Where does Kanye West go from here?
Where does Kanye West go from here? Jessica Fu

By now you've probably heard or heard about or read or scrolled past at least 194 headlines about how Kanye West said that 400 years of slavery in America sounded to him "like a choice." A choice made by the slaves.

And it's true that he did say it, and it is only the latest deeply fucked up thing he has said in the very recent past. The fact that he punctuated the statement with an attempt at an ingratiating laugh, the laugh of someone unaccustomed to being disagreed with in person, may be slightly worse than the fact that immediately before the statement, he'd said "I just love Trump."

The only satisfying moment, and the reason I felt like posting this wouldn't be just a contribution to the general noise floor inflation that's poisoning so many important things about being alive, is that in response to West's rhetorical challenge to the TMZ studio that he's demonstrating the value of the Constitutional right to freedom of speech (let's not get into the whole "free speech" syntax fiasco), a voice rose up from the other said of the room to shut West both up and down.

The voice came from Van Lathan, an on-air personality at TMZ TV. And though his tone was urgent, it was also concise, civil, and about time:

In a sense, it was the moment Kanye West traded places with George W. Bush in the ongoing anschluss of politics and entertainment.

Lathan also addressed West's ongoing self-nullification on his weekly podcast, The Red Pill, which I imagine is about to get a lot more subscribers. Damn straight.