Kanye west

Thursday

Paul du Quenoy

The media’s latest ‘get Trump quick’ scheme

“I think the former president is a spent political force.” So wrote New York Times columnist Bret Stephens of Donald J. Trump this week. Trump is apparently so spent that Stephens felt the need to pen an 879-word op-ed in the nation’s putatively leading newspaper about who the master of Mar-a-Lago ate dinner with a week earlier. This followed a separate article about the infamous dinner Trump hosted with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes that Stephens wrote with his co-columnist Gail Collins, along with no fewer than seven other pieces about the dinner that have, as of this writing, blessed the former paper of record. The Times is hardly alone. The Washington Post offered its readers six articles about the dinner, while the Wall Street Journal has produced five such pieces.

duchess trump

Tuesday

Jack Hunter

The alt-right are contrarian phonies

Why is an alt-right pundit all of a sudden best buds with the artist formerly known as Kanye West? Many have found themselves fascinated and revolted over Ye’s strange new career as a high-profile antisemite. Those familiar with the contours of the contemporary right, including the far-right, are not surprised to see white nationalist Nick Fuentes jumping onboard the Ye train. Those unfamiliar with the openly racist online host have been shocked to learn he exists, has some kind of audience, and has formed an alliance of sorts with arguably the most famous black man in America. This all makes sense when you understand how these people think.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Why Trump’s antisemite controversy just won’t die

Donald Trump has caused something of a hugger-mugger over his last supper with Kanye West, or Ye, and Nick Fuentes. A variety of Jewish organizations are either wringing their collective hands (if they’ve been supporters of Trump) or outright denouncing him (if they’ve long viewed him as an odious figure). A few Republican leaders, including former vice president Mike Pence, who said it was “wrong” for Trump to break bread with the duo, are voicing their disapprobation. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie tweeted on Saturday: “This is just awful, unacceptable conduct from anyone, but most particularly from a former President and current candidate.” Unlike previous Trump controversies, this one does not appear to be subsiding after a 24-hour news cycle.

Sunday

David Marcus

What Trump’s dinner with antisemites tells us about 2024

Well, it was quite a Thanksgiving week at Mar-a-Lago. For those just waking from their food comas, the Cliff Notes version of events is that Donald Trump hosted for dinner not just Kanye West, who of late has appeared utterly out of his mind and uttered deeply antisemitic comments, but also Nick Fuentes, a quite literal Holocaust denier who has compared Jews slaughtered by Nazis to cookies baking in an oven. I guess David Duke must have been busy. When news of the Tuesday night dinner broke, it unleashed a chorus of justified outrage. Trumpworld went into immediate damage control. First, it was claimed that Fuentes was not a participant at the dinner, then that he was but Trump didn’t know who he was.

Friday

Cockburn

Kanye’s Thanksgiving feast with Trump, Milo and Nick Fuentes

While you were carving the turkey with your family last night, Kanye West was on Twitter, unveiling his 2024 masterplan. On Thanksgiving night, the rapper posted a video titled “Mar-a-Lago debrief,” in which he said Donald Trump was “really impressed with Nick Fuentes.” That would be the same Nick Fuentes who heads up the far-right incel-adjacent "groyper" movement, attended both the Charlottesville and January 6 protests (he was on the steps of the Capitol) and has spoken critically about the notion that America is a "Judeo-Christian" nation. Also, like Milo Yiannopoulos, he's now working on the Kanye 2024 campaign. With friends like these... https://twitter.

fuentes

Tuesday

Cockburn

Why is Milo Yiannopoulos working for Kanye’s 2024 campaign?

Just eighteen days after Kanye West vowed that he was taking a thirty-day cleanse from talking, drinking alcohol, watching porn and having sex, the disgraced rapper is back. And like his idol Donald Trump, he's even announced a 2024 presidential bid. If at first you don’t succeed, maybe don’t try again? In a video shared on YouTube this weekend, Kanye revealed far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos as a new campaign staffer. "This is Milo right here, working on the campaign," the mogul said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1FQXbqRuMs&ab_channel=X17onlineVideo When the cameraman asked if that was an announcement, Kanye laughed as Milo confirmed: "I guess it is. Thanks, I accept." The cameraman then asked Kanye: "So you are running?

milo yiannopoulos

Thursday

Art Tavana

Taylor Swift is one of America’s great storytellers

"Every single song is like a road map to what that relationship stood for, with little markers that maybe everyone won't know, but there are things that were little nuances of the relationship, little hints,” Taylor Swift told Yahoo! Music in 2010. A decade of songwriting turned those “little hints” into complicated numerology, a scarf metaphor at the centerpiece of her canon, coded song titles, storytelling scattered with cardigan sweaters, Shakespeare references, faded blue jeans, true crime, YA tropes (e.g., witches, cats, prom dresses, teen love triangles and evil alter-egos) and glitter-glue covered diary pages — sealed with red lips. Taylor Swift was fifteen when she began incorporating easter eggs and (wink-wink) secret messages into her work.

