Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Obama Rips Kanye West - Off The Record

President Obama ripped Kanye West for his disruption of Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the MTV Video Awards referring to the hip hop artist as a "jackass" in an interview with CNBC.

However, the comment was made off the record and ABC (Terry Moran broke the story on Twitter) is falling all over itself to apologize.

Yet I wonder why President Obama didn't want his comment on the record? Did he simply not want salty language aired out in public? Or is he afraid of offending Jay-Z, Diddy (or whatever he's calling himself this week) and the hip hop constituency? I mean this could have been a Sistah Souljah moment for Obama at a time when a critical mass of the electorate are deeply skeptical about his health care policies. As such methinks it's a case of the latter rather than the former.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention West's appearance on the debut of The Jay Leno Show last night. West along with Jay-Z and Rihanna had been booked on the inaugural show to sing. However, West wanted to speak with Leno about the incident. West "apologized" in a rambling, incoherent manner. I get the impression West isn't really sorry for what he did. He feels badly that he got caught. I'm sure this won't be the last time he pulls a stunt like that. It's just in his nature.

1 comment:

Anderson said...

I would not be surprised at all if this whole "off the record" comment thing was partially (by Obama) if not entirely (ABC in on it) by Obama. The man's politics are based around throwing other people under the bus to make himself look better. I doubt even Clinton played such a nasty blame game.

Having said that, Obama was entirely correct.