Mitchell: Kanye West’s meeting with Trump totally self-serving

Follow @MaryMitchellCSTI’ve tried to cut Kanye West some slack

After all, he is a motherless child.

Really, the music mogul and rapper didn’t come unhinged until after his mother and manager, Donda West, died of complications after plastic surgery in 2007.

Two years before, West had jumped into the fallout over George W. Bush’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, declaring the president “doesn’t care about black people.”

Those were fighting words for sure.

However, the sentiment was something a lot of black people felt even before nearly 34,000 poor, mostly black, New Orleans residents were stranded in the storm’s aftermath.

But West’s faux pas are just too much.

If he’s not putting his foot in his own mouth (like when he jumped on stage at the MTV Music Awards and confronted Taylor Swift), he’s trying to put it in someone else’s.

Follow @MaryMitchellCSTIn case you missed it, West met with President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday morning to discuss “multicultural issues.”

“These issues included bullying, supporting teachers, modernizing curriculums and violence in Chicago,” West said in a Twitter post.

“I feel it is important to have a direct line of communication with our future President if we truly want change,” he said.

I’m flabbergasted.

West didn’t bother to cast a ballot one way or the other in the historic election, and now he is telling others how they should respond to the Trump presidency.

That’s not just arrogant, it’s shameful.

Even worse is the fact that the music mogul would use Chicago’s troubling violence to pander to the president-elect.

What is he hoping for, a loan?

It certainly could be taken that way.

In the months leading up to the election, West was running around whining about being $53 million in debt because of his failing fashion business.

If West had said he and Trump were talking about how to keep jobs in the U.S., or even about how the struggling clothing designer could benefit from filing bankruptcy, the Trump summit would have made sense.

But for West to position himself as a mediator between Trump and black folks is, well, asinine.

The same could be said for the Rev. Corey Brooks’ trying to make the case that black people are tired of Michael Madigan’s stranglehold on Democratic legislators and are ready to support Gov. Bruce Rauner’s turnaround agenda.

If that were true, Ken Dunkin would still be in the Gener-al Assembly.

Dunkin, who split with his own party to support Rauner’s agenda, was trounced in the primary by Madigan-backed Juliana Stratton.

Similar to West, Brooks has a financial agenda.

In fact, the governor was the draw at Brooks’ fundraiser for Project HOOD, the proposed $15 million community center, on Tuesday where another state senator, Jim Oberweis, was an honoree.

While Project HOOD is a great cause, when Brooks is using the governor to move luncheon tickets, his message is tainted.

West doesn’t give a damn about what’s going on in Chicago.

If he did, he would have taken part in efforts to reduce the violence a long time ago.

Instead of pouting about the collapse of his fashion empire, West would have used his celebrity status to positively influence the people who are eating up his lyrics.

But key anti-violence activists in the city haven’t heard a peep from either West or Trump about Chicago’s deadly violence.

“Just wondering what do either of them know about it, and when was the last time either of them came into the streets of Chicago?” the Rev. Michael Pfleger asked on his Facebook page.

If you think no one pays attention to West’s rants, you are missing the point.

Isn’t that what a lot of us said about Donald Trump’s Twitter rants before the reality TV star shocked the world by beating Hillary Clinton?

West can talk nonsense if he wants to, but we can no longer afford to let such yik-yak stand.

Tweets by @MaryMitchellCST