People
Instagram and Twitter have suspended Kanye “Ye” West after the rapper shared a series of antisemitic statements on both platforms.
A spokesperson for Meta said Monday that Instagram had removed content from West’s page that violated its policies in addition to restricting the musician’s account. A representative for Twitter also confirmed Monday that the app had locked West’s account for breaking its rules.
West had shared a screenshot of an antisemitic text message he sent fellow rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs claiming that Combs was controlled by Jewish people, according to NBC. The post can no longer be found on West’s Instagram.
After his post ignited a backlash, West threatened via Twitter to “go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” per internet archive records.
“You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” West wrote in the same tweet.
It’s unclear how long the restrictions on West’s Twitter and Instagram accounts will remain in place. As of Monday morning, he hadn’t posted anything on either platform since Saturday.
Earlier this year, Instagram suspended West after he directed a racist slur at “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah.
Following his most recent Instagram suspension, West took to Twitter to ask Meta executive Mark Zuckerberg, “How you gone kick me off instagram?”
West has also caused controversy recently for wearing a “white lives matter” shirt during Paris Fashion Week and for claiming on Fox News that Jared Kushner worked on the Abraham Accords peace treaties “to make money.” Kushner is Jewish.
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NEW YORK — An actor who’s accused Kevin Spacey of making a sexual advance on him as a 14-year-old recounted the episode for a New York City jury on Friday, testifying he felt helpless when Spacey climbed on top of him in bed.
“I was frozen,” Anthony Rapp said on the second day of a civil trial in Manhattan. “I was pinned underneath him. I didn’t know what to do.”
In a halting voice, Rapp testified that the then-26-year-old Spacey had invited him to a party at his Upper East Side apartment when both actors were starring on Broadway in 1986. He said after he wandered into a bedroom to watch TV and get away from adults, an intoxicated-looking Spacey joined him after the other guests had left.
Rapp said Spacey, after lifting him and laying him down on the bed, pressed the “full weight” of his chest and groin into him. He said he found a way to slip away and flee the apartment, but not before Spacey asked, “Are you sure you want to leave?”
Asked by his lawyer how he would respond to anyone who downplayed the severity of what happened, Rapp responded by describing himself as a frightened child trying to fend off a grown man.
He added: “I’m grateful that that 14-year-old boy had the wherewithal to get away. I'd also say he shouldn’t have gone through that in the first place.”
As Rapp, sometimes taking deep breaths, testified, Spacey wrote notes on a pad or sat with his hands folded.
Rapp, 50, came forward with the accusation in 2017, when he was the first among others who largely shut down Spacey's career with multiple claims of inappropriate touching or sexual advances.
Rapp is seeking $40 million in damages.
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NEW YORK — Biographers try as best they can to walk in the shoes of their subjects. Charles Leerhsen took it a step further: He slept in the same French hotel room where Anthony Bourdain killed himself, earning a unique perspective — and pushback.
“There’s been some people who’ve criticized me, saying it’s ghoulish or that I’m the kind of reporter who goes through people’s garbage cans,” said Leerhsen, the author of “Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain.”
“But all the best biographers — I wouldn’t put myself in their ranks — but all the guys who win the prizes, they believe that you really need to go where the person was,” he said.
Seeing what the chef, writer and TV host saw on his last day alive in 2018 is only part of Leerhsen's exhaustive research for the book out this week, which included 80 interviews and material from Bourdain's laptop, diaries and his final texts.
The book's most mournful part is the anguished texts from Bourdain in the days leading to his death. He was in an unhealthy long-distance relationship with actor Asia Argento, and was taking steroids, human-growth hormone and Viagra, Leerhsen reports.
“You were reckless with my heart,” Bourdain wrote to Argento on the night before he died. The book reveals that Bourdain googled her name “several hundred times” in his last three days after a tabloid published pictures of her with another man.
“I was curious,” Leerhsen said. “If you’re not curious like I was, then God bless you, you know?”
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From combined wire services
