Have you ever had one of those moments where you say something and you realized that maybe you went a bit too far? How about one of those moments where you go beyond sticking that proverbial “foot in mouth”? Ever said something that made one of the nicest people you know and who would never say something against someone say something against you? Well, if you’re Kayne West then you are used to doing all of this on quite a regular basis. Unfortunately, for him recently he went beyond the regular level of being unacceptable.
At 32 years old, West took on a nineteen-year-old Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Awards. Her shining moment of winning her first MTV Award and the historical first MTV Award won by any country artist was utterly destroyed. More disgraceful than the missed face-mask penalty in USC-NCSU, West took away the microphone from her and talked about how she didn’t deserve to win. He went on to say how Beyonce and her video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” was “one of the best videos of all time”. It was hard to watch, to see a grown man to put down a young girl like he did on national television. With her speech ruined, she smiled and went on to act with grace well after West was removed. Beyonce, who later on won Best Video of the Year, brought Swift on stage with her to give her speech to make up for West’s despicable act.
The eye of the storm from his tirade has far from ended. He was removed from New York’s Radio City Music Hall after being booed from the large crowd. Fellow artist and nominee, Pink, saw him and was too shamed to look at him. The list went extensively on to Blogger Perez Hilton, rapper/rival 50 Cent, Emil Wilbekin (Essence.com), Ann Powers (Los Angeles Times), Former President Jimmy Carter, and current President Barack Obama amongst others called for West’s head on a stick. Obama even went as far as calling West a “jackass” in an offline interview. Even Donald Trump is calling for West’s removal from the MTV Awards.
Swift and Beyonce were admirable in how they acted. Although the looks on their faces were priceless, they were priceless for the wrong reasons. West took prime opportunity of using live television and ruined a quality moment. The message that he wanted to get across wasn’t so bad but the way he went about it was truly out of line. Yes, Beyonce’s video was very good and could have been one of the best ever, but the timing of what he wanted to say was wrong. With the millions of viewers that were watching, many of whom, were probably seeing her for the first time will now associate her with Kayne West telling her on stage that she didn’t deserve to win an award.
In the end, Swift may have gotten more notoriety from this but West’s reputation is forever damaged. His apologies still don’t seem to be genuine or fulfilling but I can only hope that he learns way more than what he showed. He’ll learn his lesson one day, but he is incredibly lucky that it wasn’t someone else who wasn’t a nineteen year old country singer that he went up against.
