CAA will no longer represent Kanye West, Adidas finally dropped him too

It continues to be WILD to watch the fashion community, the Hollywood community, the media community and the common sense community pull away from Kanye West. Kanye’s recent antisemitic rants and hate speech are the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, but again, his hateful rhetoric has been happening for years. In 2018, he ranted about how slavery was a “choice.” In the same year, he went berserk in the Oval Office, ranting about all kinds of bonkers sh-t in front of the Washington press corps. His misogyny is the throughline for his career and public persona, but it’s absolutely gotten worse in the past five years. My point is that Kanye has been canceled for many of us for years already, so why did it take this long for Balencaiaga, Anna Wintour and CAA to cut their ties? They were all fine with racism, misogyny, bullying, harassing, stalking, threatening and unmedicated manic episodes playing out publicly. But antisemitism is where they draw the line.

The fallout facing the rapper formerly known as Kanye West has continued to grow as one of Hollywood’s biggest agencies stopped representing him. CAA ended its relationship with Ye this month following his recent anti-semitic outbursts in various interviews, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.

CAA is the latest business to scrap or suspend its relationship with the rapper over his remarks. Other leading entertainment industry figures including Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel called on all companies that work with the musician to cut ties with him after he tweeted he wanted to go “death con 3″ on Jewish people.

“Those who continue to do business with West are giving his misguided hate an audience,” Emanuel wrote in a recent opinion piece in the Financial Times. “There should be no tolerance anywhere for West’s anti-Semitism.”

Emanuel called for Apple and Spotify to stop streaming Ye’s music and Parler to not sell to him. The right-wing social media platform recently announced that it had entered into an agreement to sell the company to West. Emanuel noted in his opinion piece that WME clients LeBron James and Maverick Carter cancelled an episode of “The Shop: Uninterrupted” because Ye “continued to repeat dangerous stereotypes during filming.”

Emanuel’s position drew support from colleagues. On Sunday, United Talent Agency CEO Jeremy Zimmer sent a note to staff to “please support the boycott of Kanye West.”

“As a company we stand for a wide diversity of voices and ideas,” Zimmer wrote. “But we can’t support hate speech, bigotry or anti-semitism.”

Other Hollywood companies were also ending their business ties with the musician. On Monday, film and TV producer MRC said it is not proceeding with distribution of its documentary about Ye.

“We cannot support any content that amplifies his platform,” MRC executives said in a statement. “The silence from leaders and corporations when it comes to Kanye or antisemitism in general is dismaying but not surprising. What is new and sad, is the fear Jews have about speaking out in their own defense.”

[From The LA Times]

Sure. Kanye needed to be canceled years ago, so better late than never. I’m glad that people are finally waking up to the fact that they were f–king enabling this man for years. What sucks about this is that Kanye is still deep into his unmedicated manic episode, and he’s already processing these developments as “proof” of his cultural martyrdom, like he’s the only visionary who ever thought “hey, I’ll just blame everything on Jewish people.”

This just happened this morning too – Adidas finally cut ties with Kanye, after facing significant pressure online and from the industry. Kanye thought that Adidas wouldn’t do it, but here we are.

Worse yet, Kim Kardashian finally condemned her ex without even writing his name:

— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) October 24, 2022

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, screencap courtesy of Fox News.

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