Expressing an Opinion on Something I Could Care Less About

I didn't watch one second of the MTV VMAs on Sunday night. For those of you who may have followed my lead, young country singer Taylor Swift won an award for something or other. Before she could completely relish the moment, rapper type fella Kanye West hopped up on stage, took the mic from her, and informed everyone that, no offense to Ms. Swift, but Beyonce should have won. Later in the evening, when Beyonce was on stage, she invited Taylor back to the stage to have her moment and everyone was happy again.

Now, I'm pleased that everyone is still mannered enough to see that this was a very rude thing to do. Living in a country where people will interrupt the President made me wonder if we'd gotten rude as a group. By that, I'm not trying to imply any political interests; I'm just saying it's rude to interrupt the President during a speech. That's just a duh no matter who the President is and what you think of him.

Beyond the basic rudeness of the situation, what changed? What was shocking about this? Everyone performed according to their known character: Kanye is an idiot, Taylor is a sweet girl, and Beyonce is a lady. According to my pal Andy, reporting in after he'd met her, she's an angel. Not having met her myself, I'll go with lady and mean that in the politest way possible. There was nothing new here. The only 'shocking' part of it is that it actually happened as it sounds like the sort of thing guys would talk big about but never do. 'Hey man, if Beyonce don't win this award, I'm gonna go up on stage and tell everyone she should have won.' Then all your buddies giggle and egg you on. 'Do it man, do it!'

I read someone that postulated he was drunk. I could believe that. That would make a lot of sense. That would certainly add to my 'his buddies egged him on' theory.

Long term, this is not going to affect any one of these people's careers. Short term people will growl at Kanye but it's not going to affect his long term sales or anything. It's not like MTV can fine him or anything. Now, what would have ended his career and have been truly shocking would have been Taylor Swift going all Shaolin on his butt and reclaiming her microphone. Then his career would have been dead. You can't be a tough guy after a little blonde girl beats you up on live TV.

There is a big winner in all this: MTV. I wouldn't be shocked if Kanye's buddies egged him on and one of them was a MTV employee, helping get him drunk. Why? Everyone's talking about this event. It makes it more likely that people will watch their next awards show to see what crazy stuff will happen. The repeats of the programme will get a bigger rating as people go to check it out. The Internet will gravitate to the clip.

MTV wins.

This is stupid. It's an awards programme, which are dumb anyway, and it's on MTV, which is dumb, for music videos which I'm not sure MTV even plays anymore.

Rude? Yes. The worst thing ever? No. I was doing a fine job of ignoring Kanye before this and, now that I've gotten my two cents in, I think I'll go back to ignoring him.