Wednesday

Ben Sixsmith

The case for the Twitter blue check

In 2009, Twitter formalized a caste system. Notable users could apply for verification, earning a blue check next to their names. This was meant to stop malicious impersonators from adopting their identities. Oddly enough, one person who prompted this move was Kanye West, who had criticized “losers making fake Kanye West Twitter accounts.” Clarifying the identities of users was a valid aim. Still, it introduced class conflict. As Twitter acknowledged when controversy erupted after alt-right organizer Jason Kessler earned verification, being given a blue check was “interpreted as an endorsement or an indicator of importance.” An indicator of importance! Of course, that was obvious when it came to Barack Obama or Taylor Swift.

anti-woke twitter

Monday

Art Tavana

Apple Music cynically exploits Kanye West by deplatforming him

Apple Music has “quietly” removed two of Kanye West’s playlists from its platform. This news was leaked to the music press quietly, of course, and has (thus far) produced tons of free media impressions for the streamer. The move was presumably a shrewd public relations stunt, or maybe a rogue employee with coding skills. Who knows? But the media framed it as Apple Music taking a stand, quietly, of course, as the streamer repositions itself in the headlines after it announced last week that it was raising subscription prices. “De-platforming” Kanye West is messaging they’d like to piggyback, for obvious reasons, as it appeals to a swath of bored subscribers who could end up tweeting Apple Music for not being on the “right side of history.

Saturday

Art Tavana

Kanye West just can’t shut up 

Here are the facts: Kanye West should be in a psychiatric hospital. Instead, he’s speaking his mind, or what’s left of it. For what it’s worth, Kanye West should not be tweeting or going on podcasts. Unlike the side effects of a prescription drug, the results don’t vary. No, the outcome is usually the same, in one form or another: career suicide. Kanye West’s artistic legacy is undergoing seppuku. We've seen this movie before. Remember Roseanne? After a racist tweet in 2018, ABC immediately canceled her show (it was going to be her comeback). Hulu followed up by removing every season of Roseanne from their streaming service.

kanye west

Friday

Cockburn

Elon Musk is now Donald Trump’s business rival

Cockburn has always had some formidable business rivals to contend with. It's not easy competing with the likes of other thinly sourced gossip rags like Page Six and the Washington Post (even if Cockburn is confident he could drink the staff at all those publications under the table). Yet so far as competition goes, it's Elon Musk who has it the worst this week. Last night, Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, a calm and rational discussion site where people like to post helpful gardening tips and delicious recipes. "The bird is freed," Musk tweeted, though there are at least a few people (outside the expected left-wing freak-out) who won't be quite so pleased.

Wednesday

Cockburn

The Halloween costumes guaranteed to get you fired this year

Cockburn has had some stellar Halloween costumes over the years… but the world is no longer what was. Thanks to political correctness, social media and your HR department, an outfit that’s viewed to be in poor taste could now result in your cancellation and dismissal. Maybe you’re looking to make a change at work — if so, here are some Halloween costumes that will help you unleash your inner Justin Trudeau and leave your employer no option… Candace Owens and Kanye ‘Ye’ West The real power couple of the latter half of 2022! This one is guaranteed to get you canceled. Ye’s appalling “White Lives Matter” T-shirts are a bit pricey — fortunately there is a knock-off version. Candace-style wig available here.

halloween costumes

Tuesday

Cockburn

Ye learns that hate is bad for business

Cockburn keeps up with the Kardashians, so to him, Kanye West’s recent outbursts are not much of a surprise. But over the last few weeks, anyone that didn't previously know that he was, shall we say, in decline, is now fully aware. Ye's antisemitic comments, such as declaring that he would go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” and continuously talking about how Jews “own the media,” have resulted in dire financial consequences for him, as the various businesses he works with cancel their contracts and denounce his remarks. The most recent — and arguably the most important — business collab that Ye has watched crumble is his partnership with Adidas. The lucrative multi-year deal to design sneaker brand Yeezy was valued at $1.5 billion.

