TRIGGER WARNING: This article concerns Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump, and may be upsetting to some readers.
The world has gone mad, right, when these two are apparently running things?
I mean, there's a woman who's "famous for making a sex tape" speaking on matters waaaay beyond her understanding, and a man who's famous for firing people whose entire job is way beyond his, mouth-breathing oxygen on primetime. Again.
Yawn.
On Thursday, Kim Kardashian West - reality TV star, entrepreneur, CEO, influencer, law student, mother of four - appeared at a press-call at The White House alongside President Trump. And the scorn poured on her for daring to step outside of the bedazzled little pigeon-hole we have her in is astonishing.
next time @realDonaldTrump will invite Britney SPEARS talk about TARIFFS WAR
— frenchbird (@TheFrBlueBird) June 14, 2019
People have been working their asses off for years for this and then Kim Kardashian and her ass sweep in and oh nevermind.
— Save AP Bio (@patatatat) June 14, 2019
What was her offence? Well, she was in Washington to announce that she had been working with the ride-sharing app Lyft on a program that provides free-ride vouchers to recently released prisoners who need to travel to and from job interviews.
If that sentence seems incongruous to you, you haven't been paying attention. The 2019 edition of Kim Kardashian is big into prison reform and helping released offenders re-enter "normal" life. It started last year, when she bestowed a photo opportunity on the President of the United States to talk him into supporting the First Step Act, a bill that aims to tackle America's enormous problem with over-incarceration, including reducing sentences and granting pardons. Her first move was to get Trump to free Alice Marie Johnson, a 64-year-old grandmother who'd been serving a life-sentence for her role in a cocaine-trafficking operation.
Since then, Kim Kardashian has been instrumental in freeing at least 18 people and reducing the sentences of many more.
Yes, I know. It bends the brain a little. We're much more comfortable seeing Kardashian using her profile to promote the sale of appetite-suppressing lollipops, or displaying her startling physical form in skin-tight neutrals on Instagram. Or scrapping and sobbing with her sisters on the reality show that has been running for 16 (16!) seasons. Or putting filters on her impossibly cute children. Or selling us emojis so we can express our most complex opinions in an animated Kim-twerk giphy.
None of these things are glorious. But they have made her enormously, unimaginably famous and very, very rich.
Let's be clear: No-one asked Kim Kardashian to decide that prison reform was her next sexy contract. The woman is worth $350 million, and there's no upside to her spending her time sitting in visitor waiting rooms, or sitting down with felons to hear their issues about re-entering their families and workplaces.
If the mission was to "smarten up" her image, there are a thousand causes more sympathetic than helping amplify the voices of drug dealers and murderers.
So perhaps we are left with the fact that Kim Kardashian is not a shitty person, and if her decision to campaign for prison reform jolts our perception of what an advocate looks like, that might be on us, not her.
Yes, there are more qualified people on the topic. But they don't have 141 million followers on Instagram, an enormous platform that allows them to illuminate the fact that there are 2.3 million people in prison in the U.S. And that more than 60 per cent of them are black, despite African-Americans making up 12 per cent of the general population.
And as for the other much-scorned human in this equation, the clueless President who knows only that he likes his activists pretty and famous?
Well, let's imagine that KKW is playing him like a cheap violin. After all, as she says: “I did consider the fact that I would get a lot of backlash if I went to the White House. But meeting all of the people that I’ve met behind bars, I guarantee you, they don’t care who signs that clemency paper.”
Nope. And they don't care which person got their name under his ignorant nose.
But clearly, we do. What a remarkable privilege that is.
Are you backing Kim for a White House run in 2024? Let us know in the comments section below.
