Kanye West and His Mental Health

Courtesy of Getty Images

On February 10, 2004, Kanye West’s debut album The College Dropout was released. West turned from an underground, low-profile rapper-producer into one of the leading faces of the hip-hop industry, an industry that would suddenly be influenced by West’s music. West earned numerous accolades from the album, including a Grammy win for Best Rap Album and a nomination for Album of the Year. However, a year and a half later, the media transitioned from shining the light of West’s accolades as a musician and producer to frowning upon him due to his controversial statement of “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” at A Concert for Hurricane Relief on September 2, 2005.

West, like every celebrity, is not able to avoid any scrutiny or criticism for his/her actions and statements from entertainment media and the paparazzi. West is far from criticism, with seemingly controversial statements here and there from him occurring always around the release of his latest album. (For example, West’s second album, Late Registration, was released three days before the “George Bush” statement.) Numerous controversial statements and actions have come from West, such as his meltdown on stage during his 2016 tour that had to be cut short due to his mental health, and saying on TMZ in 2018 that “slavery was a choice”. The entertainment media portrays celebrities as gods, perfect, impossible of committing flaws or errors, yet they cast out celebrities who make controversial statements and actions, or who stray away the norm of stereotypical “celebrity life”. As consumers of celebrity news through tabloids and social media, we should not distance ourselves from those who we do not see eye-to-eye with or don’t have the same moral code as we do. No celebrity should be ignored, ridiculed, or abandoned by one particular action. Kanye West should not be defined by the eye-popping tabloids that detail his “ridiculous statements” and what he posts on tweets during his rants, but rather, he should be known for his successful, record-breaking discography, and his ever-lasting influence on the music industry.

            The entertainment media has consistently turned their back on West for each controversial, unfiltered statement action West has done since the “George Bush”. Yet nearly each time West always seems to win over his haters through his music, releasing critically acclaimed album after critically acclaimed album. Unfortunately, West has seemed to lose the support of the entertainment media recently once again, now for his new political and religious views, and it looks unlikely they will “return” to his side and praise him for his recent musical production. When West visited the White House and met with President Donald Trump, praising Trump for what he has done while in office, West was faced with widespread criticism and backlash. West was accused of turning his back on his own race by meeting with Trump, an accused racist who was elected President by millions of alt-right, racist, white supremacists. The Undefeated, as well as numerous media websites, newspapers, and magazines, wrote West off. “His hall of fame career [is becoming] irrelevant by pushing his musical genius to the footnotes of his legacy,” wrote The Undefeated’s David Dennis Jr. These sources encouraged the general public to “not mourn” and “not [to] feel sad that his career has reached a point of return” (Dennis Jr., 2018).

Additionally, many critics portray West’s latest faith revelation, a born-again Christian focused on strictly making Gospel music from now on, as harmful and detrimental to his followers with a cult-like feel to it, despite West’s message of praising God and hosting weekly Sunday Services (pre-Covid) which were free that were more of a Church service than a concert. On the other side, while West is condemned for his affiliations and views on politics and religions, the entertainment media praises celebrities who endorse progressive, left-wing ideals and are seen as idols or gods themselves. When celebrities are seen as the highest power out there instead of a higher existential being and promote a similar progressive political agenda, the entertainment media praises and exalts them. If a celebrity strays from that path, such as West, the media either ignores them for eternity or condemns them for their free thoughts and opinion. West, barring he does a complete 180 (which is possible), will most likely not get the love nor appreciation he once commonly got from the entertainment media.

Kanye West’s whole musical career has been defined by his tragedies and triumphs. His breakout song that burst him onto the rap spotlight, “Through the Wire”, was created shortly after he was hospitalized from a car crash that led to “his jaw being wired shut” for a brief period (Phillips, 2018). His life was at great risk, almost lost; instead, the song from his debut album thrust him into the center of the rap/hip-hop frame. Four years later, after two more successful albums, both critically and commercially, West responded to his recent passing of his mother and his breakup with his fiancé with 808s and Heartbreak, an album that cemented his grasp on the hip-hop industry which once again redefined the future sound of rap music. West continued to respond to his own personal tragedies with musical triumphs, most importantly the release of his next album, My Beautifully Dark Twisted Fantasy. Fantasy, his first album after the “MTV-Taylor Swift incident”, instantly reached higher critical acclaim than any of his previous albums and is still regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time. Despite his slip-ups now and then due to controversial statements and unnecessary interruptions, West has responded to his criticism with musical masterpiece time and time again.

