No doubt you’ve seen a replay of the way rapper Kanye West bum rushed the stage during Sunday’s MTV Music Video Awards (MVAs), yanked the microphone from 19-year-old country singer Taylor Swift – who was delivering her thank-you speech after receiving the award for best female video, and shouted the following:
Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but Beyoncé has one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!
He was right of course: Beyoncé should have won that award for “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It).” (Have you seen Justin Timberlake’s spoof of this video from Saturday Night Live? Hilarious!)
But this was not the right place or the right time (and the notoriously irritating Kanye was probably not the right person) to make this point.
Indeed, even pissed drunk (from swigging a bottle of cognac like apple juice all night), Kanye had to have known this was whack when, instead of the applause he no doubt expected, the audience booed him off the stage.
Actually, nobody seemed more incensed than Beyoncé. And this, for a conceited performer like Kanye, must have felt like a dagger to the heart. But his hurt feelings had to have paled in comparison to the shock and humiliation Taylor must have felt at being upstaged in this fashion on the biggest night of her career.
Her feelings were undoubtedly soothed however when, after receiving the award for video of the year (curiously enough for “Single Ladies…”), Beyoncé interrupted her own acceptance speech and invited Taylor back on stage to finish hers. The audience duly showered Taylor with a standing ovation, which I suspect was also meant, in part, for Beyoncé. That was a classy move B.
Meanwhile, such is the pervasive nature of the pop culture in America today that no less a person than the president of the United States got drawn into this spectacle. Because during off-the-record banter about the VMAs after an interview with CNBC on Monday, President Obama called this spade a spade by calling Kanye a “jackass.”
Then, in an astonishing, if not cynical, breach of journalistic ethics, Terry Moran, the co-anchor of ABC’s Nightline, who lifted the remark off the raw feed all networks had access to, tweeted the following to his show’s one million followers:
Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a “jackass” for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential!
This of course makes Moran not only a moron but also a jackass himself.
Meanwhile, Kanye provided the only noteworthy highlight on the season premiere of Jay Leno’s new prime-time talk show when he appeared and uttered a barely comprehensible apology – through asphyxiated tears – for ruining Taylor’s glorious moment.
Yeah, sure Kanye … until next time!
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Kanye’s grief…
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