The Reasonably Prudent Law Student

I don’t watch the VMA awards. I routinely run the risk, year after year, of showing up at school having no idea what happened the night before at the awards and thus having no way of participating in the discussions about it. What can I say? I live life on the wild side, y’all!

But I was downstairs last night making dinner and caught the tail end of the diss (technical term), and then caught Beyonce’s speech at the end, where she brought the class in a big way, while eating dinner. So this year, I actually know stuff. Aren’t you all proud?

For my kindred spirits who missed the awards, check out this clip of Kanye hijacking T-Sweezy’s acceptance speech. Only don’t, because there is no clip. The good ones were pulled and the only ones left on YT are the ones where random yahoos talk about it first and show the footage second because the whole world really cares. So here’s a picture of a puppy.

WANT.

Now, I love Kanye. I love the dude. I entered into a unilateral romantic relationship with him knowing full well that he was an egotistic crack whore. The thing is, I adore Taylor Swift more. She’s my girl, and the Hoomster takes this seriously. T-Swizzle and the Hoomsta are the leaders of the hard-core gangsta crew, actually. Little known fact.

The girl is a little puppy. Seriously. She’s nineteen, she’s a gangly little thing with curly blonde hair, she doesn’t say anything bad about anyone except that middle Jonas Brother, which is totally acceptable, because, dude, they’re the Jonas Brothers and should be kneed in the groin every second of every day, and she writes songs about boys and kittens and sunshine and self-esteem.

Being mean to Taylor Swift is like kicking a puppy. And when Kanye stormed her speech for Best Vid (her first ever Moon Man) and said that Beyonce deserved it, he kicked every puppy in the world. Experts agree on this. And when Beyonce gave Taylor her speech, she gave every single puppy in the world a bubble bath and a shiny new collar.

But let’s get real, here, folks. The whole thing was probably staged.

• Why was Kanye seated so close to the stage? Everyone knows he’s insane, and given to random outbursts. And that he’s an attention whore. Why seat him so close to the stage? You put that crazy in the eight row, center, sitting with his girlfriend between people that are either very large (let’s say, Fat Joe or something, if he’s still relevant) or people in very fussy, elaborate costumes that cause men in white coats to preemptively prowl the vicinity (Lady Gaga and whatever android is masquerading as Madonna these days). Also, between people who will scream themselves silly and tweet for someone to call the police if you so much as step on their toes (Perez Hilton). Yet this clown was seated very close to the stage as if, oh, I don’t know, it was expected for him to take the stage at some point, unexpectedly.
• Taylor performed right afterwards. She went from being upstaged by Kanye to dancing in a subway car (yay, Beatles flashbacks!) in a pretty red dress. The start of the song saw her dressed in a long brown coat and what looked like a cloche hat, everything tucked away, everything dark and somber, her voice low, her shoulders hunched, her eyes downcast. And twenty seconds later, the coat is ripped off, the hair tumbles down, and she’s singing and grinning and jumping around in a bright red dress. She’s the sweet, virginal little princess purity that triumphs after being figuratively bitch-slapped by mean old Kanye who goes around picking on children. I mean, I love underdogs and everything, but this reeks of a Disney movie in the making. A Disney Channel movie, not an actual Disney movie. Come on, people. Standards.
• Kanye has a reputation to uphold as a self-centered clown who brings the truth as he sees it. Kanye West is an uncanny handler of his image. He says what he feels like when he wants to. He doesn’t care who he trash-talks as long as he thinks the allegations are meritorious. (“George W. Bush doesn’t care about black people.”) He’s always talking about how he’s the voice of our generation and how he makes art. AND HE TYPES IN ALL CAPS ON HIS BLOG PEOPLE BECAUSE HE FORGETS THAT IT’S ON AND HE DOESN’T HAVE TIME TO REMEMBER TO CLICK IT OFF BECAUSE HE IS SO IMPORTANT!!!!!!1!!!! And the man is not dumb. Say what you want about him, but he is not stupid. With this little outburst, he reminded everyone in the room, and everyone watching, that he’s very much the eccentric egotist he sees himself as.
• Taylor isn’t MTV’s usual fare. I don’t watch MTV, but even I know that Taylor isn’t their usual bread and butter. The MTV crowd doesn’t generally go crazy for Taylor. And Kanye’s fans certainly don’t go crazy for Taylor. Except me, of course. But with this incident, all of Kanye’s fans know who she is. Everyone watching knows who she is. And people will be talking about it for days. (I’m certainly not helping.) This opened some windows for MTV to play more of the country crooner’s music along with their normal pop-y fare, or whatever it is they’re into these days. And since Taylor’s an adorable little cash cow (check out her numbers – girlfriend’s on fire), it’s good business all around. Crossover successful.
• Kanye’s mic was never cut. Kanye is known to be outspoken. If it was so shocking, unexpected, and egregious of him to steal the mic from a youngster like Taylor during her moment, why wasn’t it just cut? As soon as he realized that no one could hear what he was saying, you know that Kanye would have quit that bitch. (Again, technical term. Use with caution; you could put an eye out with those t’s.)
• Kanye was walking around with a bottle of Hennessey. Mr. Booze will mess you up, boys and girls. Kanye was spotted on the red carpet guzzling the henny and the pics are popping up everywhere. It’s a mitigating factor, isn’t it? It helps us make the leap from ‘outspoken narcissist’ to ‘really’ understanding why this happened. Kanye’s an egotist, sure, but it was the whiskey that really pushed him to jump up and hijack the moment like that. Booze is never an excuse, but it sure contributes to our understanding of what happened here, or so we think.

