Kanye West’s Obnoxious Divorced Man Energy
With only the likes of Candace Owens on his side, Kanye West is not and has not been fighting the good fight for a long time
Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, is at it again. His chaotic crusade has reached every level of his life: his music, his business ventures, his aesthetic pursuits, his current relationship, and — perhaps most tediously — his divorce.
As if crashing a child’s birthday wasn’t enough, Ye continues his public disparagement of Kim Kardashian and her ability to mother their children, and now his gripes include … TikTok.
On Friday, February 4th, Ye posted an Instagram screenshot of his oldest daughter, North — taken from the TikTok account she shares with her mother. Along with it, the caption that launched a thousand groans:
“SINCE THIS IS MY FIRST DIVORCE I NEED TO KNOW WHAT I SHOULD DO ABOUT MY DAUGHTER BEING PUT ON TIK TOK AGAINST MY WILL ?”
The now-deleted post heard around the worldvia Ye's Instagram
The post was followed by another containing screenshots of responses to Ye’s previous post by the one-and-only Candace Owens. Right-wing pundit Candace is known for her flimsy, inflammatory remarks about anything she deems the liberal agenda.
Owens joined Kanye in his disparagement of Kim, to which Kanye responded: “THANK YOU CANDACE FOR BEING THE ONLY NOTEWORTHY PERSON TO SPEAK ON THIS ISSUE … I WILL NO LONGER PUT MY HAND THROUGH A BLENDER TO HUG MY CHILDREN MY MOTHER TOOK ME TO CHICAGO WHEN I WAS 3 AND TOLD MY DAD IF HE CAME TO CHICAGO HE WOULD NEVER SEE ME AGAIN SO I BOUGHT THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR I DREAM OF A WORLD WHERE DAD’S CAN STILL BE HEROES.”
Kanye’s caption again reveals that, despite his nonsensical, ego-driven actions, he’s convinced he’s fighting the good fight. He’s not just being a hero for his own sake, but doing it … for dads everywhere?
Kim — for once — broke her silence after this public attack, taking to Instagram herself in a notes-app statement which I — for once — actually like. The notes-app Instagram post is a risky venue, but Kim’s reply was well articulated, and yes — a tad snarky. Kim didn’t stoop to Kanye’s tactics of self-victimization and blind blame. The worst of all being his complete and utter lack of self-awareness.
“Divorce is difficult enough on our children and Kanye’s obsession with trying to control and manipulate our situation so negatively and publicly is only causing further pain for all,” Kardashian stated. She also expressed her desire to create a “healthy and supportive co-parenting relationship,” and hoped to "handle all matters regarding our children privately."
However, Ye’s behavior and apparent refusal to respond to lawyers is standing in the way. Kardashian expressed it this way, “it saddens me that Kanye continues to make it impossible every step of the way."
Perhaps the most frustrating part of all this is that I have to keep going to bat for Kim. I respect what I know of her role as a mother and her attempts to distance herself from Ye for his blatant manipulation and sexism. But I’m still skeptical about how she constructed her public image — namely by appropriating and discarding Black culture when it suits her.
But at this juncture, with only the likes of Candace Owens on his side, Kanye West is not and has not been fighting the good fight for Black people for a long time. Sure, he leverages his Blackness at capricious moments — dubbing Black History Month Black Futures Month, for one. But his overall message isn’t for the people, it’s for himself, and his egotistical Divorced Dad antics only further prove that.
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Original Article: 01/22/2022
The Divorced Man is one of today’s most fascinating archetypes. He is defined by his need to soothe his wounded ego in a way that’s both pathetic and patriarchal. Let me break it down.
The Divorced Man has been conditioned by heteropatriarchal society to believe that he is the shining knight, slaying the dragon, rescuing the fair maiden, and carrying her home as a token of his strength and manliness. The wife is a mere trophy, a symbolic jewel in his cap of self-conception. And the more beautiful, shiny, and desirable the wife is, the greater his accomplishment … until she decides to leave him in the dust.
Suddenly his ego is crushed. After all, he’s not the Man Who Asks for a Divorce. This trope not only rests on him being the problematic element but he must refuse to acknowledge it. The sheer shock at his trophy’s decision to leave him rattles his sense of self so much that he’s left on shaky ground — scrambling to regain his identity. And the identity he chooses? The victim.
Do not mistake him for the apologetic lover in a romance film. He’s not John Cusak standing under a window with a boombox in Say Anything. He’s not Ryan Gosling endlessly penning letters to a woman who never replies. This would require contrition and selflessness — traits that the Divorced Man does not possess.
His goal is not to fix anything, that’s not his job. He wants three things: the freedom of the single life, the social respect that comes with being a husband and a father — and being perceived as a good one, and to make his ex-wife out to be the villain.
