Kanye West—rapper, producer, fashion icon, and pawn of the Donald Trump reelection campaign—is still “walking” for president.
In a recent series of tweets, he shared the progress of his 2020 presidential campaign. Among the updates were a list of the 10 states where he has been approved for the ballot—thankfully no battleground states yet—and a meeting with some very old, very white campaign staff.
But the most exciting post—at least for fans of Sam Raimi’s early 2000s Spider-Man movies—was a new scrolling campaign poster featuring his obvious (but also perfect) slogan “2020 Vision” and images of happy people, including a 2002 image of actress Kirsten Dunst.
Most of the images are clearly stock photos of random strangers, but the smiling picture of the Fargo actress—taken from an old Vanity Fair profile—was not alone as a recognizable face. An adjacent image of Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour expressing similar levels of joy at a 2011 Fashion Week event also made the cut.
Did either of these famous women actually endorse Kanye? Nope. Anna Wintour reached out through a Vogue spokesperson to state that she is “a deeply committed supporter of the Democratic Party … and is highly engaged in helping Biden/Harris win this November.”
While Kirsten Dunst has yet to endorse anyone currently in the race, she was a Bernie Sanders supporter as of March, and she certainly isn’t supporting Kanye’s campaign. She responded to his new ad via Twitter on Thursday with a resounding “Huh?”
Making it clear that she has no idea how or why her image ended up in the mix, Dunst offered a shrug emoji that sums up the situation pretty succinctly. But for those of us who can’t help but overthink things, this opens up a mystery: Was this a deliberate effort to claim some phony celebrity endorsements, or does Kanye West not know who Kirsten Dunst is?
We know that he has at least met Anna Wintour, as they’ve been pictured together numerous times, but she isn’t wearing her signature sunglasses, so—while her bob-and-bangs hairstyle is pretty recognizable—it’s at least possible that he thought his followers wouldn’t notice.
But Kirsten Dunst is front and center of the poster. She’s a major Hollywood actress, nominated for three Golden Globes, and the image is from the height of her fame. Did he really think he would get away with tweeting her image as part of a campaign poster?
Considering the fact that she likely has the option to sue over a false implication of an endorsement, that seems like a big risk to take. So, maybe…he just didn’t recognize her? Is that possible?
Supposedly Kanye West worked on his first album, College Dropout, for four years before its release in 2004. And in his song “Spaceship” he talks about cutting himself off from the outside world to make “five beats a day for three summers.” Was he so focused on his work that he was oblivious to pop culture when Kirsten Dunst was one of the biggest actresses working in Hollywood?
Is it possible that Kanye fully skipped the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, only to then see an early performance of the Broadway flop Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark? That seems like a stretch.
So unless we’re going to assume that Kanye secretly suffers from prosopagnosia—AKA face blindness—in addition to bipolar disorder, he must have recognized her. Right? So why would he have tweeted that picture? The only possibility is revenge. Allow me to explain.
In the case of Anna Wintour, back in 2016 the Vogue editor apologized for referring to Kanye’s fashion line—showcased at his Life of Pablo concert—as “migrant chic.” But maybe Kanye never accepted that apology.
And in December of 2015 Kirsten Dunst was playing a game of catchphrase on an episode of The Tonight Show when it was revealed that she did not know the name of Kanye and Kim Kardashian’s second child—Saint West, who was the world’s most famous newborn at the time.
Watch Kirsten Dunst Hilariously Admit She’s Never Heard of Saint Westwww.youtube.com
Clearly Kanye is paying Wintour and Dunst back for these slights. He’s misrepresenting Wintour as she misrepresented his clothing line, and pretending to think Kirsten Dunst is another stock photo model, saying “if you don’t know my son, then I don’t know you.” It’s diabolical…
Either that or he’s just being his usual, erratic self—making big moves without a lot of thought for the consequences. In which case this whole article is ridiculous. Kanye has yet to comment, and the tweet is still up.
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