“Kanye West media trainer quits after disastrous ‘Today’ interview” – New York Post
Dear Mr. West,
I’m writing to inform you that I will no longer be working as your media trainer. I reached this decision after your interview on the Today Show—specifically, when I was standing on the rim of Mount Erebus, and I scraped the frost off of my goggles only to see the contrail of my own biplane arching above me. But I’ll try to explain myself in full, since the roots of the problem stretch back further than that.
You came to me a year ago, Kanye, and asked for help. You had recently humiliated a teenager in front of millions, over a piece of trash-metal that MTV had found in its trash. As I watched footage from your other appearances, it became clear that the incident with Ms. Swift was only the beginning. Still, despite the things that gave me pause (your daily assertions that the “2Pacalypse” was at hand; that time you said the members of Coldplay were more talented than The Beatles), I agreed to take you on as a client. I know what media attention does to people. Without accredited training, everybody ends up doing the same things you did.
Unfortunately, you fostered such a toxic work environment that it was almost impossible to help you. On my second day, you heard that a blogger had criticized one of your songs. You immediately held a press conference and said, “Don’t blame me—I didn’t write it.” Then you told everyone that my husband had. That hardly seems necessary, I thought.
Things only got worse. For a man who had criticized George W. Bush in such spectacular fashion, you certainly spent a lot of time with Dick Cheney. One merry afternoon, the vice president was tossing vases at the ceiling and a shard of glass cut me above the eye. You laughed and laughed.
You expected me to perform tasks that weren’t stipulated in my contract. Take these shirts to the dry cleaner. Get me some sushi. Develop me a four-dimensional video camera that records images of music. (With the budget you gave me, did you really think I could succeed? And did you always have to point it at me, after it became clear that my prototype could “only” predict the death of whomever it was filming?)
I did not enjoy riding in your five-wheeled car. I found it frightening and impractical. For Christmas, you gave me a Swarovski crystal swan. That’s a really bad present.
But none of these things on their own were enough to make me end our partnership. In spite of everything, you were making progress. You charmed the crowd on Letterman. When you went on The View, your head didn’t explode even once.
Things changed you went on the Today Show. I hope you understand that my clients cannot think that I coached you to act that way. Getting tripped up by Matt Lauer’s routine pleasantries. Taking offense at the most innocuous questions. Tweeting about how unfair the interview was the moment you left the studio. Getting on the first Japanese whaling vessel you could find. Working for your transportation all the way to the Southern Ocean. Sneaking off at night and stowing away on a Finnish icebreaker until it reached the shores of Antarctica. Meeting up with a group of American scientists and forming a close bond, only to tie them up, push snow on top of them, and leave camp with their sled. Riding at breakneck speeds along the ridges of the weakest glaciers, so that they’d collapse and reveal the Palace of the Ice King. Telling the Ice King that if he let you live, you’d perform a concert at in the hall by the menagerie of the snow-beasts. Turning the speakers so loud that they stupefied these people—these gentle people who had never heard anything louder than a swimming seal, or the chimes of an icicle choir. Rushing up to the King as he and his retinue lay dazed, and stealing the man-lings he reared in his warm pouch, thrusting them roughly into your satchel. Taking the tiny creatures to the polar bear who guards the ruby nests, and forcing them to risk their lives to steal the rubies, which you planned to bring to the Seahorse of the North, the scourge of the Frozen Realms and sworn enemy of the Ice King. But some of the rubies, you said, you would give to your media trainer. All the media trainer had to do was come down to Antarctica, in her little trainer’s plane, and the media trainer would get them.
Ash is raining down from the sky. It will not be long till Erebus erupts, and yet I find myself crawling closer to the rim, closer to the one warmth here.