How to respond to Kanye West? His business partners severed ties. Liberal media outlets resorted to cancel culture. Elon Musk gave the artist now known as Ye a second chance on Twitter, only to regret his magnanimity after Ye posted a graphic of a swastika intertwined with a Star of David, and kicked him back off the platform.
The freak show that kicked off with Ye’s 2018 Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump — a moment whose strangeness was reminiscent of Nixon Meets Elvis — culminated over the last two months with, among other acts, Ye’s bizarre donning of a White Lives Matter shirt, antisemitic threats on Twitter, hanging out with a white nationalist and praising Hitler and the Nazis during a video appearance with Alex Jones.
I’m not a psychologist, but you don’t have to be a mental health expert to see that Ye is suffering from some sort of personality disorder or illness that is causing or contributing to this former billionaire’s public decompensation. We know that he suffered from depression after the 2007 death of his mother and has been formally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which causes extreme mood swings. When someone is in the throes of a psychological crisis, responding politically subjects someone who ought to get help to punishment instead — punishment that can only exacerbate their pain.
Trevor Noah suggested that Ye needs to be “counseled, not canceled.” But how?
As a leftist I’m hardly predisposed to sympathizing with a billionaire who expresses loathsome racist and bigoted political views. Nor do I often agree with the point of view of corporations like Adidas, Gap and Creative Artists Agency, all of which cut ties with the troubled rapper. But these companies can hardly be faulted for trying to protect their brands.
Yet I have even less sympathy for liberals and progressives who take to their opinion columns to pompously approve of the dismantling of this man’s life and career. Where is their compassion? “If the culture averted its gaze from his indiscriminate bluster, what would be the loss?” Robin Givhan asked in The Washington Post. To me personally, nothing at all. I don’t listen to Ye’s music. That’s not the point.
Because he is a human being in crisis, Ye deserves sympathy. Because celebrities and the way we treat them trickles down, his pitiful situation matters to the rest of us.
Society suffers when we don’t live up to liberals’ oft-stated declarations that we should sympathize with people who struggle because the organ that is broken happens to be their brain as opposed to, say, their lungs or their liver. If you saw a woman fall and break her leg, you would stop and help her. Watch the same woman curse at someone who isn’t there, and you avert your eyes and hasten by.
Yet judging that woman is self-destructive: Any of us might lose our mind. All it takes is a shift in the chemical balance between your levels of dopamine and serotonin.
Criminal courts and common people rightly consider mental state and motivation when assessing guilt or innocence, and, if guilt is found, severity of punishment. The tricky question is: Is Ye antisemitic, crazy or both?
After a drunken Mel Gibson went on an antisemitic rant after being pulled over by a police officer, he explained that he had “said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable.” But thoughts and opinions don’t come out of a vacuum. He didn’t speak Aramaic or reference string theory; he doesn’t know those. Gibson obviously has some dark thoughts about Jews rattling around in his brain. In vino veritas? Perhaps. We don’t know what he says in private when he’s sober. Fortunately for him and for filmgoers, Gibson seems to have managed to keep it together since then.
It’s also possible that Gibson stifles hate speech when he’s not residing at the bottom of a bottle and that Ye knows better than to indulge his inner self-hating white nationalist when he’s not in thrall to a manic episode or depression triggered by a messy public divorce. Intriguingly, were he feeling sane, Ye might not even believe that garbage, much less express it. Some studies have established a link between extreme racism and bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.
Arguing in New York magazine that sanctions against Ye are appropriate if for no other reason than they serve as deterrents, Eric Levitz writes that “I don’t think we can actually know that West’s bigotry has nothing to do with his illness.” Just so. We don’t know. We can’t know. And that should be the determining factor. One of the core principles of Western culture is that the burden of proof rests with the accuser. If you don’t know for sure, you can’t convict.
Also, if deterrence worked on crazy people, Ye would have altered his behavior the first time he lost a business deal.
