#1 - Jim Brown

This one hurts. After decades of being a high-profile advocate for the Black community, football legend Jim Brown announced his love and admiration for Donald Trump because of "what he went through to become president" and because he "really talks about helping African-American people."

Perhaps Brown is referring to what Ku Klux Klan-endorsed Trump went through to run a campaign devoid of substance and facts while ushering in a new wave of populist racism, xenophobia and sexism.

And I suppose Trump's support for the blatantly discriminatory "Stop and Frisk" policy is just one aspect of his grand plan to help Black people. 

Regardless, Jim Brown should know better. And for attempting to normalize the words actions and policies of Trump, Jim Brown is recognized as the inaugural Normalization Negro.

#NeverNormalize

#2 - Kanye West

"Although I like Kanye — He’s a Chicago guy. Smart. He’s very talented. He is a jackass,” President Barack Obama

For years we have been waiting for Kanye West to announce that everything about his life the past decade or so has been a piece of public performance art designed to highlight and underscore and, most importantly, mock the American obsession with celebrity.

But when you size up all of the evidence, the signs point in a similar direction.

Clue 1: Marry the most popular yet puzzlingly talentless celebrity on the planet, who is arguably as famous as he is, to highlight that the ultra-talented music producer and performer receives the same amount of acclaim as a woman whose two most notable claims to fame are a sex-tape with a half-rate R&B singer and a TV show documenting whatever it is she does in between getting naked for the next magazine shoot.

Clue 2: Produce an outrageously overpriced, drab, tattered, oversized, Matrix-inspired line of clothes, complete with tears and holes, to prove that obsession with celebrity renders a large percentage of the public immune to the fact that the clothes couldn't make it through a Salvation Army quality control check.

Clue 3: Bizarre celebrity kid name. Kanye named his child an ordinal direction — North West

Clue 4: Bizarre public behavior: Check TMZ for a more comprehensive list of Kanye’s odd public antics. However, the most infamous may have been interrupting Taylor Swift as she prepared to accept a music video award. 

Clue 5: Increasingly outrageous statements: He has routinely compared himself to various historical figures and luminaries including Henry Ford, Harry Truman, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Andy Warhol, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Jesus, Michael Jackson, Shakespeare, Gandhi, ... you get the point.

His lyrical content has become increasingly less accessible as he rhymes about bleached anuses and cocaine on dark-skinned women.

Clearly Kanye is a jackass. But less than a month after Kanye declared he would have voted for Trump if he voted and suggested that Barrack Obama serve as one of Trump’s advisors, Yeezy suffered some sort of mental and/or emotional breakdown for which he was hospitalized.

We're not saying the incidents were related ... we're just saying.

Adding insult to injury, days after being released from the hospital Kanye strolled into Trump Tower to meet with the president-elect.

Upon leaving the meeting Kanye stood beside Trump with a blank, dopey, lobotomized glazed-over glare refusing to open his mouth in response to reporter questions, except to say, "I just want to take a picture."

Whatever it was that led those closest to him to have Kanye taken to the hospital for evaluation, clearly he's even worse than previously thought. And until such time as Kanye confirms that he is the new Andy Kaufman and his entire life the past few years has been a satirical act designed to mock pop culture, this nut will occupy a special place on the list of Normalization Negroes who can’t wait to prove to the rest of us non-psychotics that Donald Trump’s words, actions and behavior are perfectly normal, acceptable and laudable. 

Still a jackass.

#NeverNormalize