and Ingraham: Liberals freak out as Trump reaches out
Kanye West exposed the intolerance of the left. Their denunciations of his White House appearance were immediate and withering.
It was an amazing moment in the Oval Office Thursday when pop culture icon, rapper extraordinaire Kanye West, met with President Trump before the cameras and unleashed a 10-minute monologue in which he explained his love of all things MAGA.
“You know, people expect that if you're black you have to be Democrat,” West said. “You know, they tried to scare me to not wear this (red MAGA) hat, my own friends. But this hat, it gives me power in a way.
"It was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like superman," he continued. "Like what I need "Saturday Night Live" to improve on or what I need the liberals to improve on is, if he don't look good, we don't look good. This is our president... He has to be the freshest, the flyest...”
Sometimes unlikely figures emerge in American history to play important roles, illuminating important truths. And Kanye West in his own eccentric way, has exposed the intolerance of the left. Their denunciations of his White House appearance were immediate and withering.
“When it comes to the issue of Kanye West bringing black people to President Trump, that's a misnomer,” said one personality on CNN. “He certainly doesn't speak to the diversity or to the broad experiences of 40 million black people.”
And on MSNBC one anchor remarked “That was an assault on our White House.”
An assault on our White House? Sure, West used some coarse language that he shouldn't have, but in other settings, liberals would have called that "authentic." The would have said he was being his "true self, speaking his own truth." If you're truly concerned about assaults or improprieties in the White House, how about what went on between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky? Or the Clintons' close relationship with Harvey Weinstein?
Kanye West is hardly a political philosopher, and I've always believed that entertainers should first entertain and keep their politics separate from their art. But I cannot remember any artist on the left who was treated with the same vitriol and hatred as West has been subjected to since he announced his support for the president.
When Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus were headlining Hillary Clinton rallies, running through dorms to register voters, I don't remember anyone at MSNBC or CNN criticizing them for lacking policy experience. And what about when Hillary Clinton sat down for an interview with the probing policy maven, Mary J. Blige, who serenaded the presidetial candidate with a song that went like this: “It ain't no secret, no secret my friend, you can get killed just for living in your American skin.”
That was like an old coffee commercial from the 70's. And remember, Obama was the biggest celebrity hound of them all. His cringe-worthy celebrity crushes were mutual. Remember when Barack and Michelle serenaded Usher in the White House? No one cried "impropriety" or "assault on the White House" then.
And how about Beyonce and Jay-Z? They were in and out of the Obama White House more frequently than the Secret Service. That was all perfectly acceptable. No policy concerns then. But when it was announced that Kanye West would be holding a meeting with Trump at the White House, all hell broke loose.
“So Kanye is going to let the president use him again,” said CNN’s Don Lemon. A commentator on that network remarked, “He is the token Negro of the Trump administration...Black folks are about to trade Kanye West in the racial draft.” Another said "Kanye West is what happens when Negroes don't read.”
West is being subjected to the attacks that await any black conservative who dares to break ranks with the Democratic monolith. Liberals treat these entertainers like pawns who are not allowed to deviate from the leftist groupthink at all. God protect any Hispanic, gay or black who goes his or her own way politically.
Remember the scorn that singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte heaped on Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell for working for George W. Bush? “Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell served Bush because they believe as he does,” Belafonte said. “They embrace his ideology. They embrace his imperial appetite. They are lackeys and tools of that. And my reference to them as the failed house slaves, meant that they were not the masters of their own destiny, although they had the choice to be and didn't.”
House slaves – that was really nice. More than 30 years ago, a prominent figure in the Reagan administration argued that black Americans should cast off liberalism for conservative solutions, and summed up how the GOP had lost so much ground saying, "Democrats smugly assume blacks are monolithic and will by force of circumstances always huddle to the left of the political spectrum. The political right watches this herd mentality and action, concedes that blacks are monolithic, picks up a few dissidents, and wistfully shrugs at the seemingly unbreakable hold of the liberal left on black Americans."
That official's name was Clarence Thomas, then chair of the Equal Opportunity Commission. Individuals such as the brilliant conservative economist Thomas Sowell were courageous because, as Thomas noted, "they refused to give into the cult mentality and childless obedience that hypnotized black Americans into mindless political trance.”
I'm not going to say that rapper Kanye West is Thomas Sewell or Clarence Thomas. But I will say that unless he is doing a giant punking of America, he has guts and gusto. Just because he dares to think for himself, to think differently, in his outspoken, over-the-top manner, he is pilloried by the politically correct performers in politics and journalism and of course in the entertainment industry. He represents a danger to the left because of his huge cultural influence. And moments like this, they are absolutely intolerable and frightening to liberals.
So next time you hear liberal pundits writing Kanye West off as a crazy, slavery-denying lunatic, remember this: They have to smear West for fear that black Americans will follow him into the arms of President Donald Trump. And what are the Democrats going to do then?
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