The other day, someone forwarded me a petition to have Kanye West banned from the Grammys. I thought to myself, Damn, someone created a petition to have Kanye West banned from the Grammys. Then I took a look at it, and come to find out it's a petition I started myself, five years ago.

I only ever remember it having about 500 signatures, at the time. Maybe there were more than that. It's hard to remember. It's been a while. To think, that was half a decade ago. It's even going on four years since I started blogging for this site. Time flies when your life is going nowhere.

My petition is up to 2,000 signatures now. Maybe even more than that. It's been over a week now since I took a look at it, and I notice people were steadily adding their names to it, along with angry comments about what he did to Taylor Swift at the VMAs, weeks after the fact. Cracka-ass crackas aren't about to forget that shit.

When Kanye pulled his little stunt a few weeks ago, I never would have guessed it would lead to such an intense backlash. Usually, these things are over and done with by the time they've shifted from the 24 hour news cycle - which is really more like a 15 minute news cycle these days, with Twitter and what have you.

Someone with the tools and the talent should try to put a dollar amount on the lost revenue as a result of Kanye pulling an ODB at the VMAs. We know the cancellation of his tour with Lady Gaga probably had something to do with the backlash. I heard she's going out on tour by herself now, and tickets are selling very well. And I read yesterday on Twitter that the TIs pulled the plug on his clothing line, Pastelle. Damn.

The amount of Yellow Tail I drink these days, I probably wouldn't have put one and two together, if I didn't read on Sandra Rose just now that Kanye's clothing line being pulled probably had something to do with people realizing that Kanye is an epic douche. Maybe the clothes just looked retarded, like most of the stuff Kanye wears, but I doubt we'd be hearing about Pastelle getting dropped like a bad habit, if it wasn't for the problems he's been having the past few weeks.

These clothing lines seem like such a no brainer. Jay-Z has his own clothing line, and he always kinda looks like one of the kids from my high school's "resource" department, aka the Lost World. Keep in mind, I mean that in the best way possible. I don't think you can trust a man that looks too well put together. All of the smartest men I've ever met looked at least a little bit "off."

I know Damon Dash used to make a show of having himself photographed in the offices of Roc-A-Wear, scrutinizing the designs of the various garments, but I seriously doubt he came up with any of that shit on his own. I read in college that most of these designers just buy generic shit and have their logo sewn onto it. All of the money in the fashion business is in licensing.

You'd think Kanye West, of all people, could make a lot of money with his own clothing line. (And by his own clothing line, I of course mean a clothing line secretly owned by the TIs, for which he receives a fee to act as the nominal black proprietor.) He's as well known as any number of other celebrities with their own clothing lines, and he's had more influence on fashion than pretty much anyone as of late.

These days, you see so many black kids walking around in faux hawks, extra medium t-shirts, tight jeans and what have you, and it's obvious they're just wearing their little sisters' clothes. Some company could probably come along and make a mint off of these fruits, just like companies made so much money off of grunge wear and extra baggy pants and what have you back in the '90s. This could have been Kanye's moment.

I'm not buying for a minute the story that Kanye's clothing line had to be canceled because the clothes were too gay. Not in 2009. The people who were really putting up the money for it realized Kanye's name is no longer worth a shit. As mad as white people are about what happened at the VMAs, not to mention the black president, who wants to wear a shirt that says Kanye West on it? You could fuck around and get shot.

I read yesterday that Kanye is supposedly about to spend a month in a Hindu retreat, smoking a hookah and eating house cats or whatever, and I'm assuming this is a matter of the TIs putting him on time out. This reminds me of when Malcolm X had to be put on time out, for saying JFK's assassination was the devil's chickens coming home to roost. Who ever heard of a grown man being put on time out?

A month is a long time to be out of the spotlight in this day and age. The TIs must seriously be concerned about whether or not his image can recover. I guess they saw what happened to Michael Vick. He did his year in the joint (a form of time out), but he might never get back in white people's good graces. Nike tried to cut him a check, but PETA wasn't having it, so instead he had to do a reality show on BET.

I shudder to think how that BET check compares to that Nike check.

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