The Meaning of Kanye West

Happy Friday.

Oh, crap, there is really no meaning to Kanye West, at least none that I can tell you.  I know practically nothing about him except that he is some kind of entertainer, he is married to a Kardashian and, based on the previous two attributes, he really needs to keep his name in the news.

So based on that, West made some noise in the past week that certainly kept his name in the news.

Originally this was an actual news item that had nothing to do with him, or with entertainment.  He had posted a simple tweet, "I love the way Candace Owens thinks."  Miss Owens is a conservative black writer and commentator who believes that Democrats have been very unhelpful to black Americans, by trying to keep them dependent on government rather than taking control of their own lives and destinies.

Naturally, this raised a firestorm because we are at a sad point in our evolutionary process where people actually, you know, pay attention to what Kanye West tweets.  Now, even though in this case it was a perfectly innocent, brief show of support for a voice in the black community that is not heard nearly enough, "what Kanye West thinks" is simply not news.

Well, the knee-jerk left immediately blew up in a furious hail of twittering to the effect that West was this or that, and that the people who supported him were this or that, God forbid.  After he followed up on the heels of all that by noting that he -- gasp! -- supported President Trump, well, it was all you could read in the news anywhere.

Even though, as I noted, Kanye West's opinions are no more valid than yours or mine.

Does no one in the real world (if anyone is possibly left there) realize that absolutely everything that Kanye West does, from marrying a Kardashian to tweeting support for someone that is not mainstream black thought (though it would be better if it were), is for one purpose -- to make money?

Really, you have to wonder about the media outlets that actually give air time to this, and whether Kanye West is paying them to carry this story.  This is not going to hurt him one bit; the people who pay money to attend his shows, or to buy recordings of whatever he does, are simply going to go to, or buy, more of them because he is in the news and they want to be a part of whatever that is.  And Kanye West will laugh all the way to the bank.

There is no meaning to Kanye West any more than there was to P.T. Barnum, or at least it is sort of the same meaning.  There certainly is a sucker born every minute, whether it is CNN or the consumers of whatever it is that Kanye West does.  West may or may not actually support Donald Trump or Candace Owens ... or this column.  What is important is that he was astute enough to know that if he says something, or tweets something, that will get his name on people's lips, it will end up raising his income.  FTM.

But there is actually meaning in the whole story.  We get it.  Do you?

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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