It is worth remembering that the Americans with Disabilities Act protects workers suffering from mental illness from getting fired. Ye wasn’t an employee of the companies that stopped working with him, so the law doesn’t apply. Nevertheless, corporate America should voluntarily stand for the principle that psychological problems should not be cause for terminating a contract. Businesses that are understandably shocked and disgusted by Ye’s crazy antisemitism — antisemitic craziness? — might instead have issued statements that deplored the sentiments, expressed concern for Ye’s mental well-being and paused rather than severed their relationships until he seeks and receives the help that he needs.
Hate speech like antisemitism is inherently insane. When the person speaking is off-kilter, a purely political response misses the point even if that hatred has a political tint.
Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis.
once again, ted has mistaken a hornets nest for a turban.
Like “White Lives Matter”?
How about a quote that we can all agree is loathsom, racist and bigoted.
Ye is critical of the Jews. If that is insane what do you call being critical of White people? Or Christians. Or Russians. Or perverts.
You have no clue Ted. You might as well be retarded. And/Or “insane”.
I’m a 76 year old white male anarchist living in Alabama and I haven’t voted in a Presidential election since 1976 when I voted for Jimmy Carter (that did it for me), but if Ye runs for Prez I’ll definitely vote for him.
Of course the Jews who own America would never stand for him to be elected, but if he won the popular vote it sure would add a lot of excitement to the worthless electoral dog and pony show (shit show) right before the total collapse of the system.
When the DSM-5 replaced the DSM-IV ten years ago, the psychiatric profession debated whether “cultural concepts of distress” should be upgraded to the status of being a mental illness. But all it got was some appendix language. The essay’s position is that Ye is mentally ill and needs counseling. But the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the mental-health docs does not define “going against the culture” as a mental illness (yet; wait). If the failure to embrace the direction the cultural wind is blowing is a mental illness, then I am crazy, and so is everyone here.
I’m not a psychologist, but you don’t have to be a mental health expert to see that Ye is suffering from some sort of personality disorder or illness
Speaking his mind?
There’s nothing to do, Mr. Rall, it’s called freedom of speech–freedom of expression, like you exercise in your cartooning. And please, dispense with the mental health horseshit. Some brilliant people I know are diagnosed bipolar, and, from what I can tell from your writing, outclass you in intellect.
As for Kanye, hell, he is much more deserving of a Person of the Year award than Zelensky or of a Nobel Peace Prize than Barack I’llbombya.
“Also, if deterrence worked on crazy people, Ye would have altered his behavior the first time he lost a business deal.”
That is one loaded statement! Let’s, as the ADL put it when previously referring Ye’s statements, “unpack” this:
“if deterrence worked“ This was in no way shape or form an act of deterrence, it was a swift, severe and public “Buck Breaking.”
“on crazy people” Gross presupposition. He stated all along he knew he would likely lose everything up to and including being killed, stayed very effectively true to his mission and accepted even THAT possible outcome. (Listen to Drink Champs One, Two and Three—repeatedly if necessary!)
“altered his behavior” He did in fact alter his behavior—appropriately. Having a firm grasp of his impending doom, he became more strident and outrageous. He threw HIMSELF under the bus on behalf of one hell of a lot of lesser folks, who don’t even know it and will benefit from it.
“lost a business deal.” By this I’m assuming you mean more than ANYONE believed he willing would have, particularly his handlers—on PRINCIPLE. Which by the way is the very point of the insane money thrown at ALL celebrities, to get them WAY past their principles, because it’s proven very effective and has NEARLY always worked.
Ted, you like so many others, have drank so much Kool-Aid, you are now a person of color. Congrats.
Ye may not be Christ (yet to be seen), but he SURE as hell isn’t the anti-whatnot.
Superstar – Andrew Lloyd Webber
Every time I look at you
I don’t understand
Why you let the things you did
Get so out of hand
You’d have managed better
If you’d had it planned
Now why’d you choose such a backward time
And such a strange land?
