Kanye west

Kim Kardashian realizes the American Dream

Kim Kardashian’s behind is on the front page once again. This time, it’s being accused of disrespecting the great people of America. The forty-one-year-old and her bare buttocks grace the cover of Interview magazine's September edition, the "American Dream" special. https://twitter.com/kimkardashian/status/1567135904183250944 Cockburn must admit that the bleached eyebrows are lost on him. But he wonders how warranted the other criticisms of Kardashian are. Some people online were eager to compare Kim’s look to that of male make-up artist Jeffree Star. Journalist Piers Morgan quoted her tweet of the cover, saying, "You think the American Dream is about baring your ass in front of the flag?" (Nice American English, Piers!).

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Five other award show moments that needed a slap

Actor Will Smith delivered the slap heard 'round the world Sunday night at the 2022 Oscars ceremony, smacking comedian Chris Rock for a joke about his wife's bald head. Regardless of whether you think Smith overreacted or did the right thing, the slap was the highlight of the evening and one of the most exciting awards show moments in years. In honor of the "Smith Slap," Cockburn has compiled a list of five other award show moments featuring celebrities that deserved to be slapped. 1.

Will Smith (Getty Images)

Candace Owens’s book is a work of performance art

I doubt most of the belligerents associated with Turning Point USA, the Daily Wire and Blaze TV would know what to do if they were dropped into a combat situation. If you dropped Candace Owens behind enemy lines, she'd bite the throat out of an Isis fighter and stroll back to civilization without a scratch. Not to say Ms Owens is insightful or honest, or even that she means what she says. She means to succeed, and no one will stop her.Owens’s new book Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation is far more entertaining than the recent duds from Dave Rubin and Charlie Kirk. That doesn’t mean it's a good book. Intellectually it is completely incoherent.

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It’s all in a name: the stories behind book dedications

Don’t skip over the dedications in books. They can be as illuminating as the stories they precede and shine an intriguing light on the author’s private life and loves: Jane Austen and Edmund Spenser [caption id="attachment_9876775" align="alignnone" width="739"] Family portrait of Jane Austen[/caption] The dedication to Jane Austen’s Emma reads: ‘To His Royal Highness The Prince Regent, This Work Is By His Royal Highness’s Permission, Most Respectfully Dedicated, By His Royal Highness’s Dutiful And Obedient Humble Servant, The Author.’ The Prince Regent was George Augustus Frederick, uncle of Queen Victoria and the eldest of George III’s children. He was self-indulgent and excessive.

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Kanye West is the sanest presidential candidate

Kanye West has again proven his ability to draw the attention, fascination and ire of the public — this time with his outrageous antics in the launching of his 2020 presidential bid. Lost amid all the media focus on Kanye's wild behavior, however, is something that is demonstrably true — Kanye is the most sane candidate running for the office of president of the United States, for he is the only one who openly (and eloquently) acknowledges his mental illness.

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If only Kanye’s run were serious

It was June 2015. Bill Maher was holding court with assorted journalists to discuss the 2016 race. The Republican field back then was attracting all kinds of ridiculous monikers — it was apparently the most plausible, most qualified field in history. Maher asked Ann Coulter who had the best chance in the general election. She didn’t say John Kasich. She didn’t fancy Jeb’s chances. Three days earlier, Donald Trump had announced his candidacy in Manhattan, cutting the ribbon on a festival of media bafflement, disgust, and ridicule. Coulter made her prediction: 'Of the declared ones, right now, Donald Trump.' The studio audience hooted. The other panelists did a good impression of being horrified.

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Mary, Mary, quite contrary

Who knew that the most prominent NeverTrumper would be a member of the Trump family? Mary Trump is Donald's niece and bears the same name as his mother. She has a PhD in clinical psychology and is now the author of a book called Too Much and Never Enough, an unsparing look at her uncle that does not shrink, as it were, from putting him on the couch. The Amazon bestseller has spun up the president; he is getting his minions to denounce it and is promoting cancel culture by suing to prevent it from being read by the masses. White House spokesman Kayleigh McEnany noted that she had not seen it but went on to declare that Mary’s maiden effort was a 'book of falsehoods' brimming with 'absurd allegations'.

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Kanye West and the uncancelables

For better or worse, the rapper, producer and sneaker salesman Kanye West is almost certainly not running for president, as he has claimed. He is instead sidling into the mainstream consciousness just before he drops his latest album. Kanye has had an odd few years. He's come out in support of Donald Trump, made an impassioned religious album, and failed to build a complex of Star Wars-inspired domes for the homeless. A presidential run, then, feels like a natural next move. Ultimately, though, he does not seem to have even filed the necessary paperwork. This has not prevented progressives from being outraged by what they believe is an attempt to split the liberal vote and hand Trump another victory.

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The mythic rise of the celebrity dissident

Celebrity is a remarkably enduring and powerful form of prestige. Who can imagine a world without it? Celebrities begin as people, become brands, then expand into empires. We have celebrity restaurateurs who become celebrity chefs and celebrity chefs who become restaurateurs. We have celebrity spin doctors and celebrity CIA analysts. We have celebrity comedians and celebrity revolutionaries; they’re often interviewed by celebrity journalists. We have celebrity architects, celebrity tycoons and celebrity statesmen. We have celebrity children of celebrities; celebrity ballerinas; celebrity vegans; celebrity plumbers; celebrity murderers. For decades celebrity told society stories about itself, some ennobling, some disgraceful.

