FUCK KANYE WEST

Someone did. And look how it's turning out for her.

Can I talk to you a minute? Just a minute.

“What? All of America is afraid to hurt her feelings?”

The speaker, a male comedian whose name I’ve long forgotten, was talking about both Whoopi Goldberg and Elayne Boosler, which is probably the first and last time you’ll see their names in the same sentence. His take?

“C’mon…they’re NOT funny!”

The audience groaned and he rushed headlong into his date with anonymity. But a small portion of his take…stuck. That is, the collective unspoken decision we all might make or take when confronted with facts or situations that are that wonderful Hollywood weasel word…interesting.

Which really means compelling but not compelling enough for us to rush into the breech to take a stand on them lest the wind blow the other way and we find ourselves ass out, the proud owner of an unpopular and now minority opinion.

So Biden’s effectiveness as commander in chief? Interesting. Kamala Harris’ suitability for the same? The same. MAGA-land’s legitimate claim to having “some” good points? An equivocating head…not nod, but almost a nod of what might be construed, depending on who’s listening, as agreement?

This kind of shit can go on for years. Until it doesn’t. Until one voice rises above the din and posts up with what we’ve all been wanting to say forever but never had the energy, or balls, to stand on.

[T]here are parts of “Goldigger” that, inexplicably, still make my hair stand on end, in that good way, but it’s been hard to build on that moment. He makes it hard.

To say that Woody Allen is no longer funny or interesting. That maybe it’s time for Iggy Pop to put on a shirt (or not). And here, finally, that Kanye West can go fuck himself.

But here’s a minority opinion: I’ve felt this way since first reading about him in Spin. It was a piece about Jay Z, but also about Kanye, as protégé. He had just purchased some ridiculously expensive piece of bling. A jewel-encrusted face of Christ. Jay Z at one/some point asked him why his Christ’s eyes were blue. A question that unseated West significantly enough that it was a leitmotif for the rest of the article.

The stoogery irked me. Either spend that kind of cash on exactly what you got, or spend that kind of cash not caring at all what you got, but don’t spend it on exactly what you wanted and then question whether or not it’s really what you wanted. Or, to a finer point: what you should want.

And it’s precisely this kind of thing, a desire to be approved of backed with an inability to not care if you’re not approved of that made him so tiresome.

Total disclosure: there are parts of “Goldigger” that, inexplicably, still make my hair stand on end, in that good way, but it’s been hard to build on that moment. He makes it hard.

Specifically the stunts made it hard. Though some made it easy. “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people”? Totally easy. Everything else? Not so much.

But then a glimpse behind the curtain. I was editor-in-chief of EQ Magazine, a recording magazine of note. In a conversation with a producer/engineer that had worked with West, I was sort of set straight.

“He’s there when I leave,” he said of their recording sessions together. “And he’s there when I get there. I had just gone home to take a shower and fell asleep for three hours.” They worked the whole day. And the day after that. West took no significant breaks.

This is the kind of mania worth loving. It’s also the kind of mania that destroys balance.

So the stunts continued. For so long that they ceased being stunts. The Trump deal, the running for President. Lesser so the decision to marry and father offspring. While this had stunt written all over it, as most things Kardashian, excepting the OJ Trial, seem to, kids will always make things real. Very, very real.

And passing judgment over how real that love was? Totally a fool’s errand. But here’s real: they were married and the lack of balance claimed that marriage.

None of which I give a fuck about, and all of which I found very easy to ignore.

But dealing with what happens to your relationship when you no longer have that relationship, this is where we separate the wheat from the chaff. Or like Sir Mix-a-Lot once said, “If you don't have game, then let her leave your world.”

Or she’ll let you leave hers. And once done? Let it be done.

But he zigged where personally I would have zagged and you either continued to ignore him or bemusedly noted that Apple News had a whole news section just called KANYE.

Then, what anyone who has ever had a relationship knew was coming. Maybe more so given his previous penchant for…imbalance. Introduction of the most tangible sign that you can’t go home again: another mule kicking in “your” stall. This one named Pete Davidson, the comedian.

I would be able to, in maybe a totally unhelpful fashion, guarantee that someone was going to get hurt. And I’d not be talking about feelings.

The name is not particularly important but what was and is important is the perfect storm of time and place that’s made West’s totally assailable actions unlikely to be assailed by folks for fear of running foul of some unspoken race issue. Or some mental health issue. Or some interracial issue. All of which were just enough to make us slow walk to a collective disapproval that at least in my circle of friends would have led to someone being thrown a beating.

Something Steve Harvey just indicated that the first one to actually say “hold up”, D.L. Hughley, might do now that he’s in the whirlwind of electronic sniping that passes for discourse these days.

West, for his part, seems to be standing on his “right” and willingness to do and say whatever he wants about his now ex-wife and her now new boyfriend. The threats, the harassment, the stalking, the dog-headed attempt to make good on the old abusive dude deal of making everyone’s life hell because “if I can’t have her, no one can.”

And, suddenly, what? “All of America is afraid to hurt his feelings?”

I have four daughters and four sisters and were they to share this sort of sad tale to me I would be able to, in maybe a totally unhelpful fashion, guarantee that someone was going to get hurt. And I’d not be talking about feelings.

Yet, we stand like Hamlet who hated himself for being “unpregnant of my cause”.

But in the ‘70s my mother had picked up a stalker named Hubert. He was one of her charges at Brooklyn College where she was a guidance counselor. He used to take me and his younger cousin to the movies. We had all gotten friendly. Right up until he lost his mind. Which seemed to happen much faster than you’d expect.

You’d look out the window and he’d be standing on the sidewalk across from our house. Glowering. This could be ignored for a period of time. For as long as you could until you couldn’t. My stepfather said he was going to “talk” to him. He took a bat with him because bats sometimes make for better conversations.

I followed him out. With a switchblade, when those things were in fashion.

“Where the hell did you get that??!”

“I got it.”

We hit the door and Hubert’s glower gave way, not to fear, but to the slightest of smiles. Right before he turned and ran. He had been a track star of some sort and we were not. He was gone and we returned to the house, after about 100 yards, breathless, my mother taking my switchblade away as any good mother should have done from her 13-year-old son.

We talked about it before heading to bed and before heading to bed we glanced out the window. Hubert stood across the street again. Glowering.

The cops, for their part, said that they couldn’t do anything until he did something. This was New York of the ‘70s and well before stalking laws. The unspoken part about the not-doing-something-until-he-did-something formed itself in our heads: “and maybe not even then”.

But he was West Indian and his paperwork wasn’t in order. So calls were made to the INS. They gave us a number that we were supposed to call next time we saw him and we did. Within minutes two unmarked cars speeding toward each other from opposite ends of a one-way street, screeched to a stop, burly guys with badges on their waists wrestled him to the ground, and if their reports are to be believed, bundled him over to LaGuardia and on to a plane bound for the Caribbean.

We never saw Hubert again.

Would it be that we were only able to say the same about West. But our celebrities never leave us and with over 500 channels on TV and the endless expanse of TikTok, Reels, fans and Stans, and yes, the Internet, there is no corner dark enough where they won’t find a little light.

So we’re trapped. Like Kim Kardashian. And this might suit you just fine. You could be one of those “well, at least they’re rich” folks who haven’t considered that this happens to women who are not rich all the time. It might not bother you. At all.

But maybe it should.

And maybe we should be a little more OK with being part of the world that’s not afraid to hurt West’s feelings. Now wouldn’t that be interesting?