The unthinkable
By Page W. H. Brousseau IV
TIMES STAFF WRITER
I never thought it was possible, but it is. I would not have believed it if I had not seen it with my own eyes. Kanye West makes President Bush seem articulate.
I gave West the benefit of the doubt when I saw him on the NBC fundraiser the beginning of September. His live match up with Mike Myers was a source of much debate in political circles when he said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Yet his points of contention were that he hates, "the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, 'They're looting.' You see a white family, it says, 'They're looking for food.' And, you know, it's been five days because most of the people are black."
The pictures of which he spoke dealt with different circumstances, and far as I know, George Bush was not involved in the photographing of either. West went on, "[T]hey've given them permission to go down and shoot us!" Oh yes, the big bad Republicans are gunning for the black folk of New Orleans. Liberalism does take a certain amount of ignorance to thrive. It was the Democrat Governor Blanco that bragged at a news conference, "These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will." Can you imagine if Bush said that? Bush did not even say that and he was accused of saying that. Furthermore, it was Mayor Nagin that equated looters to zombies saying, "They are starting to get closer to heavily populated [areas] and we're going to stop it right now." Aim for the head.
Throughout his diatribe, West was fidgety and blatanly nervous. His voice went from mumbling to a whisper. I said, "It's live TV, he's passing urban legend off as fact, not his fault he looks like a fish flopping around on a dock." Then I saw him on Ellen Degeneres. His attention was less focused on blaming Bush and directed to helping the evacuees. Dispite the relaxed setting, his on-air persona had not changed since the NBC fundraiser. His sentences were filled with "umm," "yea," "you know" and exacerbated by his peristent hand movements. "He's worse than Bush," I thought.
West is a source of valuable information. Such as this quote about AIDS, "It's a man-made disease in the first place that was placed in Africa just like crack was placed in the black community to break up the Black Panther party." I hope he works on his public speaking, otherwise, his acinine comments would fit right in at the 2008 Democratic Convention.
© The Michigan Times 2005