Still, the entertainment media has delved into West and his personal way too much. When West was hospitalized in 2016 due to mental illness problems, which was eventually discovered that West was diagnosed as bipolar, along with having an addiction to opioids, deep scrutiny into his personal problems ensued. Paparazzi swarmed his closest family members and friends, questioning West’s health. Even with two more albums released shortly after his release, which both received acclaim commercially and critically, the amount of deep detail into West’s private life is inexcusable, along with every other celebrity. The media’s portrayal of celebrities paints an image to their target audience, mainly young adults and teens, that could define a celebrity’s legacy and popularity as an actor/musician/dancer, etc…

The effect the entertainment media has on presenting celebrities is detrimental and harmful. “Today’s society is drawn to the approach where celebrities are portraying unrealistic lifestyles, which may appear simple, but leave the average person seeing false actions,” writes Ashley Morgan Wiedow of The Odyssey. Teens and young adults hope to replicate what they see from their favorite celebrities in terms of physical appearance, despite the near-impossible standards of beauty and attraction, leading to feelings “of less confidence, anger, and dissatisfaction” (Wiedow, 2016). Likewise, celebrities are not role models due to their behavior shown by celebrities, and harmful consequences to teens could ensue such as eating disorders, use of illegal drugs, and alcohol abuse. Lastly, the overexposure of celebrities entices teens and young adults to view them as idols, furthermore detrimental to the viewer’s wellbeing. Even though the media wants to inspire and encourage its target audiences, it ends up producing a negative impact.

            Kanye West is not the first celebrity to come under fire from all media outlets for his past actions and statements, and he will certainly not be the last. What’s worse is how the entertainment paints the picture that celebrities who “slip up” and make a mistake should be ignored, ridiculed, and “cancelled” for what they have done in the past, such as West for meeting with Trump and interrupting Swift at the MTV Awards years ago. West, as well as many other “cancelled” celebrities, is at risk of being remembered for these faults rather than the contributions he has made to today’s society through his discography and musical productions. 

2017 World Series Champions: Houston Astros*

Courtesy of USA Today Sports

“Winners never cheat and cheaters never win” is a famous English proverb mentioned repeatedly in the world of sports. Yet, cheaters won in Major League Baseball in 2017 when the Houston Astros won the World Series only for a cheating scandal to be unearthed two years later that detailed the team’s use of buzzers and technological “aids” to help them detect opposing pitchers’ pitches before the ball was thrown. The results: a multi-million dollar fine for the franchise, the loss of a few near-future draft picks, and the general manager and field manager suspended for the upcoming 2020 season. No players were punished for the consequences.

This response to the scandal has caused outrage from many sports writers, reporters, analysts, and fans for the lack of punishments enforced. The Astros players who cheated during this span ended up winning one World Series and two pennants without getting punished, so why wouldn’t other players do the same to earn a trophy and championship ring? Cheating has no place in sports and brings about corruption and brokenness to a game that must always stay fair and equal to all participating players and teams. With fan interest and viewership declining in baseball, the MLB needs to take a good reevaluation of their response to the Astros cheating scandal last year, and it needs to add more repercussions to this scandal as well as warning clubs of what will occur should any future scandals occur.

First, let’s get into the timeline of when the scandal occurred and when it was unearthed that the Astros were, in fact, cheating. In 2014, with instant replay review introduced to the league, the use of technology helped teams determine when to challenge calls and for the manager to confront the umpire to take a “second look” on a specific play. With more technology instituted in the game, it was a matter of time before scandals were revealed. Sure enough, one scandal was uncovered in 2017, when the Boston Red Sox were “caught relaying sequences of signs from the video room to a trainer who was in the dugout and received them on an Apple Watch” (Svrluga and Scalin, 2020). MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred issued a warning to the league of what the consequences would be if other teams stole signs electronically, including the automatic firings of the team manager and the general manager. Yet, video equipment remained nearby to the dugout, and furthermore the Astros used it to their advantage. Used at home games during the 2017, 2018, and 2019 season, the team’s strategy was a camera placed in center field, “a video monitor near the dugout and banging on trash cans to signal” upcoming pitches for the Astros batter (Syrluga and Scalin, 2020). The Wall Street Journal reported that this operation of deciphering the catcher’s signs “Codebreaker”.

