Why white lives matter to Yeezy

Shouldn't be hard to figure out. The musician/artist/businessman/provocateur once known as Kanye West is a billionaire. Like all billionaires, he demands the very best in professional support staff. Accountants, tax lawyers, financial advisors, PR professionals, you name it. It takes a village to raise a billionaire. Tragically, those are all fields where white lives matter. They matter because systemic racism has kept Black people out of those professions. That's why white lives matter. Unfortunately for Yeezy, stating this obvious truth out loud has landed him in a whole heap 'o doo-doo. His Addidas partnership is under review. Oh my God, I better hustle to the mall and get me a pair of $800 Yeezy sneakers while there's still time! Some outraged wokeling writing in the New York Times informs me that no less an authority than the ADL has determined "white lives matter" is hate speech, so we all need to hate Yeezy now for uttering hate speech. I'm not convinced. I've got a better reason to hate Yeezy. Look up some footage from his Paris show and check out his actual fashions. That shit sucks! I don't think there's anything there that a self-respecting person would wear in public, unless they lost a bet or something. If you have to hate on Yeezy, hate him for his crimes against good taste.

Professional Black Intellectual calls out Kanye West and Jim Brown for their Uncle Tom-ism

Peniel Joseph doesn't waste any time declaring his bona fides in his screed currently on view at CNN. It's right there in his title. If Kanye cared about black folks he'd have voted for Hillary!

And in case you didn't get it, he spells it out again in his first paragraph; thanks to Kanye and all those other un-enlightened black folks who failed to vote for Hillary, black people lost the election.

Sure... because the Clintons have done so much for black folks in America?..

A quick peek at Peniel's Wikipedia page reveals a man who's made a damned fine career out of being a Professional Black Intellectual. Looks like he's founded some iteration of "black studies" programs pretty much everywhere he ever landed a teaching gig.

In the academic world "Black Studies" is a close cousin of Gender Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, Feminist Studies, Queer Studies, etc. All your major institutions of higher learning have indulged these fields of study in the last twenty or thirty years or so because it proves beyond a doubt how tolerant and inclusive they are.

While engineering, business, and the hard sciences remain the meat and potatoes of every worthwhile post-secondary institution, and their alumni provide the gravy for their endowment funds, it's crucial to show that you're a bastion of diversity and have an eye out for the welfare of the oppressed.

There's a word for that.

Tokenism.

Mind you, it's given Peniel and many like-minded Professional Black Intellectuals a soap-box from which to mega-phone their insights... such as Donald Trump is a racist douche-bag and Hillary loves black people.

As near as I can tell Trump became a racist around the time he officially declared his intention to run for the White House. Before that he was almost a token honorary white dude among professional black activists.

Why do you suppose that changed once he was in the ring with Hillary?

About that Ezrin - Kanye feud

I have to admit I've got a bit of a soft spot in my heart for Bob Ezrin. He and I graduated from the same rehab program way back when.

Not only that, but he's produced some of the best rock albums of the last 40 years.

Kanye West, on the other hand, claims to be 53 millions in debt for...  for what?

For telling it like it is? Welllll.... not really.

For staging massive publicity stunts designed to promote himself?

Hmmm...

For living a billionaire's lifestyle on a millionaire's income?

I'm not really sure what exactly Kanye is famous for, other than being mixed up with that Kardashian gang, but I totally get Ezrin's speculation about Kanye's actual talent level. I'm pretty sure the stable of artists sampling Kanye's wares thirty years from now is going to be really really small and totally inconsequential.

Whereas the stable of artists Bob has produced will be sampled in perpetuity by the upper echelon of tomorrow's creatives.

Kanye West channels Dee Snider in wheelchair controversy

Kanye got lots of free publicity for supposedly dissing disabled audience members at a concert a few days ago.

Funny thing; the exact same controversy is something Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider has been making sport of for thirty years.

Everything old is apparently new again...

There's a lot to be said for recycling!