Kill your darlings

April 27, 2018

In the last forty-eight hours we have seen the ignominious fall of America’s Favorite Dad and Kanye’s full transition from tortured narcissistic genius to  a self-saboteur with contempt for his fans.  Nas has been exposed by Kelis as an abusive spouse and deadbeat dad.  Frankly, none of this should come as a surprise in a country that elected a tacky reality show star as President, but people have seemingly spent hours trying to parse the meaning of Kanye’s disturbing declaration of allegiance to Trump.  Beloved Chance waded into the controversy and noble John Legend tried to intervene privately, only to have Kanye screenshot their text exchange and put it on blast on Twitter.

On the same day that Cosby was convicted and Kanye doubled down on being an imbecilic jackass, Janelle Monae proudly came out, declaring the importance of being a “free a—Black woman” (Source: “Janelle Monae Frees Herself,” by Brittany Spanos, Rolling Stone, May 2018).  While Monáe’s honest vulnerability was a welcome example to young LGBT people everywhere, and a contrast to the flavors of toxic masculinity on display from Cosby, Kanye and Nas, it is hardly groundbreaking to point out that Americans place far too much emphasis on the pronouncements of celebrities, to our obvious detriment.  We foolishly look to them for political leadership and trenchant analysis, all but ignoring experts who have studied history, political economy and sociology or weary activists who have organized and effected change for decades.

The time spent endlessly parsing the meaning of Kanye’s tweets would have been much better spent reading the words of those present for yesterday’s opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.  This brainchild of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Bryan Stevenson, is the first to document and honor the 4400 black lynching victims in this country between 1877 and 1950.  Speakers at the Memorial’s Opening Peace and Justice Summit like Sherrilyn Ifill drew a straight line from the racial terror of the lynching era to the abusive police power being deployed today to forcibly drive Black people from public spaces.  Marian Wright Edelman urged the audience to go beyond merely bearing witness and to engage in the activism required if we hope to hold on to our hard won gains in the fight for full citizenship.

While folks were busy with Kanye exegesis, sleepy eyed Uncle Tom, Ben Carson proposed tripling the rent that poor people pay in subsidized housing (Source:  “HUD Secretary Ben Carson to propose raising rent for low-income Americans receiving federal housing subsidies,” by Tracy Jan, Caitlin Dewey and Jeff Stein, The Washington Post, 4/25/18).  Republicans on the state and federal level are pushing work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP that will leave scores of poor people sicker and hungrier.  It’s a bad policy idea that is simply legislated cruelty, and we should be lobbying our elected officials to forcefully resist it (Source: “10 reasons to resist work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps,” by Michael McKee, Philly.com, 4/23/18).  The lesson of the last week is that idol worship is folly.  We must read for ourselves, think for ourselves and do the work.  As Faulkner said, “Kill your darlings.”