MRC Forgets It Used To Hate Kanye West

Kanye West is suddenly the Media Research Center’s favorite rapper, now that he’s hanging out with President Trump. As a result, he’s now getting the full right-wing defense:

• Ryan Foley huffed that “many” people at CNN “spent the entire week slamming Kanye West as mentally ill and/or directing racial slurs at him.”
• Foley also complained that CNN’s Chris Cuomo called the Kanye-Trump meeting a “traveshamockery,” adding that “Cuomo also made sure to take shots at West’s mental health … as he attempted to make the case that people should not take the meeting between President Trump and West seriously.”
• Nicholas Fondcaro grumbled that “the broadcast networks spent 5 minutes and 59 seconds on Kanye’s visit to the White House (ABC = 1 minute, 58 seconds; CBS = 2 minutes, 4 seconds; NBC = 1 minute, 57 seconds). But when it came to the policy proposals Kanye and [Jim] Brown were there to promote, the nets punted with a total of 27 seconds.”
• Scott Whitlock claimed that “When it comes to the so-called mainstream media, it’s a case of Kanye West vs. Kanye West” since some media outlets who now criticize West “gushed over the ‘thoughtful’ entertainer when he derided then-President George W. Bush as a racist.”

But Whitlock and the rest of his MRC cohorts will not remind you that it’s Kanye vs. Kanye at the MRC as well. Until his political flip-flop, the MRC despised West.

In 2011, the MRC’s Erin Brown was outraged that a preview for the video for West’s song “Monster” “shows the rapper making sexual advances to a dead or drugged female corpse in his bed, and several dead, lingerie-clad women are seen hanging with chains around their necks.” Brown added: “West has objectified women in his videos before such as the 2005 hit ‘Gold Digger,’ in which attractive young females were seen throughout the video in provocative lingerie dancing around West. But none have gone so far as ‘Monster,’ which sexually objectifies a woman to the point of death.”

Catherine Maggio complained that “Monster” includes “28 F-words,” adding about the video: “West’s so-called “art piece” opens revealing a dead, young girl, hanging from a ceiling in a noose, wearing nothing but underwear and heels. The video is centered around the graphic violence against and the death of the women in the video, who are often shown wearing only underwear or lying face down, naked, bloody and dead. We are warned before the video that it is to be taken as art, but the saddest thing is that violence and necrophilia would be considered ‘art’ by anyone at all.”

A 2012 post by Paul Wilson declared that West and Jay-Z “have once again expressed their love of gratuitous violence” through their song “No Church in the Wild,” the video for which includes “anti-police riots.”Wilson further huffed that “Kanye showed up to support the Occupy Movement wearing expensive gold chains,” which made him “the embodiment of the 1 percent.”

In 2013, NewsBusters’ Noel Sheppard cheered a Jay Leno joke about “Kanye West wanting to be the Obama of clothing saying, ‘To achieve his goal, he’s designing fashion nobody wants and offering it on a website that doesn’t work.'”

Sheppard also mocked — given current events, highly ironically — one commentator’s suggestion that President Obama should meet with West: “Does the President of the United States really need a vulgar, anti-Semitic manager who thinks Obama’s inability to get his agenda passed is because black people don’t have the connections that Jewish people do?”

In a 2013 column, MRC chief Brent Bozell bashed Weset as a “nattering, narcissistic rapper” and whined that the New York Times was “pandering to West’s colossal self-regard,” He took offense to West’s criticism of Bush, claiming that “West lashed, for no reason, and stupidly, arrogantly, and rudely declared that President Bush ‘doesn’t care about black people.,'” then added: “West aspires to be a limousine leftist, a race-baiting revolutionary driving a $760,000 Lamborghini. How many poor Katrina victims could he feed if he didn’t have those car payments?”

And in another 2013 column headlined “Kanye, Go Away,” Bozell took offense to Kanye  “ofending the Jews” by saying blacks “don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people.” Bozell ranted that “This oppressed man is worth an estimated $100 million. But victimization is way too seductive to let go.” Bozell added:

It’s just ridiculous that mega-rich black rappers complain about their terrible plight. Or is that all just part of their cynical marketing? Don’t count it as a political act. It’s a craven business strategy. Aren’t they and their race-baiting enablers easily accused of strangling the people’s view of what is possible in America? If Kanye West can’t handle the heat of public opinion – especially the opinion of people who live outside the bubble of his ideological apple-polishers –  he should just go away.

The other night he performed in the Sprint Center in Kansas City, a venue that was 75 percent empty. Maybe I’m not the only one wishing him to go away.

Funny how none of this derogatory history was referenced by the MRC in its Trump-era defense of West.

Bozell and the MRC clearly aren’t wishing for Kanye to go away anymore — at least, not as long they can exploit him in order to boost Trump.

UPDATE: In its Kanye flip-flop, the MRC is doing the same thing it accused the media of doing when President Obama invited the rapper Common to the White House in 2011 for a poetry event. Scott Whitlock huffed that Common “has repeatedly defended cop killers such as Mumia Abu-Jamal,” and Tim Graham took offense to Common’s lyric that God “was able to Barack us” and declared that the media assert that “raising questions about songs honoring convicted cop killers was not a legitimate line of inquiry” (of course, the MRC no longer considers raising questions about Kanye’s song a legitimate line of inquiry).

And of course, Bozell felt compelled to rant: “Everyone from record companies to record buyers should be condemned for enabling “music” that glamorizes killing police officers. It’s ridiculous and offensive that a black multi-millionaire like Common can still pretend America and the police officers who protect Americans of all colors are racist. It’s even more offensive that this man would be honored as a poet at the People’s House.” Again, Bozell will never raise this issue about Kanye.