Suspicions grew within the league that something was amiss in Houston. Two weeks into the 2017 season, the Astros were first place in their division and stayed there for the remainder of the season. Scouts that evaluated the Astros to try to relay “their tendencies to their [own teams] found their reports filled with material that had never before been necessary” (Syrluga and Scalin, 2020). Executives, mainly within the American League, were befuddled of how the Astros were doing so well. One executive said, “We can’t beat them if they’re cheating”. Speculation grew, but Astros players ignored it. The team’s manager laughed it off when the New York Yankees accused the Astros of cheating, adding, “It made me laugh because it’s ridiculous”. The Yankees had reason to speculate, losing to the Astros in the 2017 and 2019 playoffs. When Houston won the 2019 ALCS over the Yankees off a walk-off homer by Jose Altuve, a video quickly went viral of Altuve warning to his teammates as he reached home plate not to rip off his jersey, creating more questioning around the league. “You’re covering up and holding your shirt closed when you hit a homer to win the pennant”, one executive asked rhetocically. “Who ever hit a home run to win the pennant and goes to the clubhouse and 20 seconds later comes out in a different shirt?”

Surely enough, less than two weeks after the 2019 playoffs concluded, the Astros were eventually exposed for their cheating ways, when The Athletic released a bombshell of a story reporting the strategy the Astros had in place for those three seasons. Sadly, baseball has had more than its fair share of transgressions. The Astros scandal occurred exactly 100 years after the “Black Sox Scandal”, when the Chicago White Sox intentionally lost the 1919 World Series so some players could earn money from gamblers. The most recent scandal that hit as grand as a scale as the Astros’ was the “Steroid Era”, which took place in the 1990s and early 2000s. Named the “worst scandal in the history of the sport”, it “destroyed more than a generation of players” and disgraced those players’ careers (Bryant, 2020). But while the Black Sox Scandal resulted in the permanent suspension of cheating players from MLB and the Steroid Era has cost many notable players a Hall of Fame spot, the Astros scandal had next to no consequences. The field manager and general manager for Houston may have been removed from the team, but not a single player faced the punishment of cheating. The Astros’ “championship and records remain intact”, and Manfred has made it clear it will stay that way (Bryant, 2020).

Manfred’s response to the incident is simply lacking and inexcusable. Cheating ruins the integrity of the game, regardless what sport it is. It forces players to join in, to be a part of this “new norm”, where being opposed to cheating would you cast you as an outsider within the team. Mike Bolsinger, a former pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, lost his job after the Astros got four runs, four hits, and three walks off him in a third of an inning during a 2017 regular season game in Houston. Bolsinger suspected that “they know what was coming”, but his coaches doubted him, sending him down to the minor leagues. Bolsinger’s outing against the Astros that day was the last time he has played professional baseball.

As for the next generation of baseball players, incidents like the one Astros had on their hands is detrimental to their morality within the game. Cheating, and earning accolades and trophies from doing so, encourages young athletes, whether in little league ball, high school, or collegiate play, to repeat it within their own competitions. It has already been made clear that as technology becomes more and more easy to access, it has made the temptations of cheating in sports stronger than ever before. Excluding the punishments cheaters would face, there are many other negative consequences of cheating. Feelings of shame and guilt arise, cheating hurts opponents (just like the case with Bolsinger), and lastly, it negatively impacts the spirit of competition. Sports are “built upon the foundation of fair play, and when [fair play] is broken it completely dismisses the values of hard work and playing by the rules” (Stankovich, 2020). Decisions regarding integrity and fair play happen during every sports play, and it is up to every athlete to maintain that integrity and to aim to win fairly.

What happened within the Astros organization during these three seasons taints not just the sport of baseball, but the sporting realm of the professional sports league in the U.S.A. If not for the 2019 World Series Champions Washington Nationals having their pitchers be assigned five sets of pitching signs, there would have been the possibility of Astros winning two championships in those three seasons. (Instead, the Nationals won the series in seven, with all wins in Houston.) While Manfred has indicated numerous times that there will be no more future consequences for what the Astros have done, a second look into the issue should happen with additional ramifications, such as potentially vacating the World Series the team won in 2017.

Relegation Needed to Expand: Why the MLS Should Adopt the Promotion/Relegation Structure

           

Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber (Photo courtesy of MLSsoccer.com)

            In 2013, DC United, a professional sports team in America’s Major League Soccer (MLS), finished dead last in the standings with 24 losses from their 34 regular season games and a paltry 3 wins overall. A turnaround happened immediately, with a first-place finish in their conference the following year, and five playoff appearances in the six seasons following 2013. However, the top professional soccer leagues in the world, such as the Bundesliga and the Premier League, are structured in a completely different way than MLS.

Enter the promotion/relegation (pro/rel) system. This system, adopted by majority of the professional soccer leagues in the world, punishes the bottom-dwelling teams of each league at season’s end by moving them “down the ladder” to the country’s lower league, while the top teams of that lower league will move “up the ladder” to fill their spots for next season. Used for decades, the pro/rel system is one of the main reasons why these top professional leagues strand from the Americanized version of sports, with playoffs to determine a champion, and rewarding poorly performing teams with a draft pick. Struggling to gain the spotlight in the American sports world, and with an uneven salary cap amongst all of its teams, the MLS should adopt the “pro/rel” system to gain fan interest and earn more revenue to give the league its due in America as an established professional sports league.