If you’d come today
You could have reached a whole nation
Israel in 4 BC
Had no mass communication
Don’t you get me wrong
Don’t you get me wrong
Don’t you get me wrong, now
Don’t you get me wrong
Don’t you get me wrong
Don’t you get me wrong
Don’t you get me wrong, now
Don’t you get me wrong
Only want to know
Only want to know
Only want to know, now
Only want to know
Only want to know
Only want to know
Only want to know, now
Only want to know
Jesus Christ Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Tell me what you think
About your friends at the top
Who do you think besides yourself
Was the pick of the crop?
Buddah was he where it’s at?
Is he where you are?
Could Mohamed move a mountain
Or was that just PR?
Did you mean to die like that?
Was that a mistake or
Did you know your messy death
Would be a record breaker?
Don’t you get me wrong
Don’t you get me wrong
Don’t you get me wrong, now
Don’t you get me wrong
Don’t you get me wrong
Don’t you get me wrong
Don’t you get me wrong, now
Don’t you get me wrong
Only want to know
Only want to know
Only want to know, now
Only want to know
Only want to know
Only want to know
Only want to know, now
I only want to know
Jesus Christ Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Jesus Christ Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Jesus Christ Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Nothing wrong with Ye, it’s the world that’s screwed up.
Drunk Mel said Jews start ‘all wars’. He didn’t kill anyone.
Neocon Jews really did start wars and killed countless people based on lies. And Jews had something to do with 9/11.
But Gibson is someone we should worry about?
My only beef with Gibson is
1. He said it drunk, not sober, and so he said it crazy.
2. He apologized.
He should have said it sober in a serious way and NOT apologized.
Kanye has said some nutty things, but he didn’t kill anyone. But Neocon Jews have used sub-nazis in Ukraine to murder innocents and provoke war.
Yet, this country is more worked up about some rapper than all these murderous Jewish Supremacists?
GMAFB or give me a f***ing break.
You are an idiot Ted Rall. A buffoon that has females and Jews on a pedestal.
“Hate speech like antisemitism is inherently insane”
No, hating truth like you do, is inherently insane. Hating evil is not inherently insane.
“Some studies have established a link between extreme racism and bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.”
——-
Ha! That explains everything about the majority of posters here on UNZ.
You cannot be serious! I was wondering how Rall would work in some stupid far left bleeding heart angle into this story.
Ye should be stripped of all his assets, hog-tied and sent back to Africa.
Let’s face it, there is NO WAY Ye is telling the truth.
~ Ted Rall
Feel free to leave if you’re too stupid to defend your communist ideals.
That in a nutshell is why the Christian neofascists are poised to turn our failed experiment in secular self-government into a Taliban style theocracy. As Eldridge Cleaver commented long ago: a white middle-class liberal is just a mixture of jive and bullshit.
You don’t have to be suffering from madness to correctly name powerful special interests whose greed and corruption are manifestly destroying our land. You just have to be suicidally inclined to say it out loud in an era of mindless enforced conformity and universal deceit.
Dismissing clarity of observation as mental illness is too Stalinist for a lot of us who remember what leftism really means.
The author is preparing grounds for detaining Ye in a mental asylum. He does not at all refer to what Ye holds to be the proximate cause of the “mental break down” – Ye’s wife and children were prised away from him, and Ye blames some J***s as the cause. This makes me wonder if the author really has Ye’s best interests in his mind.
One never knows.
Oh look the implanted mental conditioning kicked in.
It should be patently obvious to an intellectual giant such as you, Teddy Boy.
Ye is suffering from a severe case of drapetomania. Kyrie Irving is also a victim of this mental illness. I expect it to become a mass psychosis before long.
How can Kanye West be antisemitic, he likes Palestinians. Ted Rall obviously does not know that and slander him with mental illness – pathetic. Hate is an emotion opposite to love and only ignorant undemocratic people try to suppressed it. Communist tried that a failed.
Unfortunately both institutions that you mentioned are controlled by Zionists the same way they control the governments of Aglo-zone, Ukraine, Poland, Netherlands, Kosovo plus.
