The Assholery of Kanye West
[Editor’s note: Watch Not My Party every week on Snapchat.]
Tucker Carlson: White Lives Matter t-shirt. Why did you do that and what did it mean?
Kanye West: I do certain things from a feeling, a gut instinct, a connection with God, and just brilliance. Yeah, it’s like Tonya Harding. She was in so much practice that when it was time for her to skate, it just happened. And that’s what’s happening. It’s God, it’s like, preparing us for the real battles.
Will Ferrell in Blades of Glory: I don’t even know what that means.
Jon Heder in Blades of Glory: No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative.
Tim Miller: Now, this is not generally a celebrity gossip show. If it were, you’d be getting a lot more Timmy on Timmy content.
Troy McClure, The Simpsons: Spin off!
Tim Miller: But when a megastar goes on Tucker’s Show to spread Alex Jones style conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic innuendo and an official Republican Twitter feed replies with an enthusiastic endorsement, well.
Jim Parsons, Big Bang Theory: You leave me no choice.
Tim Miller: So Kanye’s had quite the week. First, he and Candace Owens tried to trigger people with their White Lives Matter outfits at Paris Fashion Week. Then with Tucker, Ye implied that the Uvalde shooting might be a false flag.
Kanye West: You know I felt like the people at the Gap knew about the school shooting before it even happened. This idea of like, this media rush over the 78 specific outlets.
Alex Jones: Yes. Everything is hidden in my view.
Kanye West: Have I reached Alex Jones’s territory yet?
T.J. Miller, Silicon Valley: Jesus fucking Christ.
Tim Miller: Makes you wonder, what else is the Gap hiding behind those basic jeans? Most alarmingly, he engaged in a series of anti-Semitic comics. How the Kushner brothers just care about money, how Diddy is controlled by the Jews, and tweeting that he’s going death con three on the JEWISH PEOPLE (in all caps, just in case you missed it).
Adam Brody, in The O.C.: That wasn’t vague or ominous at all.
Tim Miller: Now there’s a temptation to just mock crazy Ye or fall back on his mental health struggles to excuse him. But that’s bullshit on both counts. Ye knows what he’s doing, and we can’t just ignore the serious ramifications of this hackish assholery. For starters, a lot of younger Republicans are attracted to Ye because he bucks the conventional wisdom. And anyone who goes against the elite narrative is good. Hence the “Kanye. Elon. Trump” tweet.
Locke & Key: The what?
Tim Miller: Or Republican Todd Rokita saying, “The media is going after Kanye because of his independent thinking.” But there’s a difference between being a creative, out of the box thinker, something Ye might have been at one time, and just being in a troll, doing Charlie Kirk level stunts. I totally get the impulse to want to challenge the establishment thinking. They’ve had some big misses. Iraq, closing schools during COVID, the list goes on.
Jake Lacy, The Office: Fight the power.
Tim Miller: But you begin to go to a very dark pathetic place when you use that to justify being against anything, just because it supports the “establishment narrative,” whatever that means.
Roger, American Dad: It’s a conspiracy.
Tim Miller: Kanye’s latest antics are Exhibit A. Blaming Jews for things you don’t like isn’t interesting or transgressive. It’s the oldest trick in the book. Populist demagogues have been doing this shit for centuries, and to this day, people with platforms across the ideological spectrum are spreading the same anti-Semitic bile.
On the right, there’s Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Jewish Space Laser.
Cecily Strong, portraying Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on SNL: I think that the California wildfires were caused by Jewish Space lasers.
Tim Miller: Doug Mastriano’s swiping at Elite Jewish schools.
Jake Tapper, CNN: I have questions for him though about his attack on this Jewish school, because Mr. Mastriano also has close ties with Gab, the far right social media platform where Nazi venom is regularly spewed.
Tim Miller: On the left, it was Ilhan Omar accusing Israel on hypnotism.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN: You tweeted, Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people, and helped them see the evil doings of Israel.
Lenny from Shark Tale: Oy Vey!
Tim Miller: Given the reemergence of these same old tropes, it shouldn’t be a surprise that anti-semitism is on rise on college campuses, and so are anti-Jewish hate crimes. That manifestos of mass murders have relied on anti-Semitic themes and have shown that they were influenced by people with big platforms like Ye spreading this nonsense.
Police Officer: Suspect is talking about all these Jews need to die.
Tim Miller: Criticizing Kayne isn’t cancel culture. He’s not being censored. Dude says what he wants and he’s everywhere. The real problem is the reach and appeal of his conspiracy mongering. He’s preying on the innate human desire to be different and independent in order to spread the most unoriginal message of hate you could imagine. The sad part is he doesn’t seem to recognize that he’s advancing the same type of oppressive narrative that he claims that he’s fighting against. That’s why it’s up to all of us to speak out and shine an ultra light beam on his hypocrisy.
Kanye West: I will eventually be President, you know, in my lifetime.
Kayne West, being parodied on South Park: And I’m a genius voice of the generation. So that is that. All right!
Tim Miller: See you next week for more “Not my party.”
