Shaquille O’Neal has dunked hard on Kanye West following the embattled rapper taking several shots at the former basketballer on his Twitter.
West, almost out of seemingly nowhere, brought up billionaire businessman Jamie Salter and his relationship with Shaq in order to make some sort of point about Black people being controlled by white men and having image rights over celebrities. Shaq immediately shot back with a tweet disregarding West’s comments, essentially saying “don’t get up in my business”.
Shaq dismissing West comes after he was featured in a previous Ye tweet talking about Kyrie Irving. Shaq had described Irving as an “idiot” following his antisemitic movie recommendation, which ended with him getting suspended for five games by the Brooklyn Nets. Shaq even quoted West back to himself, in the ultimate slam dunk.
There’s an outpouring of reactions to West’s very public breakdown online, with his first antisemitic remarks getting lambasted by the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, Sarah Silverman, and many more. Unfortunately, not much is changing in terms of his ability to be platformed.
Elon Musk had said he had spoken to West about his infamous “death con” tweet and believed it had an effect on Ye, but clearly, the effect it had was utter indifference, if it even happened in the first place. West has somewhat of an ally in Musk, who has started off on shaky ground as the Twitter owner with free speech issues but seems to believe in allowing all views on the platform — regardless of who it offends.
West’s access to his account feels as though it could be revoked if Musk wants to make an active example of hate speech, though he seems to be far more engaged in defending his terrible ideas from Stephen King.