With the world turning its back on Kayne West (or at least the world that matters) in light of the rapper’s latest Hilter-loving remarks, many of us are wondering if maybe we shouldn’t have seen this coming.
But as it turns out, comedy folk duo Garfunkel and Oates evidently did just that.
After all, Ye has always been an egomaniacal loose cannon with a history of unpredictable behavior — from infamously saying that then-President George Bush “doesn’t care about Black people” during a nationally televised telethon benefit for displaced Hurricane Katrina victims in 2005 to even more infamously interrupting Taylor Swift’s 2009 VMA speech to declare that Beyonce had one of the best music videos of all time.
Perhaps this is why, around that same period of time, Garfunkel and Oates, consisting of actress-comedians Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, respectively, did an onstage comedy bit called “Who Said It: Kanye or Hitler?”
The format is quite standard (there is currently a version circulating online comparing Elon Musk to Mr. Burns from The Simpsons), in which the pair read several quotes and then left it up to the audience to determine whether they were said by West or … well, Adolf Hitler.
And it’s tougher than you’d think! “When a man is starving in the streets he’s not thinking of bread and water, but of caviar and champagne,” teased the first quote, which seemed to stump the audience. (It was Hitler.) The next one, however, “I stand here as a revolutionary, it is as a revolutionary against the revolution,” was just nonsensical enough that the audience unanimously thought it must have come from Ye — but that one was also Hitler.
After a few more guesses, Lindhome lobbed a softball with a quote about designing something for “Obama to go to the club in,” which they jokingly attributed to Hitler — not knowing that in 2022, Kanye is decidedly no longer a fan of the 44th president.
Yet, back in October 2009 when they filmed the bit, making fun of Kanye West was still controversial, as he was still mostly considered to be un untouchable eccentric genius. As such, they added the following disclaimer to the YouTube description.
“OKAY guys! We are not comparing Kanye West to Hitler! We know that Kanye didn’t kill anyone. We think it’s funny that, even though they couldn’t be more different, their quotes are the same. I love Kanye. Please stop misinterpreting this — WE ARE JOKING!!”
What a difference 13 years makes.