Some debate on hate speech meme, in frame of perceived paper rights on speech being nil, except porno, and cabalists putting down whites, which porno isn’t speech yet first amendment was used to claim it is, while speech that matters is tanked. Among other methods such as media, courts sliding in law dictating can’t record audio in court now, and rules claiming whatever court transcript is the ‘only’ official’ record, so, whatever they claim was said or not is the ‘law’. If they change or delete whatever, no recourse, because can’t record or use audio to disprove. People assume things don’t affect them, but on the covid con who enforced shutting down businesses and foreclosing homes. The angles of media or paper laws are to dissuade from using natural law ability, which speaking is part of. Then consider hate speech and supremacist memes scheme is some dictating themselves and their speech over others.
The memes were made for tyrany, example, Biden said white supremacy is a poison and people should reject white replacement theory, but Biden is white, and by scheming to be a supposed ‘president, over others, he is a supremacist. On one hand everyone should make effort outward, though tyrany is another thing. Chastising whites to not have any interest in their life, is being a gross supremacist.
The hate speech meme when used to shut down other’s speech, to dictate only speech of supremacist’s choosing, is supremacist hate speech. Suggest make note as same on anyone claiming to be supposed state using hate speech meme or supremacist meme, about anyone else, is accusatory inversion/projection scheme.
There’s nothing wrong with anger at things, and necessary as requirement to be alive, sorting people, and communicating. Would add that speech where we live should be first focus, as web can be cut off. Kanye expresses opinions using natural law ability, which schemers attempting to cut speech, is opposite of equality. So though disagree on hate speech meme in article, otherwise noticed that though Ted ranks on Kanye opinions, doesn’t say he should be cut off, and on that is example of equal arguing, which is how it should be.
.
Yes, yes! If only Ye’d been a tranny meeting with Pedo Joe. Or had dallianced with hookers and coke like Boy Scout, Hunter!
B-b-b-b-because everyone knows that Whites don’t matter, just Mbutus, Aztecs, Gunga Dins, Golden Horders, and others. Right?
TRANSLATION: Ye cited Jew power-crimes-shenanigans.
Netanyahu?
Like the one used by the US Army? https://tinyurl.com/4anruyx8
Indeed. There are reasons why the Eiffel Tower, wine, cheese, etc. personify Paris. Stereotypes do exist…and for reasons. Humans, to survive, must recognize patterns. So….
(You’re almost there, Ted. Now…grow a pair and name the Jew!)
Kanye aired the obvious: Jews are uber-powerful. Uber-powerful Jews proved that by trying to destroy him. Why? For telling the truth!
Capisce?
What threats/abuses did post-WWI Germany face? Any from Jews…who’d recently destroyed Christian Russia, cruelly and needlessly murdering the Czar and his wife and children in the process? Were Jews then acting like Ukrainian Azov-holes now? Did 1918-33 Jews goad German Teutoborg Foresters like they’re baiting the Russian Bear now?
Also, why is it kosher for Juden to be proud, tribal, insular, walled-in, and nationalistic…but not others?
Yet you pretend to be.
Yes: HTD!
“From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter Thompson’s Disease.” ~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Ted is a truth-hater. And I bet he says bupkis when Whites get slandered, choosing instead to fellate Magic Niggerwords and trannies while getting pegged by feminist lesbian Aunt Peg.
That Amish gent?
The rag edited by David Haskell? The Lefty who published a slut’s allegation of being sexually assaulted by Trump? That “unbiased” toilet-paper roll?
Now tell us, Mr. Enthralled-by-Zionism Rall: what misdeeds, crimes, and valid negatory stereotypes of Jews can merely mortal goyim mention without being cancelled?
We’ll wait.
Right you are, and though Kanye is more deserving than Z and Obama, so are my postal carrier and the cashier at the local grocery store.
You tricked me. I don’t read leftists.
warmonger
And what if Kanye wins in the epic troll of all times?
haha I hope so, at least he is speaking truth.
I think you, MemeJewJew, should be stripped of all your assets, hog-tied and sent back to the Pale of Settlement to fight against the Russians whom you hate so much.
Ted took all those words to simply say this:
If a Jew calls you “anti-Semitic” you are…
1) at best sick-in-the-head and in need of loving Jew therapy, after which you will grovel up a storm, or…
2) a “Jew hater” deserving of imprisonment.