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Kanye West: 'George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People'

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06:35 / 03.09.05

Wow.

Mike Meyers looks a bit uncomfortable doesn't he?

Foust is SO authentic

07:03 / 03.09.05

He's a comedian. I doubt Myers is used to having a surprise, inevitably controversial rant sprung on him on live tv.

07:24 / 03.09.05

I'm so damn proud of Kanye right now.

07:36 / 03.09.05

From 17 January 1995 to 21 December 2000 George W. Bush was Governor of Texas. In those years 153 people got executed (death penalty).

Since 1976 there were 980 executions in the USA, 348 of them in Texas. GWB is responsible for almost half of those 348 killings in less than six years.

I was not able to research the ethnicity/race of those 153 executed prisoners.

But to me it looks like "George Bush doesn´t care about human life" is pretty accurate.

07:45 / 03.09.05

Apart from white ladies in vegetative states...

08:24 / 03.09.05

Aaand cut away. Quickly.

Perhaps Pat Robertson will suggest assassinating Kanye now.

08:35 / 03.09.05

Surely Pat would merely advocate 'taking him out' as in 'taking him out all night'. Like your mother.

All Acting Regiment

10:04 / 03.09.05

Gives a boost to this thread:

http://www.barbelith.com/topic/8216

20:25 / 03.09.05

Now that was some boost

Get this on ebay:

Tryphena Absent

22:40 / 03.09.05

Mike Myers was obviously reading off an autocue, somehow I don't think Kanye was.

paranoidwriter waves hello

23:25 / 03.09.05

I thought he was magnificent. Nice one, Mr West.

01:41 / 04.09.05

I hope like hell that they're going to donate profits from that shirt to the victims. (There's a different shirt on EBay that's similar in a store).

I was impressed. Mike Myers looked so panicked. If you want to see more videos of people from the government getting yelled at on television, this page has many. Ici.

02:13 / 04.09.05

Mike Myers was obviously reading off an autocue, somehow I don't think Kanye was.

It was a live show, and apparently whoever was in charge of the live edit was just listening for curse words and didn't realize Kanye had gone off script.

I love it... although I have to say, with the exception of the last sentence everything he said had also been said by leaders of the Black Caucus on CNN, so it shouldn't be as shocking as it first seems.

03:00 / 04.09.05

I think the shock is more contextual, i.e., not something you expect to hear from rent-a-celeb on an inoccuous telethon. Plus, the punchline is a killer!

Also, the shirt proceeds are going to the Red Cross as far as I know.

Tryphena Absent

03:04 / 04.09.05

Mike Myers looked so panicked

I love those couple of seconds after he realises what Kanye's said. It's serious. It's also the funniest thing I've seen in an age. He just can't believe it at all and that's what's so beautiful about the clip.

04:37 / 04.09.05

Ah, yes, let's bring race into this. Obviously incompetence, piss poor planning, and lack of preparedness had nothing to do with it. It's all due to racism.

Actually Kanye West's been quite vocal lately. I wonder if the fact that he just had a new album come out has anything to do with it? Nah...

If all this race baiting is going to continue and if people keep thinking that the color of one's skin is somehow important (which is done a lot by both sides) I wouldn't be surprised if we'll end up having race riots within a few months.

06:39 / 04.09.05

Yeah, if we don't mention race there won't race riots! Good call!!1!

Jake, Colossus of Clout

06:42 / 04.09.05

Yeah, because everyone's been saying that all of this is due to race.

God forbid that many different factors combine to make a whole.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:16 / 04.09.05

For some reason I can't get the file to work... does anyone have a transcript?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:49 / 04.09.05

Ah... found one in the KW thread in R&M.

Fucking nice one, Kanye-dude!

08:14 / 04.09.05

Front page of the Sunday Herald today, Kanye!

It's a big thing where I come from.

Beside Jesse Jackson, Randall Robinson and some BC guy I'd not heard of.

Article says 44% of state's disaster fund cut to bankroll everyone's favourite war.

I'd've thought this was all self-evident after days of watching loads of black people being in a fucked up situation. Might buy the album now, anyway, despite middling advance word. Both singles are good.

08:33 / 04.09.05

Obviously the hurricane didn't think, "let's go to where all the poor black people live," but I can't help but think that if this disaster had left a bunch of rich white people stranded at the city center they would have gotten helped more quickly.

09:44 / 04.09.05

Ah, yes, let's bring race into this. Obviously incompetence, piss poor planning, and lack of preparedness had nothing to do with it. It's all due to racism.

Yes, because clearly the lacklustre response can't be due to more than one factor, can it? And perhaps if everyone simply avoids mentioning the fact that most of the neglected suffering are poor black people, it'll cease to be an issue? Good plan.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:27 / 04.09.05

I think Enamon might have been providing a brilliant satitirical example of how whitness is assumed to be normative. Alternatively, he's a bit dim.

It might be more accurate, however, to say that George Bush doesn't care about poor people, many of whom are black. See also people who vote Democrat.

10:36 / 04.09.05

Does the fact that Bush is now admitting the initial response was inadequate suggest he's got an album coming out?

