Last night at MTV's Video Music Awards show, young Taylor Swift - a country music star - won for Best Female Video. Good for her. Here she is attempting her acceptance speech, in this CNN Video: "I sing Country Music, so thank you so much for giving me a chance to win a VMA award." And, then, Kanye West takes the mic from her and announces that "Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time." Poor Taylor Swift looked just devastated.
I'm wondering just what possessed Kanye West to lose his mind on national television last night. Everything I've ever read about him suggests that he's a good guy. He's supposedly polite, and treated his late mother with respect, but last night he went a little nuts. I'm left wondering, is Kanye West just the product of his own stardom, or is he an example of how far down we've traveled as a society?
Nowadays, anyone can say and do anything to someone else and there are no repercussions. We can all stand behind the First Amendment. Admittedly, I'm just as guilty as others. Back when President Bush was in office, I sold t-shirts making fun of him and decisions the Republican Party made. I think the meanest one I sold was of Bush dressed like a scarecrow with the saying, "I could be another Lincoln, if I only had a brain." Amazingly, that one didn't sell as many as the one saying, "Bush does not play well with others." Flash forward to President Obama's run for the White House, and a co-worker approached me with a t-shirt idea. It was a picture of Obama with a target behind his head. "You'll sell millions," he said. It made my stomach crawl. I was shocked that someone would actually want to sell, and someone else would buy, a t-shirt like that. My "If I only had a brain" looked pretty tame. Needless to say, I declined.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - zingzing
kanye west is the court jester of the pop world. he's a hell of a lot more interesting than taylor swift, and more talented as well. and it's stuff like this that is precisely the reason for how awesome he is. he's a living, breathing ego, and there's nothing quite like it out there right now.
revel in it.
2 - El Bicho
Kanye West doesn't care about white people
3 - Dawn
Nice article and I couldn't agree more, except the part about Kanye being polite. I've never heard him called that before. Total asswipe, jerk, arrogant, obnoxious, sure, but polite, that's a new one.
People need to get over themselves and stop thinking every moment is about them. I guess they aren't teaching the Golden Rule in school anymore.
4 - zingzing
kanye west is our collective pop id.
5 - Maddy Pumilia
I love Taylor Swift. She is amazing.
Kanye ... not so much.
6 - Glen Boyd
What possessed Kanye was a pre-show bottle of Hennessy and a whole lot of insecurities that he masks with egomania. What an asshole.
-Glen
7 - zingzing
isn't he awesome?
8 - El Bicho
you might want to set the awesome bar a little higher, zing
9 - zingzing
celebrities set the bar, not i. and if you can think of a pop musician who is more interesting, both as a musician and a personality (asshole though that may be), i'd be surprised. really, i don't give a shit if he's a dick or not. he puts out some of the best pop singles of the time AND he's constantly doing ridiculous, smarmy, hilarious things. he's a gem.
10 - klondikekitty
I guess all the comments made here by "zingzing" just prove to support the theory that Americans have become selfish and rude, and don't care about anyone else but themselves . . . It's okay, I believe in karma, what goes around, comes around, and Kanye West will get his sooner or later . . so will u, zingzing . . .
11 - Acrylic Style
I'll let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time!...
12 - Jordan Richardson
This is a massively overblown situation compounded by the intentions of people to "protect" someone like poor Taylor Swift simply because she looked stunned and shocked.
It's Kanye being Kanye and, like zing's saying, it's interesting. We're all talking about it, aren't we? This is rock and roll, people. It was rock and roll when the bassist from RATM sat atop the structure in 2000 when Limp Bizkit was accepting their award.
What's maddening about this situation is how people are reacting. Look at some of these comments: "Kanye will get his....so will u, zingzing." What the hell does that mean? If Kanye is rude for a 5-second interruption, what does that make you, klondikekitty, for threatening people with the "laws of karma?"
