Tuesday, 21 July 2020, 4:52 pmOpinion: Binoy Kampmark

In many ways, rapper and footwear mogul Kanye West fitsthe mould. That mould the star or celebrity running forhigh office had already been made by theactor-cum-amnesiac Ronald Reagan, who, with his dabbling inastrology and conveniently re-imagined reminiscences, didmuch to prepare the White House for what one might call thereality show. The fruit from that garden has beenample and bitter.

After announcing his improbable andalmost certainly doomed campaign for the US presidency,West, after flirting with dropping out, decided to at leasthave a campaign rally. Like other countries who havewitnessed celebrities gather the electoral silver and maketheir way into office, West is playing politics emptied ofpolitics, the patient extracted of the nerve. Theanti-political politician is an oxymoron, but it is anoxymoron that has speared and skewered statecraft. Thepolitical classes are petrified in alienation,representatives shielded behind armies of pollsters, publicrelations gurus and party machinery. The voter might as wellvote for a candidate on the autopilot gravy train. Thelunatic you get is the lunatic you see.

West is hisown gravy train, admittedly also stocked up with provisionsfrom his fellow celebrity companion, Kim Kardashian. Hisarticulations are pricks of irritation, rarely credible andalmost always reversible. He does his utmost to convincethat he is some discount idiot savant, trying to soundprofound even as he fumbles. His rallyat Charleston, South Carolina left something for everybody,though no one present should have been confused by theall about me theme.

It all started withpredictable theatre. There was no microphone. West donned abulletproof vest. (You ought to be worth shooting to becredible.) 2020 was shaved into performers head.The audience gathered could not exactly be called vast,though the rapper promised that future events would beglorious, held in rooms where the acoustics will beincredible because I will be involved with thedesign.

The presentation was peppered by suchhowlers as that on the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, whonever actually freed the slaves. What Tubman did,reflected West, was just having the slaves go work forother white people. The fogged up looking glass wasbrought out, with suggestionsby Dani Di Placido in Forbes that this might havebeen some obscure reference to wage slavery and whitesupremacy. That said, a lament follows. Why did West haveto go after a beloved civil rights hero given hisprevious Trump love phase, his own hyper-capitalistambitions and the fact of becoming a billionaire whichcan hardly happen through opposing wageslavery?

Knocking off the gloss of the Tubmanlegacy was part of a show that moved into the realm of theteary and transcendental, with the performer promoting hisinspirational link to the divine. West the mystic spoke ofGods intervention, suggesting that fabulous sky creaturedivines are terribly incurious, and bored, by nature. Iwas having the rappers lifestyle. I was sitting up inParis, and I had my leather pants on and I had my laptopup and I got all of my creative ideas. I got my shoes, I gotmy sound cover, I got communities, I got clothes, I got allthis and the screen [went] black and white and God said,if you f*** with my vision Im going to f*** withyours.

It all had to do with his child, whoserved as a good publicity prop for the occasion. This goodLord of the mind blowing f*** vision had convincedWest that he and his wife should have their baby. And Icalled my wife and she said, were going to have thisbaby. I said were gonna have this child So even if mywife were to divorce me after this speech, she brought Northinto the world when I didnt want to. She stood up and sheprotected that child. To ease any moral or ethicalquandaries, West had a solution for troubled couples: givethem money. Everybody that has a baby gets a milliondollars.

There was much talk about hisentrepreneurial prowess (boosting the Adidas bank balanceand share portfolio), his 132 IQ genius, a person wholiterally went to the hospital because his brain was toobig for his skull.

There were audienceinterventions that rarely taxed the big-brained wonder. Acertain Summer complained about education beingwhitewashed, police brutality and thebrainwashing offered by such technology platforms asTikTok, though West spent more time fussing over not beingable to hear anything above the din and distraction: nocamera flicks, no flashes, no moving, no opening up Doritobags. He also got preoccupied about the exits. You seewhere the two exits are? Is it okay to close the doors, butkeep them unlocked while we are talking?

Campaignsfor the US presidency can start as engorged, dramaticstunts, with the ego maniac festooned with ambitions thatare light on policy but heavy on boastful character. Theperson promoting it ends up riding a historical train hecannot get off. Donald Trump, to some extent, did just that.Many in the Trump camp, leaving aside such ideologicalblunder busts as Steve Bannon, were as disbelieving as manyothers that victory was in the offing that November in 2016.Then the gag got real. West has some way to go before comingclose.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a CommonwealthScholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMITUniversity, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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All About Me: The Kanye West Campaign Rally - Scoop.co.nz