Kanye Makes an Ass of Himself

I'm sure most reading this have seen the footage by now, or have heard about it. At the VMA's last night, Taylor Swift won the award for best female video, beating out a competition which included Lady Gaga, for "Poker Face", and Beyonce, for "Single Ladies". As she accepted her award, she began talking about how amazing it was to achieve her dream, and thanking everyone for giving her a chance since she sings Country. At this point, Kanye West decided it was his place to jump on stage, grab the microphone from her, and point out that Beyonce had made one of the best videos of all time, before shrugging and returning the mic.

Now, I'm not even a fan of Taylor Swift, but that was about the rudest, most out of line move I can remember seeing at an awards show like this. In fact, it goes beyond rude - it wasn't even his right. People have the right to their opinions, sure, but he had no right to steal her moment like that. To interrupt - to TAKE the microphone out of her hand while she is accepting an award (a subjective award, by the way) - and say that this award belonged to somebody else was a terrible and classless thing to do. In fact, what he did was embarrassing not only to Swift, but Beyonce as well. She certainly didn't want anyone stealing someone else's fire and claiming it belonged to her (I do commend Beyonce for calling Swift back up when Beyonce accepted an award and giving her a chance to say what she didn't get to say earlier).

In spite of how upset I was that he did this, the real reason I am writing this is because I have seen several friends of mine put status updates online praising Kanye for what he did. They're proud of him because he is keeping it real, speaking the truth, supporting who really should have won. Again, it was a subjective award, first of all. Secondly, I was pretty upset to see people I considered myself friends with supporting such an asshole move. Like I said, I'm not even a Taylor Swift fan; I don't like Country music. But that doesn't make any difference to how I feel that Kanye was way out of line here. In fact, even if you are a Beyonce fan, and you feel Beyonce deserved that award, I don't see how you could condone what Kanye did. Because as I said, what he did was embarrassing to her as well, and she has too much class to condone anything like that. If this happened in a sports capacity, such as an NBA awards show where players who are talking are also under a union contract through their league, sanctions and fines could be placed on someone for pulling a move like this. In this case, I don't know that there is anything that can or will be done in response to this, other than Kanye's reputation perhaps taking a downswing. He was, after all, booed pretty much the rest of the night whenever he was mentioned.

Anyway, my opinion certainly is much less of him now. Not that I was buying his albums in the first place, but I certainly won't be giving him any of my recommendations. The one thing I liked about him was what he said about George Bush's response efforts during the Katrina response. However, that was on his own time. The camera was on him - it was his turn to talk. When someone else is accepting an award, and it is their turn, you don't cut in and steal their mic away, regardless of your opinion. He stole more than just her mic; he stole her moment, her happiness. How could anyone support somebody doing something like that?