But this is not just an overwrought movie trope. No, the Divorced Man is most compelling in real life — especially when he’s a celebrity who’s acting out for millions to see and cringe at.
Think Brian Austin Green post-divorce to Megan Fox. We get it, if Megan Fox left us, we too would be distraught. We’d also be especially hurt if she immediately began a PDA-filled relationship with Machine Gun Kelly (congrats to the happy couple on their impending nuptials — but I digress). However, Green dealt with his frustrations by taking to … Instagram comments?
When their relationship ended in 2020, the pair carried out multiple heated Instagram exchanges, in which Green attacked Fox’s character and her maternal devotion.
After Green shared a now-deleted photo of their children on Instagram, Fox commented: "You're so intoxicated with feeding the pervasive narrative that I'm an absent mother, and you are the perennial, eternally dedicated dad of the year. You have them half of the time. Congratulations you truly are a remarkable human! Why do you need the internet to echo back to you what should be inexhaustibly evident in the way your children love you?"
Fox’s comment gets at one of the Divorced Man's most pitiful tactics in his bag of tricks — not just portraying themselves as the devoted family man, but in the same breath painting their ex as the opposite.
The latest Divorced Man carrying that toxic torch is none other than Kanye West, who is emerging from his divorce from Kim Kardashian with several projects: a new fashion line, a potential new album, and a new romance. But the primo project of them all is proclaiming himself the father of the year.
But isn’t Kanye the king of rebranding? He’s rebranded himself from rapper to music-genius to billionaire businessman, and fashion innovator. He also had a hand in Kim Kardashian’s rebrand from reality star to major fashion and lifestyle mainstay. Apparently, he’s doing the same with his new GF, Julia Fox. And he’s doing all of this while attempting to tear down Kim’s reputation as a mother.
Recently, West took to Twitter to claim that Kim was keeping him from their children, and tried to bar him from his daughter’s birthday party.
“I’m just wishing my daughter a public happy birthday,” Ye claimed in a video he published online. “I wasn’t allowed to know where her party was.”
The party was a joint celebration for Ye’s daughter — Chicago West — and Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott’s daughter, Stormi Webster, who were both turning four. After Travis Scott — the rapper behind the Astroworld tragedy — texted him the address, Kanye reportedly made it to the party much to Kim’s surprise.
However, this wasn’t before Ye claimed that “the games” being played by Kim were intentional attempts to sabotage him … and his mental health. “There’s nothing legal [in place],” he claimed. “This is the kind of games that’s being played. It’s the kind of thing that’s affected my health for the longest.”
Weaponizing his following to blame Kim for attempting to destroy not just his relationship with his family, but also his mental health, is just the kind of gross hyperbolic victimization that is peak Divorced Dad. This is especially wild considering the statement from the Kardashian camp, which claims: “There were always two parties planned for Chicago, which was Kanye’s idea.”
From reports about the Kardashian-West divorce, Kanye’s outrage at being supposedly kept from his children is surprising. The rapper had taken to spending most of his time at his compound in Wyoming … meaning away from his wife and children … long before the divorce. Where was this family man attitude when he was spending weeks away and pretending to be in Halloween photos?
His Divorced Man metamorphosis comes just as Kim enters her own new relationship with Hollywood’s favorite enigma, Pete Davidson. We may love him, but Kanye West doesn’t. In a recently leaked track from Ye’s new album, he raps: “God saved me from that crash just so I can beat Pete Davidson's ass.”
His anger at their relationship feels hypocritical as he parades his own ‘relationship’ with Julia Fox in Interview magazine. However, to the Divorced Man, this reaction is typical. He feels Wronged enough to justify his own pursuit of another trophy — one who will appreciate him the way he’s convinced he deserves. Then there’s Fox calling her two weeks with Ye a “Cinderella story”. Sure sounds like it fits the bill — but he also still feels ownership to his ex.
We are not excited to see how this plays out — Kanye’s unpredictability and emotionally erratic behavior means this cannot end well. We’re not rooting for anyone except the kids here — well, maybe Pete Davidson. The tale of the Divorced Man is always an exhausting one. And in this tale, the only winner will probably be Kris Jenner, puppet master extraordinaire who seemingly lives on press — negative or not. Wish us all luck, we need it.
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The Upside of the Coronavirus: We're Finally Past Celebrity Drama
Celebrities' normal antics are not as entertaining (or as important) as they once seemed.
Kim Kardashian has lashed out at Taylor Swift, or Taylor Swift has lashed out at Kim Kardashian, but most of all, both lashed out at all of us for constantly devouring their drama.
Kardashian volleyed a bunch of tweets last night, admonishing Swift for apparently re-invigorating their briefly dead feud and then disavowing the feud on the whole. She finished, "This will be the last time I speak on this because honestly, nobody cares. Sorry to bore you all with this. I know you are all dealing with more serious and important matters."