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I’m a prisoner of Kanye West’s homeless camp

I hear the sound of chanting in the distance, grim and ominous. ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom ba boom, boom, boom...' Suddenly, voices cry out: ‘Je-sus walks!’ A white-robed Kanye West is surveying the geodesic dome structures that he has built across his lands. A MAGA hat is pulled over his brow and the sun glints off his oversized sneakers. Kim Kardashian stands beside him in a bodysuit that strains against her preternaturally tumid curves. Kanye announced that he was building the housing complex for the homeless in 2019.

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Will Trump declare war on Sweden?

The nation waits with bated breath for news of one of its favorite and most delicate sons, the ‘rap artist’ A$AP Rocky. Mr Rocky is held hostage by the military of the barbaric regime of an anti-Western failed state called Sweden. The Scandinavian rogue nation is widely suspected of having colluded with the military of another barbaric regime of another anti-Western failed state, Iran, which last week kidnapped an entire oil tanker under similar circumstances. Mr Rocky claims to have been minding his own business with two of his minders when they felt it necessary to kick an Afghan asylum seeker in the body and head while taking an early evening stroll in the rubble of Sweden’s Mogadishu-like capital, Stockholm.

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Kanye West is the gift that keeps giving

Kanye West is perfect. Every time I think he can’t go up in my estimation, he does something more magical. Last night, having established himself as the most important political figure in the free world, he decided the time had come to find new worlds to conquer. ‘I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing on being creative !!!’ he tweeted, out of the blue. https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1057382916760707072 And this not three weeks from the Oval Office audience he gave President Donald Trump, an occasion at which he, brilliantly, chose to communicate only through free association – oscillating at a frequency barely within the realms of human comprehension.

kanye west candace owens

Kanye West is winning Trump over with flattery. Does that make him a ‘madman’?

Shortly after yesterday’s outlandish Oval Office episode, several national political reporters under age 40, such as the New York Times’s Jonathan Martin and the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker, claimed total ignorance of Kanye West’s discography — as though impressed with themselves for being oblivious to one of American pop culture’s most titanic figures of the past decade and a half. Maybe they’ve really somehow never heard ‘Jesus Walks,’ ‘Gold Digger,’ or ‘Power,’ which would cast slight doubt on their ability to gauge the political sentiments of the population they purport to cover. Or maybe they just feel compelled to throw Kanye down the memory hole now that he’s taken up with Donald Trump.

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Can Ye win with black economic nationalism?

Kanye West is getting perilously close to the most disruptive idea in politics. ‘Disruption’ has been a buzz word among tech companies for many years now, but the political world got a taste of what it means for the first time in 2016, when Donald Trump shot straight to the White House without ever having run for lower office. He cut through all the indispensible consultants and ideologues and party apparatchiks who were supposed to run the GOP, then beat Hillary Clinton by winning states no Republican had won since Reagan. That was disruption. But the forces of un-disruption are hard at work, and they're confident that the Trump demographic is dying. Trump actually did better among non-whites than Mitt Romney, the last conventional Republican, did.

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Ye he Kan! Why Kanye West’s SNL stunt showed real courage

Kanye West is an egomaniac. Who isn’t these days? He’s also very brave. It takes courage to wear a Trump hat to sing on Saturday Night Live. Kanye — or ‘Ye’, as he wants to be called — said he was ‘bullied’ backstage by people telling him he should take it off, and you can imagine that is true enough. The Saturday Night Live audience booed Kanye on stage, but he remained undaunted. ‘We need a dialogue not a diatribe,’ he said, not unreasonably. The SNL brigades clearly did not agree. Their idea of dialogue is just anti-Trump diatribe. Good for West; he makes the world more interesting. And for him to stand by what he thinks as the rich, elite world he belong to harangues him takes guts.

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Musically, politically and culturally, Kanye West is uncontrollable and unignorable

Kanye West is more than halfway in to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame — if his politics don’t block the way. This extraordinary rapper-producer first won over a worldwide audience with the 2004 anthem ‘Jesus Walks’, disrupted hip-hop’s bling-bling materialism with the us-vs-them challenge of his Jay-Z collaboration Watch the Throne, and then released the confounding My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which rightly became the most highly acclaimed hip-hop album this century. He went on to make controversial public art with his ‘New Slaves’ video, which was projected in 66 locations around the world (called Orwellian by admirers and dumbfounded detractors).

What is social media’s problem with black conservatives?

Last week Dave Rubin (of The Rubin Report) sat down for a rare interview with Thomas Sowell.  For three quarters of an hour they roamed over an amazing array of issues – social, political and economic. YouTube (where The Rubin Report is posted) demonetised the video immediately.  This is a favourite trick of the platform – to signal YouTube’s disapproval of the content, making sure that the no one (other than YouTube, of course) and certainly not the content’s creator can make any money out of it.  For YouTube it would seem that nothing is scarier than a black economist talking brilliantly about the issues of the age. Then on Saturday something strange happened in the universe.