Kanye West Is Forcing Liberals To Check Their Artistic Privilege

Given my basic political and moral worldview, the idea that I had to agree with an artist to enjoy their art was never an option, because of how dominant liberalism is in the entertainment industry. While I don’t actively dislike Kanye’s music—my wife had to remind me that we have the 12-inch of “Gold Digger” buried in our very large record collection—I’ve never much cared for his music, either. And I don’t feel any different now that I know Kanye West could cause African-Americans to rethink whether electoral allegiance to the Democratic party is in their own best interests, or that I happen to think Kanye is essentially correct when he tweeted “Obama was in office for eight years and nothing in Chicago changed.”

It’s not just that the assumption that all your favorite artists are reflect your own values makes you entitled and intolerant. It’s that it dulls your critical faculties. The idea of objective criticism is non-starter when you assume that any art that doesn’t result in personal affirmation is somehow bad. And to the extent that art must be challenged in the instances where it does inject dangerous values into the cultural bloodstream, that’s hard to do when you think it might otherwise be advancing political goals that you agree with.

Last year, there was a thoughtful essay in the Paris Review on Woody Allen in the wake of the #MeToo movement, and I suppose late is better than never. On the other hand, was the left so blinkered by the political resonance of “sexual liberation” that it took them 40 years to realize that Manhattan is a really icky and deeply troubling film? And that the conservative critique of sexual liberation was essentially correct the whole time, even as Hollywood kept producing art that suggested anyone who had a problem with gratuitous sexual depictions and the accompanying exploitation was some repressed Bible-thumper who wasn’t getting any?

Similarly, it’s telling that Kanye has long been celebrated as one of the most visionary artists alive, even though he’s always bombastic and confrontational. None of this was cause for concern; it was all part of the enigma that is Kanye when he was saying things such as, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” But now that he’s praised Trump people are suddenly noticing he’s erratic, arrogant, and untalented to boot.

Kanye claims that he’s a “free-thinker,” even if at times he’s an obviously disordered one. Even if I remain lukewarm about his talent as a rapper or fashion designer or whatever artistic mask he’s trying to wear when he rolled out of bed today, no observer who’s been sentient the last 15 years would think that Kanye isn’t at least an expert at reading the zeitgeist so as to draw maximal attention to himself and his work. He and Trump have that much in common. They both owe a meteoric ascent in large part to realizing that when the cultural conversation is this rigidly liberal, there’s a lot of power to be had in confounding expectations and defying conventions. And until this country’s art and politics become less commingled and stifling, there are going to be a lot of people becoming rich, famous, powerful, or all of the above, not because they’re making great art or want to Make America Great Again, but because their sole gift is making doctrinaire liberals upset.

I don’t think this kind of confrontational discourse necessarily portends a better political conversation than the climate of enforced conformity enabling it. The sensible alternative to the current chaos was once understood to be respecting each other and making sure that differing viewpoints are given a chance to be heard. But in both art and politics, respect for different points of view seems like an awfully radical sentiment these days.