Soccer in America differentiates from European soccer in more ways than just the pro/rel system. For one, the schedule for the major professional leagues in Europe, like the Premier League, Serie A, Bundesliga, and the La Liga, start regular season play in mid-August and conclude sometime in May. The MLS regular season starts in March and ends in late October or early November, with playoffs (for the top half of teams based off regular season points) finishing in early December. The structure of bringing players into MLS is much different from the structure used in Europe. MLS and its teams “operate within a so-called “single-entity structure”, which means that [the teams] share revenues” (“Differences Between...”). MLS’ teams have owners, but instead of signing their contract with their club, as done overseas, the players sign their contracts with the league.

Along with these differences, MLS contrasts from European soccer in various other forms. Playing styles are different, where the MLS adopts elements of the diverse styles that vary across each European league to create a hybrid form, mixing possession and conservatism with end-to-end, quick transitions and counterattacks. Player development also stands out between America and Europe. While more and more MLS teams are adopting the European way of creating youth academies to develop talents for kids from as young as 9 up to 17, MLS tend to rely more on “finding college standouts so they can prepare them” for professional play (“Differences Between…”). Lastly, cultural differences are a big reason why European soccer stands out from American soccer. “Soccer is more than just a game in Europe, it’s a lifestyle and a part of the culture,” writes the Celtic Football Club. Undoubtedly the number one sport in Europe in terms of TV ratings and popularity, fans devote unparalleled loyalty to their local teams. In the U.S., while soccer has a significant following, the sport does not match the attention and recognition soccer in Europe does. Even if there are some similarities between the US and Europe for soccer, most importantly abiding by the universal rules of the sport enforced by FIFA, it is evident that professional soccer in America contrasts from European professional soccer.

So, is there a possibility that the MLS will slowly adapt to become similar to European soccer, putting in place the “pro/rel system” and getting rid of playoffs? It looks unlikely that change for that system will happen in the near future, as the commissioner of MLS, Don Garber, stated in 2019 he does not see the system as being effective in the U.S.A. “Just because there is promotion/relegations in other leagues doesn’t mean that it would make sense in MLS”, said Garber in 2019, adding that the country has “no economic rationality” to pro/rel (Galarcep, 2019). However, legal battles have ensued to try to implement pro/rel into the U.S. Riccardo Silva, owner of Miami F.C., who are situated in the lesser professional league North American Soccer League (NASL), bid $4 billion for TV rights that were given to the MLS in 2017. Silva hoped that the MLS would soon implement pro/rel. The offer was never considered by MLS. Additionally, the NASL filed an anti-trust lawsuit against MLS when they were “moved down the ladder” after U.S. Soccer made the new United States League (USL) the second tier of pro soccer in the country. NASL claimed that “U.S. Soccer and MLS had conspired along with USL to keep it from competing with MLS”, implying that the potential of pro/rel possibly being installed. Yet, as of today, there are no set plans from within the U.S. Soccer and MLS to even consider implement pro/rel.

Support for pro/rel system being implemented in the U.S. is continually growing, with MLS players calling for the league to seriously consider making the change. DaMarcus Beasley, who had played for the US men’s national team for four World Cups and who has played within MLS for a handful of seasons, is openly for the switch. “100 percent”, he said when he was asked by SBI if the league would benefit from having pro/rel. Beasley furthermore went on to say that pro/rel “would put more pressure on the league” and “more pressure on players to perform” (Panizo, 2019). Beasley noted the mentality for American soccer players must change, suggesting that a new system such as pro/rel could be that change. Prior to Beasley’s comments, renowned soccer player Zlatan Ibrahimovic, playing for MLS’ LA Galaxy at the time, trashed the current league format, stating that it “foster complacency and does not make for an environment that is intense enough to bring out the very best in players (Panizo, 2019). Ibrahimovic told SBI, “I think the system is sh-t. Results in every game is important but here [if] you [finish] 7^th, you make playoffs. How do you create mentality to be on your toes [for] 24 hours?” Ibrahimovic left MLS three months after those comments, returning back to Italy to play for AC Milan in Serie A.

Change should occur within American soccer, most notably, adapting to European soccer and implementing promotion and relegation. More and more American born players are ignoring to play pro in America and are heading off to play overseas to play in a more “competitive” environment. For American soccer to gain more recognition from within their own country and from international professional leagues across the Atlantic, U.S. Soccer should put in place the pro/rel system for their professional leagues.

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