Twitter; what was once a means of sharing what we ate for lunch, has rapidly become a platform for voicing political and social matters across the world. But this is not to suggest that it's lost it's original use of sharing menial facts, oh no. In one space you have access to everything from a boy yodelling in Walmart, someone you knew from school saying "OMG pushed a door that said pull LOL", all the way to the actual president of the United States discussing a nuclear war with North Korea. So however wild your imagination can get, there's most definitely something weirder happening on twitter.
So with all that in mind, you'd think we'd be pretty desensitised to the world of celebrities making outreagous statements, but Kanye West has proven otherwise. Yes, Kanye West is a man who despite being highly regarded in the music industry, has an innate ability to divide the masses with his out there opinions and absurdly large ego. There's no argument he's an incredibly talented, creative individual however one could argue that this has been excusing his behaviour for too long now. In the last week or so Kanye's made a return to twitter (something he seems to do every year or so) and has been reigniting questions concerning his mental stability.
It started off pretty obscure but by his standards it was the kind of strange ramblings you read and just think "oh Just Kanye being weird" then carry on scrolling. Then things got progressively weirder with him posting a photo of him and Michael Jackson in the form of barbie dolls with the caption "Me and mike"...
All very bizzarre but what was most notably out of his character was the lack of controversy. However , this world first lasted a grand total of about an hour and half when he then decided to share his thoughts on a certain yellow haired mister president. During a surreal speil of tweets about the importance of 'free thinking', suddenly the Kanye we love to hate was back.
Unlike previous statements he's made that have lead to a mass of raised eyebrows, the fact politics were involved made it much deeper than the usual case of ruffling a few feathers. Fans, friends, celebrities, all took to their keyboards to question him in bewilderment.
Although on one level I agree with the general basis of what he's saying in terms of voicing your opinions and not getting caught up in following the crowd, it's as though he's disregarding all the harm and negativity Trump stands for. For someone of Kanye West's stature to speak so highly of a man who's overtly racist and misogynistic views have divided the USA so drastically, to me is just foolish.
Sadly his provocative and considerably insensitive collection of thought-peices were not put to bed here. A matter of days later he went on to truly blow our minds with his ignorance, eradicating all patter of the man being a genius. In an interview with TMZ, he callously stated the following: "When you hear about slavery for 400 years… for 400 years? That sounds like a choice (...) You was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally imprisoned.” If a team of the worlds most renowned writers all collaborated in an effort to write a career ending statement for a celebrity to come out with, it would probably have been similar if not less shocking than that. It's the shock factor that makes many almost disregard it in a sense and no one likes feeding into a celebrities rat-trap for gaining attention. The age old tale of a once respected celebrity who's been out of the limelight for a while, then all of a sudden they make their debut in the most outrageous and ridiculous way possibly imaginable. However, this felt different.
One could only assume that by no stretch of the imagination would someone disregard centuries of struggle and bloodshed of an entire race for the sake of some publicity. Thankfully it didn't take long before someone interjected with some sense. TMZ employee Van Lathan retorted with, "While you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you've earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives(...) We have to deal with the marginalisation that's come from the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a choice." A well articulated response that can only be praised yet at the same time it's almost concerning that even in 2018 we have to award praise for pure common sense and a lack of ignorance.
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