Well! Unless you've been paying attention to less important items such as some stupid tire trade war with China and domestic terrorism rings, you are well aware that the world ended at approximately 9:42 PM Pacific time, when rapper Kanye West strode onstage in the middle of Taylor Swift's acceptance speech for Best Female Video on MTV's Video Music Awards. With his career in one hand and the microphone he'd snatched out of Swift's hand in the other, West magnanimously informed Swift that he'd "let her finish in a minute," then announced to one an all that he considered his friend Beyonce the winner.
As media splashes go, this was a cannonball. The story was granted above-the-fold status on The Drudge Report, and DJ's buzzed for hours between spins: "Does this guy just base his entire career on making idiotic comments on live television?" one asked, invoking West's utterly inappropriate and obnoxious "George Bush hates black people" rant during a Katrina benefit, all spewed as an increasingly suicidal Mike Meyers shared the camera frame.
But this comment ignited far more outrage. Why? Admittedly, I'm no fan of Swift's--she announced "I sing country" before West snatched the mike, and I would dispute both "sing" and "country"--but really... why? I can't remember a time I,or anyone I know, watched either a music video, MTV, or a music video on MTV, and yet, here we are in this post. All it took was the sad news of Patrick Swayze's death to conflate the two stories: "YO PATRICK SWAYZE I KNOW YOU JUST DIED AND ALL AND IMMA LET U FINISH," read one tweet, "BUT MICHAEL JACKSON'S DEATH WAS THE BEST ONE THIS YEAR."
This is perhaps a Michael Vick moment, the football player who became a 215-pound hate magnet when he was convicted for running a dog fighting ring, despite the fact that professional sports are rife with sexual assaulters, DUI kings, and perpetrators of assault. We live in a scream-saturated society; you see the tweet quoted above, a slash of capital letters using the name of a cancer victim in a joke barely twelve hours after his death. How is it our society is all right with that... but not with West's decided lack of tact in the presence of a living person who could defend herself?
I'll let you finish.
