I had resolved not to write about Kanye West ever again after his anti-Semitic rantings, post his white supremacism masquerading as Black Power posturing. It was since Kim gave him the conscious and seriously uncoupling boot. It was because he ran for president of the US in a painful side show of hysterical rambling and preaching. It was after he set up the Church of Yeezy.
I was committed to not adding any further meta-commentary to this man’s incessant hogging of the attention economy.
But then — and for this I apologise profusely — he went and hogged my attention. He's done what he does best: for the past month he's been engaged in a bizarre and frankly disturbing sideshow all over the north of Italy, parading his so-called “wife” in a see-through body stocking across Florence and Milan.
He's been taking this woman, whom he calls his wife (though they haven't officially sanctified anything by way of the laws of church or state), Bianca Censori, ostensibly an Australian architect who works for his Yeezy brand, on a daily walkabout.
She could be a free agent in this tragic sideshow but, more likely, she could also be mistaken for a sad lollipop — top-heavy and precariously balanced on teetering heels, often clutching a purple cushion to her amplified bosom. The cushion I surmise is for modesty, ostensibly hiding her breasts from the paparazzi while also demonstrating that she is, in effect, walking naked through the cobbled streets of Italy.
She is the daily living embodiment of that scene in Game of Thrones in which the queen is punished, shorn and humiliated as she's forced to parade naked so that people can spit and throw excrement on her — a unifying figure of universal shame onto whom the dark psyche of mass hysteria can vent their pent up frustrations.
She is living testament to the fate that Jeremy Clarkson wanted to impose on Meghan Markle. He was required to apologise for saying that he dreamt of the day when Meghan was “made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowd chanted 'Shame!' and threw lumps of excrement at her”.
Yeezy, unlike Clarkson, doesn’t have to apologise to anyone — he just gets on a vaporetto in Venice with his booty on display like a troubled flasher with a grubby trench coat and gets Bianca to perform fellatio on him in full view of the passing public and the gondolier, thereby punishing all of us as well and making us unwitting accomplices of his public humiliation of this woman. But also victims of this banal and soul destroying nonsense.
No one is forcing me to look, but when it comes up on my feed, I stop and look. It's getting very hard to both continue watching the circus and keep balance on the moral highground.
Bianca gets censored and Yeezy gets to live out his torrid mysogynist fantasies on a global scale.
As I write this, Bianca had to leave her comfort cushion at the hotel this morning and come out in a see through bandeau and her underwear — another day of provocation and trauma on full display.
The attention economy apparently works like this. There's no bad publicity. There's only the attention we pay, thereby building Kanye's cachet. All other considerations be damned.
The Italian public are bemused and laugh out loud at this daily walk of shame. The Italian police are probably wondering if they need to get their Iranian counterparts on speed dial for some heavy duty morality policing advice.
I confess, I’m watching this against my will, but still watching. I want to look away, but I also want to tut tut and shake my head . I want to stop it all and try to understand what I’m witnessing but I can't. I realise that I have to perform terrible ethical gymnastics to write this column.
No one is forcing me to look, but when it comes up on my feed, I stop and look. It's getting very hard to both continue watching the circus and keep balance on the moral high ground. I'm sorry to say I am rapidly slip-sliding off that precarious perch.
My own downfall started long ago when I agreed with the prevailing arguments that held sway a lifetime of innocence ago that Kim K had personal agency over her brand by stripping down to her Skins to shrill for billions. Or the argument that Madonna was a feminist power when she shot her SEX book totally naked to grab our attention — and her position as Queen of Pop.
How different is this side show, really? Maybe Bianca is totally free in this situation? Maybe she's not? Maybe she's a victim of Kanye's hunger for attention, for his slice of that pie? But I know this: I am heartily sick of the attention economy and I don't think I can afford to pay for it with my soul any more.
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