• Kanye’s blog entry after the event was perfect parts apologetic, schmoopy, sweet, and *HEADDESK.* He put up a post on his blog, “Kanye UniverseCity,” after the event where he apologized to Taylor and called her “VERY VERY TALENTED!!!” and said that he liked the part in her song about “BEING A CHEERLEADER AND SHE’S IN THE BLEACHERS!” (I can’t make this stuff up, folks.) He apologized several times in the entry, he praised her talent and success, and he laid on the exclamation points something thick. In the very first part of the post, he made specific mention of talking to her mother, and how Taylor’s mother said the same thing to him that his mother would have said. That’s the part where we’re supposed to imagine gruff, hardcore (?!) Kanye talking to some sweetly stern Southern mother laying down the truthiness about how douche-y his behavior was, and we’re supposed to imagine Kanye with his hands clasped in front of him, his gaze on the floor, properly chastised by Taylor’s mama. And then we’re supposed to remember that he lost his mother, the most important woman in his life, and he’s been even crazier since her passing. And we’re supposed to loosen our grips on the pitchforks a little.And then, just to remind us that he’s still insane and doesn’t go around kissing babies and playing with puppies in his spare time, boyfriend threw in a random line in the middle about Beyonce still having the best vid. (“BEYONCE’S VIDEO WAS THE BEST OF THIS DECADE!!!!”) Thanks, Kanye. We get it. Ha ha. God, I love him.His original blog post can be found here. It appears he took that one down (maybe because he was drunk when he wrote it) and put up a shorter one, in upper AND lower case, that doesn’t include any reference to B.
• These are the same people that orchestrated “Operation: Bruno’s Balls in Eminem’s Face.” You didn’t forget about that, did you? Sacha Baron Cohen, dressed in full Bruno gear, dropping down from the ceiling with his groin ending up right in the face of known homophobe Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem? Remember how it was set up to look like a wiring/location accident? And how Eminem got all grossed out? And how Eminem’s bodyguards stood up and started batting Sacha around like a cat bats at a ball of yarn? And how Eminem and his entourage stormed out, visibly upset? They all admitted to staging that, even going so far as to question whether people really believed that if the crew were lowering a man from the ceiling and into the audience, they’d really leave anything to chance that would allow him to end up in the wrong place, etc.To reiterate: THESE PEOPLE PUT SACHA BARON COHEN’S BALLS SQUARELY IN EMINEM’S FACE. Is it so outlandish to think that maybe, just maybe, they could have asked Kanye to hijack Taylor’s speech, Taylor to be shocked and sad, and Beyonce to cut her speech short and turn it over to Taylor? It seems like child’s play when put in this context, really.

• And the #1 reason it was probably staged…It was FABULOUS publicity for all involved. The VMAs were kind of a bust, weren’t they? And aren’t they always, aside from maybe one or two notable events during the course of the show? Janet’s performance was nice, from what I hear, and Madonna’s speech was sweet or whatever, but other than that, there was no stand-out moment. And no, I’m sorry, Lady Gaga looking like a tampon with that rope and all that blood doesn’t count. God, she’s weird. But talented. (I’m listening to “Love Game” right now. Wow, I fail. Don’t judge.)But after that happened, the 2009 VMAs will always (?!) be remembered as the ones where Kanye pummeled poor sweet little Taylor with his fists of humiliation. MTV wins, because they got coverage on Twitter (it was a trending topic); they got coverage on the poor man’s news channel, YouTube, with the total views of all clips of the incident reaching insane view counts; they got coverage on Facebook with all the F—K KANYE groups popping up (and you know eight million people reflected the events in their statuses, at least); they are guaranteed tons of blog coverage; and the television and print media channels are all over this. MTV wins. MTV wins big.

