Adidas Terminates Agreement with Kanye West (Ye) over Anti-Semitic Comments

Adidas has a line of shoes branded "Yeezy," a brand associated with Kanye West, who now goes by Ye (right).  According to Jaclyn Peiser and Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post,  the brand generated $2 billion in revenue last year and accounts for nearly ten percent of Adidas' annual revenue.  The end of the contract will be costly to Ye, but Adidas estimates that it will also cost the company about $250 million.  Adidas is the last domino to fall.  Numerous other companies had already severed ties with Ye. 

None of the articles that I have looked at discuss the basis for terminating the deals.  One expects that the contracts have morals clauses, but one would like to have a look at them to see whether Ye's partners have discretion to invoke them selectively.  As discussed below, his anti-Semitic outbursts are not the first occasion that might have given corporate partners concerns about how Ye's conduct reflected on the product.  To date, I haven't seen anything suggesting that Ye was challenging the companies' rights to termination his deals.  

Earlier, Ye's social media accounts were restricted in connection with statements viewed to be anti-Semitic.  Ye responded, according to media accounts, by entering into a preliminary agreement to buy Parler, a social media platform that promotes itself as more amenable to unbridled freedom of expression than its mainstream rivals.  

The Washington Post provides many reasons why Adidas might have been willing to bid auf wiedersehen to Ye.  He was not easy to work with, to say the least, and his recent barrage of provocative speech is not his only brush with controversy.  The Post speculates that, shunned by the fashion industry, Ye might fall back on music to keep his empire afloat.  But there is also the danger that the major music platforms will also refuse to distribute his products.  

That seems unlikely to me.  It's not as if Ye supporters are in it for the anti-Semitism, but as Lisa Respers of CNN reports, many have noticed that corporate partners did not sever ties with Ye when he made statements that could be construed as anti-Black, such as when he donned a "White Lives Matter" t-shirt, called slavery a "choice," and decried racism as "a dated concept."  Those who were willing to stick with Ye despite his anti-Black expression and expressive conduct would likely continue to do so notwithstanding his anti-Semitism.

Doing so, in my view, would not make them complicit in Ye's anti-Semitism.  Most of his fans dislike his anti-Semitism, but many would overlook it because of his unique attributes as an artist.  I'll admit it, when I recently learned that Eric Clapton (far right, with Blind faith) had expressed support for Enoch Powell's British fascism, and that David Bowie (left) had expressed unseemly enthusiasm for Hitler and the Third Reich, it had no effect on my enjoyment of Layla or Changes.  I forgive them their trespasses or their not-so-youthful indiscretions or whatever made these wonderful musicians say such stupid things.  Our broken world is full of broken people, including broken artists.  Sometimes, it is more appropriate to respond with compassion than with judgment.