by When I was a child, I was told that it didn’t matter whether you won or lost because it was how you played the game that mattered the most. I can’t help but think that rap artist Kanye West, master of crybabyism, never took that lesson to heart. Over the past five years, Mr. West has taken it upon himself to find every opportunity to loudly complain when things have not gone his way — some of which have been well documented.
The other night at the Video Music Awards, however, Mr. West took things a little too far when he decided that the wrong person won the award for Best Female Artist. Taylor Swift was only a couple of minutes into her acceptance speech when Kanye walked onto the stage and took the microphone from her.
Taylor, I’m really happy for you. I’ll let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!
Where can we even start with this? First, there is the fact that Beyonce’s video was a simple black and white recording of her song being played over a classic Bob Fosse routine — note that I say that it was Fosse’s routine, not that it was inspired by it.
After he was done ranting, Kanye got off the stage and left Taylor to stand awkwardly in silence until the next part of the show started. The camera panned over to Beyonce who smiled in an extremely uncomfortable manner. Kanye later appeared onstage and was met by a cold reaction from the audience.
A little later, Beyonce won the award for the best video of the year. She got on stage to accept her award and she briefly thanked a few people before mentioning how she felt when she was seventeen and won an award and turned the microphone to Taylor to let her give the speech she had intended to give before she was interrupted.
We know that stealing is never good but Beyonce had the good manners to give back to Taylor what was taken away — a chance to thank people after properly winning an award. Does it help that he has apologized three times since then?
It was, frankly, a strange and insane thing to do, Gordon. Was Kanye trying to express his outrage at a perceived racial bias?
His apology on The Jay Leno Show last night was truly bizarre. He deserves the wrath of the world he earned.
When Michael Jackson passed away, Kanye said that he was now deserving to inherit the King of Pop crown.
I don’t think anyone who thinks they deserve to inherit the crown deserves it.
He really has a warped perception of entitlement, I think.
Hi Gordon,
It’s highly weird. Was he out of his mind? Some people really don’t have any idea about how to react/ interact/ behave in public…I wonder where does it come from?
Katha,
He just has bad public manners — or he just knows that every time he does something like this, he gets lots of attention!