Kanye West has a bone to pick with the media, which is nothing new. After his recent demands, which included making everyone stand up during his concert and wanting proof that people were indeed disabled, he's calling himself a target.
During Monday night's performance in Brisbane, Australia, West went on yet another rant:
What I want you to do is, I want you to run the video everyone's talking about where I so-called screamed at somebody and everything. I want you to run that, right, since this is such big media-press-news and everything that obviously they trying to demonize me for. It's like, 'Welcome to today's news, ladies and gentlemen.' We've got Americans getting killed on TV, kids getting killed every weekend in Chicago, unarmed people getting killed by police officers …
… It makes you just want to reflect on what are the things that are a little bit more sensationalized than others. … Because they've got this thing where they want the masses—people who've never heard my albums—to somehow read a headline that reads negative, and think that I'm a bad person or something. I'm not judging, I'm just going to tell you who I am. I'm a married, Christian man.
West also referred to the previous night's fiasco as "bulls—t blown out of proportion." But if it was such bulls—t, then you'd think he'd still make the crowd rise to its feet, without exceptions, but he changed that request.
According to Australia's Courier Mail, he used a little more sensitivity this time around. "Everybody who is not in a wheelchair or handicapped will stand up," he told the Brisbane audience. "If you cannot prove to me that you are in a wheelchair, you need to be standing, if you can it is OK to sit down."
So here's the thing: If it weren't for the media, West would be a has-been. Nowadays, you can't survive on record sales alone. If he didn't want to be in the media's watchful eye, maybe he should have chosen a different career and be less of an a—hole and not married to a Kardashian. I'm quite sure there are hundreds of artists out there who would love to have Kanye-type attention.
Second, to everyone like West who may say, “Well, there are more important things going on in the world," well, duh, there are. Are people that one-track-minded that they can't focus on more than one thing at a time? So you can't worry about unarmed black men getting killed by police and laugh at another West antic? If not, I recommend a course in time and task management.
Every day on The Root's home page, there is national news that affects black people. The Root has various stories on Ferguson, Mo.; domestic violence; racism; education; and history. Needless to say, we cover a variety of stories, for a variety of readers' interests.
Entertainment and pop culture are a break from the seriousness of life. And as long as celebrities keep giving sites fodder, those sites will keep writing about them.
Stay tuned next week, when I'm sure West will rant about something else.