Swift also responded negatively to the feud's resurfacing. "Instead of answering those who are asking how I feel about the video footage that leaked, proving that I was telling the truth the whole time about *that call* (you know, the one that was illegally recorded, that somebody edited and manipulated in order to frame me and put me, my family, and fans through hell for 4 years)… SWIPE up to see what really matters," she posted on Instagram. When fans swiped, they were taken to a donation page for the nonprofit Feeding America and the World Health Organization's Solidarity Response Fund.
The mind-numbing stupidity of the Taylor Swift-Kim Kardashian-Kanye West feud feels even more obvious in the light of the fact that we're living in a pandemic. Are we entering the age of the post-celebrity feud?
Everywhere, celebrities and ordinary people are expressing rage and anger at those who attempt to continue with business at usual. People who cluster on the street and hang out in parks are the recipient of angry yells from the balcony-bound self-quarantined. Those with any inclination towards the mystic are writing about how the world must change after coronavirus passes—how we cannot return to the way things were, to the way we mindlessly destroyed the planet and hurt each other, thus somehow cursing ourselves into isolation. Humans are the virus, they write; to which the activists respond, capitalism is the virus, while people facing unemployment attempt to vie for a rent freeze.
Even ordinary acts of "kindness"—of the sort we would normally associate with celebrity benevolence—are beginning to appear woefully out of touch. In essence, Hollywood's version of prepackaged, performative kindness and drama seems to be failing to placate the masses. Instead, it only serves to show that the main difference between these folks and regular people isn't necessarily hard work or talent—it's money.
Ellen's versions of "tolerance" and "kindness" were under scrutiny before the virus, but now that she's live-streaming from her couch and complaining about boredom from within her massive home, a thread about her cruel behavior has gone viral.
Madonna also faced vitriol when she made a poorly crafted attempt to comfort her fans from the safety of her bathtub. "Coronavirus is the great equalizer," she said, equating her own living situation—in a flower-filled bathtub, safe within one of her multiple large homes—with the plight of people who have no way of paying this month's rent. (She faced so much backlash that she deleted the video).
And then there's Gal Gadot's "Imagine" video, a horror that seemed to seep out of the wounds coronavirus has already made in our world and ways of life. What was the worst thing about that video? Was it Gadot's waffling intro? Was it seeing our beloved celebrities, without their stage makeup and lighting and cameramen to turn them into gods—was it seeing our celebrities' mortality and feeling some inordinate rage that we've worshiped them for so long while they were really just ordinary people? Was it the look in their eyes, the tepid sorrow overshadowed by a glossy egoism, the same look in the eyes of everyone who has taken a photograph with a child on a service trip? Was it the different keys, the lack of background music, the carelessness of the whole thing?
The "Imagine" video was awful, certainly, but would we have hated it so much if it were well-made, a professional music video with excellent harmonies and good lighting and dazzling costumes? Maybe the disappointment we feel while watching the "Imagine" fiasco stems from a feeling of falling, a realization that the person behind the curtain has always been just an ordinary man, and yet these mortals are languishing in massive air-conditioned homes while so many people sleep on the streets.
Some of the celebrity responses to coronavirus are not just disillusioned; they're truly dangerous. Vanessa Hudgens also provoked ire when she posted a video showing just how much she cared about those who might be affected by the virus. "Even if everybody gets it, like yeah, people are going to die, which is terrible... but inevitable?" she intoned in a video she later apologized for. Worse still, Evangelline Lilly is crusading against quarantining herself on the basis of some idea that it's a violation of her American-born "freedom."
And then there's Donald Trump, the reigning king of the celebrity illusionists. Everything he says sounds as painful and as hollow as the "Imagine" video to some of our ears. Recently, a man died because he tried drinking chloroquine phosphate, a fish tank-cleaner, per Trump's ill-advised recommendation. Trump has been persistently spreading false information, promising that America will be up and running by Easter as other nations tighten their regulations.
Most of the guiltiest illusionists of all aren't even visible. They're the Wall Street executives and the genuinely super-rich—not the Hollywood-level rich but the Jeff Bezos-level rich, those who possess a literally unfathomable amount of money—the ones who have already raced off to their bunkers, the ones who bought stocks at the start of the crisis instead of raising the alarm.
Collectively, maybe we're all getting tired of these folks, parading their gaudy lifestyles and tapping out their stocks, getting early access to tests while our healthcare workers can't even access tests in their own hospitals. Illusions just aren't going to cut it the way they used to. That's not to say they won't change form; certainly our new very-online lives will leave plenty of room for performance and fabrication. Still, the coronavirus feels like it's peeling back many layers of performative benevolence to reveal the insubstantiality at the heart of it all—the wealth inequality and pure selfishness that's allowing this crisis to sputter on into the disruptive mess it's become. Even Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, and Britney Spears are waking up to it. Are you?