Courtesy of Ebony.com
I get it.
No, really. I do. Trust me.
Kanye West is not the easiest person to like. Or defend. His main contribution to our culture — his music — has become increasingly bizarre and inaccessible. His public words — interviews, tweets, speeches at Pusha T record release parties, etc — somehow manage to vacillate between ridiculous, obnoxious, ridiculously obnoxious, and obnoxiously ridiculous. He also somehow manages to be both socially awkward refuge and attention whore. Oh, and he is currently engaged to our country’s patron paragon of vapidity; one of the only American women who matches him in both fame and the level of immediate visceral distaste they induce.
I haven’t even mentioned Kanye’s peculiar relationship with race. And how he manages to use both Black and White women as props and proxies in his music. (I guess I just did mention it. But I won’t continue.)
(For those of you who don’t read the gossip blogs—or watch national news—Kim was allegedly called a “nigger lover” by an 18-year-old White man at a Los Angeles doctors office. The accused also screamed at and berated the reality star before being punched by her fiance.)
So, I get the urge to dismiss what reportedly happened to him and his fiancee as some sort of comeuppance. Or a publicity stunt. Or maybe you don’t think it was a form of comeuppance or a publicity stunt, but since you just don’t like Kanye and/or Kim, you heard the news and was amused by it. Maybe you even thought it was funny.
I also get the urge to dismiss Kanye as a hypocrite. I mean, he did create a song called “Niggas in Paris.” And he is attempting to “re-brand” the Confederate flag. And, I mean, he is engaged to a White woman. So if touchy race-related subjects didn’t seem to bother him then, why should he allow a simple “nigger-lover” to bother him now?
But, while I guess I get those urges, if you allow your personal distaste for Kanye and/or Kim to dismiss the fact that what (reportedly) happened to them was very wrong and somehow disregard the fact that their apparent response was very normal human one, you — with all due respect — are stupid.
Actually, let me rephrase that. Perhaps you are not stupid. I’m willing to concede that. But you are acting stupidly. And you are doing a great impression of a stupid person.
[Image: Joe Seer/Shuttershock]