about Bush. What West said wasn’t the truth; it was an opinion, and an uninformed one at that, coming as it did from “Mr. I Don’t Read Books” himself.
Don’t you worry about people who elevate their own opinions — or the opinions of others they happen to agree with — to the level of “truth”?
West — and the people who praised him — denied facts that were right before their eyes. Bush had one of the most diverse presidential Cabinets in history.
Bush appointed not only the first black secretary of state, but also the first two black secretaries of state. He was the first president to put an African American in the line of succession for the presidency.
That mattered not to West, or other Bush bashers. With his elders in the black American body politic urging him on, praising him for his naked race-baiting attack, West’s ego — already large enough to have parts of it detected by the Hubble Space Telescope in far-away galaxies — probably grew even bigger.
So he no doubt felt on solid ground when he interrupted Swift’s speech. His ego wouldn’t allow him to contain himself in England, when he said that people look at him like he’s Hitler.
“One day the light will shine through and people will understand everything I ever did,” West told the crowd of Brits that had the bad taste and even worse misfortune to listen to him.
Oh, we understand, Kanye. We understand only too well.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