The fact is that Americans haven't become selfish and rude, they (and we, as humans) have always been that way. Kanye was drunk, a jerk and an asshole. But it wasn't the first time, it won't be the last and it makes for damn good television. Taylor would have simply accepted the award for a crap video and left had this not happened. Now, as it is, everybody's on her side and talking about it more than they should be. If you ask me, the kid'll be just fine with all of popdom on her side over this.
Incidentally, people wondering why people might be egotistical at a damn awards show really need a reality check. The whole night was about ego, for crying out loud.
13 - zingzing
hey kitty. what did i do that was selfish? not hate on a guy? not be all judgmental? you really ought to look in a mirror if you're going to talk about karma. for shame, kitten. for shame.
i just think he's interesting. who would really care about the self-reflexive celebrity back-patting that is the vma's if kanye had come out an made an ass of himself? no one. that made the night.
and if you really want your musicians to be nice all the time, you're gonna have to hate a bunch of musicians. for every paul mccartney, there's a john lennon, and mccartney isn't always nice either.
14 - Glen Boyd
Celebrities behaving badly will always be a source of fascination for the public. Like Jordan says, we are all talking about it, aren't we?
For the most part these shows celebrate mostly disposable flavor of the minute pop that will be replaced by whoever next years pretty faces are. There are exceptions of course...Beyonce's a talented singer (and a class act); Green Day is a good modern-day version of the Ramones; and Jay Z's a decent rapper. But for the most part its not really about art or talent.
My bitch here is that the lack of civility and decorum. If we have to celebrate this crud, at least have some respect for the show and for your fellow "artists" and let them have their moment. The lack of just plain and simple respect public figures seem to have these days -- whether its a nutcase congressman shouting down the president of the United States during a nationally televised address to congress, or Kanye behaving like a boorish drunken lout, and in essence beating up on an innocent, mostly defenseless sixteen year old waif like Taylor Swift -- just amazes me.
But as Jordan said, we are all talking about it aren't we? So what does that say about our entertainment choices?
-Glen
15 - Glen Boyd
I always liked the image of a drunk Lennon wearing a kotex on his head outside of the Troubadour, or Keith Moon driving a Rolls Royce into the hotel pool. Those are funny images to me. The difference here is the behaviour came at the expense of someone else's moment, and someone who was not equipped to defend it.
I won't be buying any Taylor Swift records anytime soon (or any Kanye West for that matter). But if we must celebrate this crud, at least show some common courtesy for your fellow performers.
-Glen
16 - zingzing
she's 19, not 16. she's no child.
and do you remember the story of lennon mocking the "spastics" they wheeled up to the front row at concerts? now that's mean. burn him!
17 - Jordan Richardson
Glen,
The problem is that American culture is built upon going on the offensive. Look at the various forms of media for countless examples. Talk radio is filled with callers being cut off and rudeness from the hosts and producers, complete with "shock jocks" and the like. Cable news pundits are celebrated for telling honest, defenseless guests to "shut up" and ordering for microphones to be cut off. As you mentioned, public discourse is actually carrying signs and placards as though one is attending a professional wrestling event. Press conferences are given attention if there's some sort of a scuffle. And so on.
This isn't new, either. It's in the bloodstream and it has been for quite some time. Americans have long prided themselves on being bigger, louder, faster and flat-out better than the rest. It's a relentless spirit of competition that breeds contempt for fellow human beings and it shouldn't be shocking that it would seep into the self-congratulatory and utterly meaningless arena of MTV awards programming.
So when drunk Kanye West takes all of five seconds to heap praise on Beyonce's video during Taylor's moment, you'll have to forgive me for not thinking it's that big of a deal. I think it's much more of a big deal to look at the fallout and the reaction. When Pink calls Kanye the biggest piece of shit "on earth," for example, her overreaction staggers me in light of what's going on in our world and what sorts of evil and REAL pieces of shit there are out there. When comments across the internet call for Kanye to be lynched, killed, murdered, and the like, that strikes me as much, much ruder than anything Kanye did.
The situation was unfortunate, but that's about it. That it took away from the other performances of the night, most of which were actually very good (Lady Gaga was brilliant!), has more to do with us as an audience than anything Kanye did.
