Cathy Maestri
InstantPride.com

Oh, Kanye. We know you meant well. And judging by the pictures of the bottle in your hand in the red-carpet pictures, we suspect you may have had a bit too much to drink. But that’s still no excuse for taking the microphone from Taylor Swift to say Beyoncé should have won Best Female Video on Sunday night at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Shame on you, Kanye West. That was rude, thoughtless, stupid and mean — and we like to think far better of you.

Instead of saving a damsel in distress, you created one. And left a mess for a mortified Beyoncé to try and make right later in the show.

Which she did, when she won Video of the Year (making that tirade even more pointless, eh?) and had Swift come out to make her thank-yous. Now that was classy.

Besides, if Beyoncé needs to be defended, we’re thinking that duty belongs to her husband, Jay-Z. He’s known for that sort of thing — he quickly stepped up for Rihanna after Chris Brown beat her.

Then there’s the way you stole the show from Janet Jackson’s powerhouse tribute to her brother Michael. And in a typical year, Pink’s impressive acrobatics would have gotten some buzz. (Or Lady GaGa’s oddly bloody finale.) But no, all everyone is talking about is how rude Kanye was.

We don’t think that was what you intended. (Honestly, these outbursts at awards shows never go well for you.) Taylor Swift won — dude, don’t you ever underestimate the power of teenage girls.

We’ll give you points for apologizing on your website before the show was even over. We know you get overenthusiastic and are perhaps a little too passionate at times — OK, most of the time. And we appreciate your honesty. But this calls for a deeper apology, some community service (how about a benefit for Taylor’s favorite charity?) and maybe some rehab.

Because we don’t want this to go down as the night Kanye jumped the shark.

Filed under Entertainment, News A1, Video Library

Monday, September 14, 2009

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