11:27 / 04.09.05

Maybe Bush/Republican party is picking up tips from Mugabe? i.e. persecute those who are likely to vote against you and concentrate your resources on those who back you. With the hope that eventually people with either vote with you out of fear or so many of your opponents will have died off there won't be enough left to vote you out.

*massive disclaimer* I'm not for one second suggesting that a hurricane can be engineered like an 'illegal settlement clearing' and I'm guessing that Louisiana probably voted Republican anyway. **

I suppose I'm just suggesting it's an extension of those in power supporting those who put them there, i.e. the rich and 'influential' and sod all the rest. If it had been a natural disaster in Bush's home state you can guarantee people wouldn't have been locked in refuge centres and left for days to struggle and die amongst the dead and their own waste.

11:40 / 04.09.05

Stoatie, the transcript from the other thread isn't the whole text of what he said - if you see the actual clip, he adds a fair bit including an emphasis on class. Also, its clear that he's rambling and full of emotion, not making some sort of planned publicity stunt.

11:46 / 04.09.05

Yeah, his voice was wobbling all over the place.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:47 / 04.09.05

sTE - Lousiana did, New Orleans didn't. That's one of the interesting things here - a well-managed relief operation would probably not have turned NO red, in much the same way that not drilling in a nature reserve is unlikely to make the people who protest against drilling in nature reserves suddenly vote Republican - there's no compelling argument for caring. However, the possible impact on other voters of the sheer enormity of this cock-up is, I suspect, not something that had been entirely understood.

14:17 / 04.09.05

If you haven't seen it yet, there's a couple links to it here.

Along with a mess of other reporters beating up on the feds- okay, mostly on this Brown guy who's in charge of FEMA.

14:59 / 04.09.05

"but I can't help but think that if this disaster had left a bunch of rich white people stranded at the city center they would have gotten helped more quickly."

from a recent Guardian article:
"At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses rolled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line - much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the stinking Superdome since last Sunday.

``How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?'' exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage."

and about Kanye...
I don't entirely support what he did. I agree with his point - the reason we waited so god damn long before rescuing these people, the reason we've chosen to focus on looting rather than the hundreds that are dying daily because of incompetance, the reason that the entire remaining population of New Orleans is now being refered to as "the insurgency" by the military, IS because they're black and poor, and not much use politically to the Bush administration. And this, no doubt, has me outraged. At the same time, however, keep in mind that this imprompteu rant may have caused many conservative viewers to turn their tvs off and put their phones down. That telethon was supposed to raise money to help these damn people, and I think Kanye might have done much more damage than he did good, despite his intentions.

and as enamon mentions*, I'm sure having a new album out didn't slow Kanye down any when he first considered doing this.

ibis - although you're right, I can't imagine that Kanye said it quite as intelligently as the Black Caucus did (he is a college dropout after all, and feels the need to mention it every two seconds)

*this is the only part of his post I agree with, beside the fact that we probably will be having race riots within the next few weeks

oh yeah, and why is this in conversation? I think it's probably worthy of the Switchboard, don't you?

15:31 / 04.09.05

Well, I'm sure having a new album out is why Kanye was invited to be on the program, but to my ears he sounded nervous and emotional in his outburst, not calculatingly opportunistic - not to read too much into his motives. But he's on some level an ordinary citizen like the rest of us, and I say good on him for speaking his mind.

I just think it's a shame that every time a celebrity expresses a strong political opinion that happens to be pro-government, pro-Bush, or pro-war (aka pro-"troops"), he's given a veritable standing O -- but any celebrity who expresses a strong political opinion that happens to be anti-government, anti-Bush or anti-war, he's raked over the coals - by EVERYONE, even those who agree with his point of view. See: Toby Keith vs. Dixie Chicks, etc.

15:39 / 04.09.05

At the same time, however, keep in mind that this imprompteu rant may have caused many conservative viewers to turn their tvs off and put their phones down. That telethon was supposed to raise money to help these damn people, and I think Kanye might have done much more damage than he did good, despite his intentions.

a) We've absolutely no idea of knowing whether this line of reasoning has any basis in reality. If Fox News is now criticising Bush, it's anyone's guess whether "conservative viewers" are indeed being as squeamish as you suggest.

b) Depending on their individual brand of conservatism, this hypothetical body of "conservative viewers" may equally have turned their televisions off because of the celebrities chosen to make the telethon, or because they followed the 'New Orleans = Sodom' stuff or because they disapprove of charity or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, this 'musn't frighten the horses' softening of harsh realities in order to pander to a formless right-wing mass leads to a lazy, anodyne, ineffectual media which is no use to anyone.

c) The 'yeah, but X has got a new album/film/book coming out' response is kneejerk cynicism - equally tired, but, in the absence of a critical press machine, a good way of neutralising valid criticism from anyone else.

15:53 / 04.09.05

Amen, 'nesh.

18:06 / 04.09.05

I've always thought Kanye was kind of a dick. The man is right, though. Rich, white people wouldn't have been treated the same way these poor black folk are and it's a goddamn shame.

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