Let’s take a look at Taylor, because she wins, too. She’s the sweet, goody-goody, adorable little puppy-eyed country cutie that was unjustly deprived of enjoying her moment after winning her very first Moonman, you guys, but, like, she totally pulled it out and gave an awesome performance and, gosh, she’s just so awesome and we love her we love her WE LOVE HER!!!1! (Sorry, I was too busy to remember clicking off the Caps Lock key.) Plus, like I said earlier, she kicked in the door to greater MTV coverage in the future. She comes out looking great in all of this, especially with her statement about the events of last night, something about how she was really excited because she won, and she was really excited because Kanye was on stage with her, and then she wasn’t so excited anymore, but no worries because she had a really great night, and she’s cool with Kanye and doesn’t want to start a big thing. Girlfriend knew how to work the situation.

Then there’s Beyonce, who, in the words of Michael K, went from being “Sasha Fierce to Saint Fierce.” She has received Moonmen before; it’s no big deal to her anymore. She got up, she gave a quick speech, something about Destiny’s Child, and then called Taylor out. Her goodwill, which might have been a rather tepid 6.5 due to rumors of her crazy diva nature, rocketed up to a solid 12 after that. And in the music industry, you have two things: your talent and your name. You can have all the talent in the world, but without the right marketing team and the right public relations team, no one is going to care and you’ll be the Guitar Person at Potbelly’s for years. Likewise, you can have the best PR and marketing team ever and, without a talented bone in your body, you’d fail miserably and be a laughingstock, e.g., Heidi Montag. Notable exceptions are Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers, but these are not the rule, just freak exceptions because teenage girls are dumber than a stick of butter and will flock to anything with flat-ironed hair and tight jeans. (JoBros, you are not excluded from that description.) Take Chris Brown, who arguably has talent. It’s his random trash talk about Oprah and Wendy Williams, to name a few, his arrogant displays, and his utter pummeling of then-girlfriend Rihanna that get him in trouble. Whether his career ever recovers remains to be seen; frankly, I have serious doubts. Beyonce has talent; this much is clear from the numbers she generates. She has a decent PR outfit working, too, I guess. But last night, she owned it by turning the moment over to Taylor and winning all that good will from fans and non-fans alike. And that translates over, usually into increased downloads, album sales, and quantity and quality of press coverage. Miss B won more than a Moonman last night, that’s for sure.

And you know that if I leave out Kanye, bad things will happen. Bad things, you guys. So let’s turn our attention over to Kanye West, who’s worked hard to make an image for himself as a straight-talker, an artist, an entertainer in all senses of the word, who doesn’t give a crap what you think about him and if he does, you’ll know it – with a side helping of CAPS LOCK. We know he’s an egotist and he values art over anything else. And he’s turned managing his image into an art, too, and I get the impression that he is one of those guys that really subscribes to the idea that the only bad press is no press. So let’s recap the events of last night: MTV won, Beyonce won, Taylor won, and Kanye’s on the front page of the New York Times. He’s mentioned on Perez Hilton about four times in the span of a couple hours (that’s four unique posts, not four mentions of his name). He’s a trending topic on Twitter. He’s the subject of Facebook groups. His speech from last night will be played on every entertainment channel and probably even nightly national news. His blog crashed repeatedly last night from all the fans and non-fans trying to get a look at his entry. Papers across the country had his blog post up on their websites with accompanying stories within minutes of his posting it (that’s how I got a hold of it). He’s the subject of many gossip and non-gossip blogs, and the subject of conversations among industry types and celebrities alike. Pink tweeted that he was a POS, and to quote her. Kelly Pickler told him not to mess with her little sister. Joel Madden called him a straight bully. Kelly Clarkson wrote an open letter to him on her blog. Perez Hilton won’t stop alternately fuming and shrieking. Yeah, I think Kanye won big-time, too.

So, after thinking about this, I’m pretty sure that it was all staged. Not that it matters. Certainly not in a legal context. But it was just something I felt like talking about. Also, my iPod just tried to play 8 Taylor Swift songs in a row. It’s like it knows.

Final verdict: Taylor wins. Beyonce wins. MTV wins. And, because I put this post up, Kanye wins. Not bad for a sixty-second outburst, yeah?

I’ll leave you with some entertainment.

Here’s Kanye interrupting Obama’s healthcare speech, the bastard.

Here’s T-Sweezy illustrating why she’s co-leader of the gangsta crew, along with yours truly.

And here’s my boy Kanye being a gay fish. The link takes you to a non-YT video. Here’s Kanye’s blog post in response to being called a gay fish. And here’s the classic part 3. It’d be nice to find part 2, but his blog is being wonky.