i am usually skeptical about celebrities who show their humanitarian stripes in public. i was unmoved by all the celebrity hype surrounding the G8 and talks of ending world poverty. Watching Brad Pitt talk about it in a solemn tone didn’t inspire me at all. I was disappointed that John Mayer wasn’t one of the performers that day. Kanye West, however, did perform. And he also gave a solo performance on Sunday, regarding the recent Hurrican Katrina tragedy.

in what was a live NBC-produced program to raise money for the Red Cross, Kanye departed from the teleprompter and let out a torrent of criticism and opinions that probably made many people very uncomfortable (from WashingtonPost.com):

West: I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, “They’re looting.” You see a white family, it says, “They’re looking for food.” And, you know, it’s been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I’ve tried to turn away from the TV because it’s too hard to watch. I’ve even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I’m calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help — with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way — and they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us!

and after Mike Myers feebly (and confusedly) read his line off the teleprompter, it came back to Kanye, who said:

George Bush doesn’t care about black people!

although the West Coast never got to see the Kanye rant, it was one of those great, unexpected television moments. i am a Kanye fan because he is creative, arrogant, funny, and in such instances as this one, bold. who truly knows what Kanye’s motivations were in doing what he did? did he want to create more buzz, maybe boost up some of his album sales (his 2nd album was released last week), or maybe distinguish himself as a socially conscious rapper? i especially liked his attack on Bush because Bush seems to have been spared by the public and the media for his inability to respond quickly (look at polls that basically excuse the president – ABCNews.com).

whenever tragedy hits, there’s always going to be a great deal of kitsch that comes about (i am using “kitsch” as kundera described it in unbearable lightness of being, which i just finished earlier today) where the images of loss and angst are nicely balanced with images of people helping each other and celebrities writing big checks. this is how we go about systematically mourning tragedy and then adjusting ourselves back to a “normal” state. but with every major crisis like this one, there are opportunities to question certain things and examine some issues that challenge our conventional views of our institutions and the way things are. then again, the entire practice of “looking underneath” and “challenging conventions” has become a mainstream, money-making industry (e.g. Michael Moore, anti-Bush movements), so i can’t be sure that we gain much from crisis to crisis. we just seem to go through set motions.

one more thing – i liked this New Yorker piece by David Remnick on Bush’s missteps in dealing with Katrina. he throws up the kitschy veil of “non-partisanship” to relieve himself of accountability:

“…he knew that he had delivered a series of feeble, vague, almost flippant speeches in the early days of the crisis, and that the only way to prevent further political damage was to inoculate himself with the inevitable call for non-partisanship: ‘I hope people don’t play politics during this period of time.’”

Mother Nature and her weapons of mass destruction.