The Wild, Wild West

A couple of days I wrote about Kanye West and his ongoing virulent and violent anti-Semitic comments, and how the issue isn’t about Kanye West, but about the Republican Party which has not only been silent about it all, but has continued to back him and Trump’s own recent anti-Semitic rant.
 
I stand by that.  But I do think Mr. West does deserve some attention of his own.
 
(Quick side note:  I know well that he’s now referred today as “The former Kanye West who legally changed his name to Ye.”  But what he didn’t seem to bother to change was his Twitter account, for which he doesn't use "Ye," but still posts as Kanye West.  So, if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.)
 
This comes because, after having been pummeled by his business partnerships, notably losing his deal with Adidas who he basically dared cut ties with him, and they did, he’s be acting very desperate lately.
 
As I said before, Kanye West will be fine financially.  If he loses 90 percent of his income, with the remaining 10 percent he’s still doing great.  (Assuming he had a billion dollars – maybe more, maybe less – that still would leave $100 million.)  That said, we don’t know his financial ties and if he’s leveraged and has outstanding loans, and how losses from other business cutting ties will affect his finances. 
 
What we do know, though, is that after Adidas dropped him, Forbes magazine almost immediately removed West from their billionaire's list, significantly plummeting his net worth to $400 million.  That's a huge loss of wealth.  It's also still a massive amount of money.  Though whatever real-life problems it may cause him, I don’t especially care.  Because this isn’t about money.  It’s about a virulent, violent anti-Semite. 
 
But as much as I don’t care about Kanye West’s finances, he clearly does.
 
The other day, he went uninvited into the corporate headquarters of Skecher, trying to get a new deal to replace the one lost with Adidas – and not only didn’t get the deal, but was escorted out of the building, getting the company to put out a press release explaining that they would not be working with Kanye West now or in the future, saying among other things, “Skechers is not considering and has no intention of working with West.  We condemn his recent divisive remarks and do not tolerate anti-Semitism or any other form of hate speech."
 
He's lost partnership deals with Adidas, Balenciaga, Skechers, TJ Maxx.  His talent agency CAA dropped him as a client.  The MRC Entertainment production company has shelved a documentary that already completed about it.  Vogue has cut ties with him.  Gap has said it’s removing his Yeezy Gap products and shutting down the Yeezy Gap website.  Apple Music announced that while it’s not removing all his music, it is, however, removing the Kanye West Essentials Playlist some material, along with his biography.
 
By the way, going back to Gap a moment, Kanye West put out a weird social media post yesterday – one of many, so that’s par for the course – that included a small comment that hasn’t gotten much attention:  “As to Gap, the non-compete expires December 15, 2022.  You own the Yeezy name and all trademarks associated with Yeezy.”
 
He lost the name and all trademarks for Yeezy??  Well, that can’t be good.  Most especially for someone who went to the trouble of legally changing his name to Ye.
 
Also not good were all the social media postings he put out yesterday.  The most notable one, though, was ostensibly sent to his former agency, writing –
 
“ARI EMMANUEL
"I LOST 2 BILLION DOLLARS IN ONE DAY
AND I’M STILL ALIVE
THIS IS LOVE SPEECH
I STILL LOVE YOU
GOD STILL LOVES YOU
THE MONEY IS NOT WHO I AM
THE PEOPLE IS WHO I AM"
 
"The people is who I am."
 
Just not all the people.  Just not the people he wanted dead and to go “Death Con 3” over. And has been virulently attacking for many weeks, in fact months and perhaps years.  (A news story yesterday told how in 2018 he apparently wanted to title his album Hitler.  And had to be talked out of it.)

Fun fact:  Writing "love speech" doesn't make people (and business partners) forget one's hate.
 
And that’s the point of this all.

Kanye West can cry out that he’s all about love and The People, but his words and words and relentless words come tumbling out before him.  He can’t claim his was misquoted.  They were his own social media postings he himself wrote.  (And never claimed anyone else did.)  They’ve been his own relentless, ongoing words.
 
And beyond his own virulent and violent words of anti-Semitism that have been picked up by white supremacists  and neo-Nazi groups, he even has taken on his own black community, wearing “White Lives Matter” t-shirts and claiming George Floyd wasn’t killed by a now-convicted police officer kneeling on his neck for eight minutes, but rather died from a drug overdose.  (A “claim” the Floyd family has sued him $250 million for.)
 
That’s the problem he faces.
 
Given all he’s said about Jews and even blacks and for so long, it’s very difficult to apologize and say, “Gee, I didn’t mean it.  It was hurtful and wrong, I’m sorry.”  Because clearly he did mean it, and meant it repeatedly.  Bluntly.   You don't accidentally want to title your album Hitler.  Single “oops” statements can be apologized for with a mea culpa.  But this is about core beliefs about who a person is.  Such things require acknowledging who you are, explaining the hurt and harm it caused – giving comfort to white supremacists, understanding why it is wrong and why you have been wrong for so long and what you are going to do about the long process of changing who you are right now and for the rest of your life. 
 
And even that doesn’t erase what is on the long record of what you said.
 
That’s the problem he faces.
 
By the way, the added problem is that I don’t see most people, and most especially Kanye West, given who he’s showed himself to be his long public life, going through such a complete public cleansing of his past.  And even if, for some miraculous reason, he did, it would likely be seen as being just an attempt to reclaim is lost partnerships and money, not a public rending of his soul.  But even if – beyond even miracles – his words and actions are so profoundly powerful that they are seen as deeply heartfelt to the extent that he’s gone through a personal conversion…those words he’s long said still live on.
 
And though people at that beyond-miracle point could forgive him, it would still be hard for businesses to want to risk being associated in any way with those early and relentless, hate-filled, violent words.  And hoped-for album titles.
 
To be clear, I think it’s possible some people, maybe many, would be able to forgive Kanye West and keep listening to his music, and would want to buy his products if they could find them being made and sold somewhere, even if he only gave a moderate apology. 
 
The hurdle for West is that it’s hard to see he has even that in him.  And further, while it might be enough to win some or many fans back, it wouldn’t be enough to bring businesses back.  He’s much too toxic to the corporate world for just a mild “I’m sorry if I offended anybody” apology.
 
And his business deals are the core to his wealth now, not his music.  And music trends are short shelf lives.  The public often can forgive egregious, but simple transgressions, however those tend to take a while, let’s say five years.  The music world in five years (let alone more) may not likely have much place for a Kanye West, other than in the Oldies bin.  And the fashion world is even more fickle, often changing from season to season.  And now make it, what if the mea culpa comes in 10 years?
 
I’m not saying Kanye West won’t be able to turn around how he’s crashed and burned his life.  Or that he will be impoverished by his actions.  Financially, he should be better than fine, just perhaps at a less-grandiose scale.  And depending on how he chooses to respond to everything, he may stop being a pariah.
 
But “should” and “may” are tangential terms.  And they come up against a monumental wall and onrushing tsunami that he himself created.
 
That he himself created, and then dared Adidas to do something about it.  Not recognizing the obvious that his world revolved around so much more than just Adidas.  Who, in the end, had utterly zero interest in understanding that it was far more in their corporate interest to move to higher ground.
 
There are so many biblical quotes one could throw around here, starting with “Pride goeth before the fall.”  But it’s one other that most stands out --
 
We have not yet reached the point where this deeply-ironic biblical phrase has taken on brand new meaning, but it’s up to him to avoid it:
 
Abandon all hope Ye who enter here.