What's ruder? Kanye's five seconds or the public's unforgiving attitude and thirst for vengeance towards him?
The reaction to this situation says more about us as a society and what we choose to pay mind to than it does about anything in the entertainment industry. There have always been throwaway pop stars, there have always been flash in the pans, and there always will be. There will also always be legends. The difference between our time and times gone by is that we expect to know who are legends are going to be RIGHT NOW instead of waiting for the legacy of history to bear them out.
While I get that Taylor Swift may not have been "equipped" to defend herself in her moment, she got her moment and then some later on. She's young, but I truly believe it could have been anyone besides Beyonce up there winning and Kanye would've done the exact same thing. It had NOTHING to do with Taylor Swift.
Forgive the ranting and rambling, but I've had a little too much Hennie. :)
18 - Ted
You MTV encourages him to do this shit.
19 - Ted
I meant 'you know'...
20 - Glen Boyd
I agree with what you say in principle Jordan. Doesn't mean I have to like it though...
My point is that even in a cultural environment that does both encourage and even reward this kind of shit -- and truth be told, rock and roll has encouraged this as much as anything has -- there's still a place and time for it.
If some crackpot congressman wants to have his say about Obama, there's a hundred talking idiots on FOX news and the like ready and eager to give him the forum for that. The proper forum is not a nationally advised address in the halls of congress by the president of the United States. That kind of shit used to be unthinkable, regardless of what party you support, or your personal politics are.
So I guess we shouldn't be surprised when we see it on an awards show like the VMAs. Hell, half the time they stage stuff like this.
My point is that Kanye showed a stunning lack of respect for everyone involved. Not just Taylor Swift, but Beyonce, the memory of Michael Jackson (which his BS effectively upstaged), the show itself, and pretty much everyone there as well as those watching at home.
I just find the lack of common courtesy and decency he displayed appalling. That said, some of the comments on the internet have been equally dismaying, and open up another whole can of worms in this debate. The underlying albatross in all of the public discussion about these "incidents" involving Kanye and Taylor, Obama and the Congressman, etc. is the issue of race.
It seems to me that the public discourse has taken a disturbingly ugly turn in recent weeks.
-Glen
21 - paula
Kanye West has no class.
22 - STM
Id DID spoil her moment, though.
And it WAS selfish and it WAS thoughtless and boorish.
Too much money, not enough sense.
You can't teach class, though. It's there or it ain't.
In Kanye's case, obviously it ain't.
23 - Glen Boyd
His apology tonight on Leno seemed genuine. Granted it was his third apology in 24 hours, and he didn't seem real sincere in either of the first two. I think it's finally sunk in though...he seemed genuinely sorry.
-Glen
24 - Maddy Pumilia
"His apology tonight on Leno seemed genuine. Granted it was his third apology in 24 hours, and he didn't seem real sincere in either of the first two. I think it's finally sunk in though...he seemed genuinely sorry." (Glen Boyd)
I agree with this completely. This morning I had no respect for Kanye. Now, at least, I can respect him a little.
Maddy
25 - El Bicho
you called it "awesome," zing, so you are the one setting the bar. And what exactly was so interesting about it? Rude, obnoxious people pop up at least once a week on the pop-culture landscape. It was actually rather boring and lacked imagination, like most of his music, although it's no surprise a buffoon who ruins a good Ray Charles song thinks stealing choreography from Bob Fosse equates to "one of the best music videos of all time."
Kayne is constantly belly-aching when he loses and here he is stealing someone else's time in the spotlight. So what if it was just a crappy country/pop song or not the greatest video or just an award show, he obviously believes these events are important or he wouldn't keep showing up. That was her moment to thank all the people that helped her and supported her and got her to where she is and he was too selfish to see that and he ruined it.
Not a surprise he rolled over and apologized. Ooh, what a rebel. Now we just need Glen to apologize for that ridiculous Green Day/Ramones comparison.