'Oh STOP'! This Slate piece on Kanye West and John Legend just OOZES condescension

Sarah D | 8:34 PM on May 01, 2018

Man. We thought Touré’s take on Kanye West’s apparent rightward drift was condescending. He had nothing on Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley:

John Legend gently explaining civil-rights related party realignment to Kanye is the most relatable thing a celebrity has ever done: https://t.co/XqoJylGgIW pic.twitter.com/bJmnb7pTEH

— Slate (@Slate) May 1, 2018

It seems Mathis-Lilley was a little unnerved by West tweeting a screenshot of a text conversation that mentioned that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Fortunately, Mathis-Lilley could count on John Legend to set people like Kanye straight:

But the party claiming to be the party of Lincoln is living in the present? Looking forward to 1863? https://t.co/wseZ0Gnzb5

— John Legend (@johnlegend) April 30, 2018

True! And then all the segregationists and their ideological descendants eventually became Republicans! The solid south of the Democratic party became the solid south of the Republicans. White southern vote is almost exclusively GOP. Facts bruh.

— John Legend (@johnlegend) April 30, 2018

What would we do without guys like John Legend to teach us the facts, bruh? Or without guys like Ben Mathis-Lilley to make sure that Kanye West et al. never stray too far from the True Path? The headline for Mathis-Lilley’s piece was bad enough. But check out what he wrote:

Truly, we—and by “we,” I mean the kind of people who read articles, and even sometimes books, about history and politics—have all been there, in discussions with the proverbial otherwise-beloved uncle or in-law who has seized ahold of an isolated, miscontextualized factoid being deployed for reactionary purposes at a morning-zoo-DJ level of analysis.

Kanye West is far from perfect. And it’s still not clear if all this is genuine or just part of an elaborate publicity stunt. But this much is certain: There are plenty of people out there who have grown tired of the Left’s taking them for granted. And if liberals like Ben Mathis-Lilley think they’re doing themselves a favor with crap like this, they’re setting themselves up to be very disappointed.