This did not age well

So, in the comments section of that post I just wrote about, one of the participants also linked to a series of articles published on a site called Grantland, a popular culture blog operated by ESPN until they got bored with it, all written by Steven Hyden about “the winners of rock ‘n’ roll”. Curious to see what else he had on the site, I spotted a piece that looked interesting…

…oh. And, well, much as Kanye looms over everyone in the picture, he comes out at number one on the list. In fairness to Hyden, it’s really only hindsight that makes this look as bad as it does now; when he wrote this in 2015, Kanye’s fascination with Hitler (which may go back a lot further than we thought at first, depending on how much credence you give to unnamed sources) was something the rest of us didn’t know about in the way we do now. Still, there’s something terrifically ironic about that picture and the article. I wonder what Hyden would make of this now, though he certainly appears to have cooled on Kanye not too long after writing that piece…