kanye west business

Sunday

Alexander Larman

Taylor Swift’s Midnights is a bright spot in a bland music industry

The recent downfall and shaming of Kanye West was likely to have been greeted with schadenfreude by at least one 32-year-old pop star. In 2009, West interrupted Taylor Swift's winning best female video at the MTV Video Music Awards to inform her that the gong should have gone to Beyoncé instead. Their relationship ever since has been a gossip-friendly roundabout of fallout, reconciliation, sniping and bitching. West’s current defenestration from public life, owing to antisemitic comments he made, has not been publicly alluded to by Swift yet. But the lyrics from the song "Karma" on her new album Midnights might make tacit reference to their ongoing feud, as Swift castigates an anonymous man for "talking shit/For the hell of it/Addicted to betrayal but you're relevant.

Tuesday

Kara Kennedy

Inside the Kanye West-Parler deal

After emailing a nameless press contact for Parler, the last thing I expected was to get a flattering reply from George Farmer, the CEO himself. “I’m a Spectator subscriber, nice to e-meet,” he said. Farmer joined the right-wing social media app Parler in March 2021 as operating chief, and was promoted that May to CEO. “My goal is to provide the platform for the disenfranchised and the voiceless who feel that the mainstream has cut them out,” Farmer told the Financial Times at the time. “It is almost like we are an ‘anti’-company.” Just over one year on, and that "anti"-company has been acquired by rapper and businessman Kanye West. After a string of recent controversies, Kanye and Parler are under the spotlight.

george farmer parler

Monday

Cockburn

Is Candace Owens cashing in on Kanye West?

A great American poet once wrote: I went to the malls and I balled too hard/ “Oh my God, is that a black card?”/ I turned around and replied, “Why yes/ But I prefer the term 'African-American Express.’” How times change. Following a failed presidential run, a bitter divorce and two poorly reviewed records, for Kanye West, “balling too hard” now means buying a right-wing social media site from Candace Owens’s husband. It was announced today that Kanye, who now goes by Ye, is to buy the social media platform Parler, in a move the company characterized as “a bold stance against his recent censorship from Big Tech.

kanye west candace owens parler

Thursday

Ben Domenech

We deserve better than Candace Owens

Candace Owens's latest foray into the sphere of defending antisemitism ought to be something everyone can easily condemn. Discussing rapper Kanye West's controversial post, which has gotten him locked out of his social media, Owens said Monday: "If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic. You did not think that he wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This is not the beginning of a Holocaust." https://twitter.

candace owens

Monday

Cockburn

Republicans endorse Kanye as everyone else slowly backs away

If there is one celeb to not rally behind right now, it’s Kanye West. Over the past few years, the rapper's mental health has steadily declined and his outbursts have become more regular. As he becomes more unhinged, friends who used to come to his defense have realized it’s in their best interest to quiet down. Yet in spite of all that, Cockburn can't help but notice that House Republicans have embraced Kanye. A tweet, which somehow has not been deleted, was posted on Thursday by the House Republicans Twitter account. It reads, "Kanye. Elon. Trump." Not only was the tweet ratio'd within minutes — with quote tweets such as "who are three people we really don’t need to hear from ever again?

Friday

Cockburn

Tucker Carlson grills Kanye West

Tucker Carlson has tackled a question that has long puzzled Cockburn: is Kanye West crazy? Ye has had his fair share of controversial moments: he appeared on a 2006 cover of Rolling Stone mimicking Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns. He infamously stormed the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards stage to tell Taylor Swift she didn’t deserve her award. For the past couple years, he's been battling ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her family, during which time he also became religious, started hosting Sunday Services and bought a ranch in Cody, Wyoming, which he tried to sell but then took off the market. Most recently, Ye incited establishment ire by wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt alongside conservative firebrand buddy Candace Owens at Paris Fashion Week.

ye

Wednesday

Cockburn

Kanye West is turning into Candace Owens

Cockburn misses the old Kanye, straight from the ’Go Kanye. The rapper, producer, designer and… (what’s the opposite of a mental health advocate?) plumbed new depths this week with his appearance at Paris Fashion Week. West showed up to the launch of his new sneaker line alongside friend and fellow former liberal Candace Owens. Both wore shirts adorned with the slogan “White Lives Matter.” https://twitter.com/RealCandaceO/status/1577000138131656704 “White Lives Matter,” of course, was a common retort to the “Black Lives Matter” maxim that emerged in 2013 after George Zimmerman’s acquittal for the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

kanye west candace owens