Taking Adantage of Ye

Photo by Peter Hutchins from DC, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Kanye West — now known as Ye — recently drew attention when he appeared at an event with Candace Owens sporting a “White Lives Matter” shirt. Owens, of course, is a long-time “conservative” grifter, with a history of rhetorically biting the heads of chickens to get attention. She famously organized a “BLEXIT” rally during the COVID pandemic for the supposed masses of Black people leaving the Democratic Party to vote for Trump. She also hawked the Freedom phone, which, as far as I can tell from her Twitter posts, she’s still not using.

While West has tended to lean conservative in recent years — famously supporting President Trump — he previously supported Obama and Clinton. He’s criticized Black Lives Matter, especially since coming under the influence of Owens. He has long been an opponent of abortion but also opposes the death penalty. He was highly critical of Trump’s handling of COVID-19. And when we last saw him on these pages, he was teasing his own Presidential run, which went precisely nowhere.

So, the shirt was not exactly a surprise. What was a surprise was that a bunch of conservatives immediately proclaimed Ye to be a political genius. Many parts of the conservative echosphere have had a long hatred of BLM, preferring an unquestioning deference to law enforcement.¹ Seeing one of the most powerful Black celebrities in the world mock BLM tickled their fancy. The House Judiciary GOP, also celebrating reports that Elon Musk will actually buy Twitter for reals this time, put it succinctly.

Kanye. Elon. Trump.

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 7, 2022

But less than a day after this fascination began, Ye began tweeting anti-semitic nonsense. He would later make false claims about the death of George Floyd. The comments were roundly criticized, but the conservative grifters were undeterred, continuing to talk him up and giving him a long guest appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show where he seemed to endorse a lot of conservative viewpoints.

Yeah, about that (gift link):

Even in what Carlson showed, there were questionable comments. Ye spent a full minute raising questions about the investment of Josh Kushner (brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared) in Kim Kardashian’s clothing line — a riff that seemed to snap into a different context given Ye’s subsequent antisemitic comment on Twitter about going “death con 3” on “JEWISH PEOPLE.” He claimed that he’d been warned that supporting Trump might lead to his death.

What was excluded, according to the footage from Vice, was more disconcerting. Ye claimed that he’d rather his kids learn about Hanukkah than Kwanzaa since “at least it would come with some financial engineering.” Ye’s assertion that “professional actors” had been “placed into my house to sexualize my kids.” He said he trusted Latinos more than “certain other businessmen” — a vague descriptor he used to “be safe.” Ye also told Carlson that he had “visions that God gives me, just over and over, on community building and how to build these free energy, kinetic, fully kinetic energy communities.”

* * *

What emerges from the fuller context provided by the Vice segments, really, is that Carlson wasn’t really interested in interviewing Ye or presenting his views to his audience. Instead, it’s that Carlson wanted to present a very specific version of Ye to his viewers, a Ye that mirrored Carlson’s rhetoric on race and politics and didn’t go much further.

As Vice’s Anna Merlan points out, Ye’s admission that he’d been vaccinated against the coronavirus — something Carlson has undermined repeatedly for more than a year — was excluded from what aired. Carlson, it seems, wanted his audience to see Ye saying particular things and not to fret over Ye’s rationality. So, he and his team cobbled together two days of shows that did that.

The context here is that Ye has a long history of mental health struggles, having been previously voluntarily hospitalized for delusions and paranoia. Ye has admitted to previous suicidal ideation and has told interviewers he suffers from bipolar disorder. None of this excuses his anti-semitic comments obviously, but it places everything we have seen in the last few weeks in a different context, that of someone struggling with his mental health.

I want to be clear here, so I’ll lay my cards on the table. While I don’t struggle the way Kanye does, I have had issues with anxiety. I have family, friends and colleagues who have been through serious struggles with mental health, including bipolar disorder. Diagnosis with a mental health issue is not shameful. It does not mean someone is broken. It’s just, as Taylor Tomlinson says, information that help someone take better care of themselves (language warning):

It’s not clear that Kanye’s mental health issues were ever really addressed. It is clear that, as a celebrity who just had a high-profile divorce, he is under intense pressure and scrutiny. That he would be struggling right now is not shocking. And it does not make him a bad person or a failure. Mental illness, especially of the intensity Kanye has previously described, distorts reality. It lies to you and can make you think everything is fine even when everything is going off the rails (or that everything is going off the rails even when everything is fine). Despite his anti-Semitic ravings, I have sympathy for Ye and want him to get help.

No, my anger is at the people who are taking advantage of this man. Kanye needs help, not attention. He needs to know that what he’s doing is wrong, not praised for the carefully selected bits that coalesce with someone’s political priors. My anger is at people who let him rant and rave for hours and then carefully edit it to make it seems like he’s a level-head man supporting their agenda. My anger is especially reserved for those who might think twice about doing this with someone who was white, but are so desperate to pretend their movement is devoid of racism that they’ll push this man forward, not caring what it does to him or his family.

I have long reconciled with the idea that the Owens and Carlsons of the world are shameless grifters.² They have become unmoored from any actual principles — assuming they ever had any — and are willing to say whatever they think their audience wants to hear and whatever can demonize the other side. I’m used to that. But a dangerous line is being crossed here, a line that does not end well for Kanye.

Mentally ill people are not geeks in your political circus. They’re not exhibits to be trotted out whenever they say something you like. And if your response to someone in a mental health crisis is “we can edit this into something good” or “I can get him to bail out my husband’s failing media company”, you need to take a long long look in the mirror. There’s nothing shameful about mental illness. But there is something deeply shameful of taking advantage of those with mental illness for your own benefit.

1. Well, unless that law enforcement is trying to keep the Vice President from being lynched or something.
2. As I was writing this, news broke that Kanye intends to buy Parler, the previous attempt to create a right-wing social media platform. What’s interesting is that Owens’ husband is apparently CEO of Parler, which places her wooing of Kanye in a different light.