Is Candace Owens cashing in on Kanye West?

A great American poet once wrote:

I went to the malls and I balled too hard/
“Oh my God, is that a black card?”/
I turned around and replied, “Why yes/
But I prefer the term ‘African-American Express.’”

How times change. Following a failed presidential run, a bitter divorce and two poorly reviewed records, for Kanye West, “balling too hard” now means buying a right-wing social media site from Candace Owens’s husband.

It was announced today that Kanye, who now goes by Ye, is to buy the social media platform Parler, in a move the company characterized as “a bold stance against his recent censorship from Big Tech.”

 “This deal will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech,” said Parler CEO George Farmer, who in 2019 married Candace Owens at the Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Ye is making a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again. Once again, Ye proves that he is one step ahead of the legacy media narrative. Parlement will be honored to help him achieve his goals.”

Cockburn suspects that the rapper feels hurt after being deplatformed by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, for what he describes as “conservative opinions” that are considered “controversial.”

So what are his “controversial” claims? Last week the rapper pledged to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” and then appeared on the Drink Champs podcast to addd: “Jewish people have owned the black voice, whether it’s through us wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt, or as all of us being assigned to a record label, or having a Jewish manager or being assigned to a Jewish basketball team, or doing a movie on a Jewish platform like Disney, and we understand this.” Cockburn must have missed the chapter of Edmund Burke that covered all of that.

Ye also seems to be regurgitating Owens, star of the new documentary The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM, in his recent claims that the primary cause of George Floyd’s death was fentanyl abuse and that police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee “wasn’t even on his neck like that.”

Kanye’s recent comments are hateful, but Cockburn can’t wonder whether he really is being taken advantage of by darker forces. Not “the Jews,” of course — but Candace Owens. Author and columnist Tim Carney summed it up when he said: “Kanye is the mark. That doesn’t mean he’s ‘the real victim,’ but understanding that he’s the mark helps you understand the con.”

Others claim that Kanye is more compos mentis than he’s being given credit for. Podcaster Dave Rubin, whose own alternative social media site Locals merged with Rumble last year, claimed Kanye was “intentionally trying to get himself banned from Twitter last week,” adding that “people think it’s all a combo of creative genius / mental health with him, but it’s actually quite calculating and intentional.”

Like many others, Cockburn is contemplating whether Ye’s time would be better spent in a therapist’s office than the Parler C-suite or a podcast studio. Of course Candace may be innocently offering support to her chum, but Ye should tread with caution — as another old friend Jamie Foxx once reminded him:

She take my money when I’m in need/
Yeah she’s a triflin’ friend indeed/
Oh she’s a gold digger way over town/
That digs on me…