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Stop Giving Kanye West Attention, It Just Encourages Him

As you no doubt know by now, Kanye West rejoined Twitter and was immediately back on his bullshit. That’s just Kanye being Kanye. He’s like a neglected kid, he acts out for attention because negative attention is better than no attention. And with a new album coming out, Kanye wants to be the center of attention for everyone. And in that sense, he’s absolutely nailed it.

Since his return to Twitter, when he isn’t posting rejected fortune cookie fortunes, Kanye has been letting the world know he likes Donald Trump. He has an autographed “Make America Great Again” hat.

He and Trump have been tweeting their mutual admiration at each other for a few days. People are either outraged or enthralled, but it’s mostly theater.

The best part of this, to me, is the degree to which people care and the complete 180 degree flip people have been doing. You may remember that during a Hurricane Katrina telethon, Kanye West, who was young and very much putting his career on the line, said that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Republicans were shocked and outraged and vowed to never support Kanye West in any way ever, as if a bunch of white baby boomers were planning on picking up his albums to begin with. Now that Kanye has said he likes Donald Trump, far-right pundits are practically tripping over each other in the rush to suck his dick.

Of course, the left wing isn’t much better. I don’t think I can sit through another meandering thinkpiece about how “irresponsible” and “disappointing” it is and “how could Kanye West do this to people?” as if it’s somehow unimaginable that a self-centered rich person would be a Republican. I have news for you, Kanye West is the Republican base, all of their policies are carefully crafted to benefit him and 20 other people who are almost exactly like him at the expense of everyone else.

And of course there are those people coming out of the woodwork to declare “I never liked Kanye’s music to begin with!” as if they’re magically ahead of the curve. You’re not fooling anyone, Kanye’s music is great, Annie Hall is the best movie ever made, Louie C.K. is hilarious and Kevin Spacey is one of the best actors of his generation. You’re not getting any points with anyone for pretending to not like the popular person after you find out they’re bad.

What’s actually going on is that Kanye West did something controversial (and it’s a sad indictment of the modern world that saying you don’t think that the President of the United States is bad is controversial) right before his new album drops. Kanye loves it when people talk about Kanye, whether it’s good or bad. He’s like a toddler banging pots and pans together, he’ll go away if you just ignore him. And in the end, do we really care what Kanye West thinks about politics? He’s a singer, him voting for someone you do or don’t like doesn’t make his songs sound any different.

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