I would like to coin a new term, “Getting You Tubed.” I don’t know if someone has already coined a similar term, but I will take credit. When that means is that you do something bad that would have been buried in your regional news 3 to 4 years ago, but now because of You Tube and other web 2.0 technologies, the story goes huge.
The most current example is Congressman Pete Stark from California. The conversation went like this: Senior Citizen to Congressman Stark: “Don’t pee on my leg and then tell me it’s raining.”
Congressman Stark’s Response: “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg – I wouldn’t waste the urine”.
Before YouTube, this comment maybe would have made the pages of a paper in California, but now it is a national story I heard about on a NPR’s Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me quiz show, all because of YouTube. I think this is an example that shows that all public figures need to be on notice, that if you say something unprofessional or beneath your level, it will get noticed and it can travel across the globe.
I received this e-mail from a former colleague last year and I found it quite amusing.
A first grade girl handed in the drawing below for a homework assignment.
After it was graded and the child brought it home, she returned to school the next day with the following note:
Dear Ms. Davis,
I want to be very clear on my child’s illustration. It is NOT of me on a dance pole on a stage in a strip joint. I work at Home Depot and had commented to my daughter how much money we made in the recent snowstorm. This photo is of me selling a shovel.
Mrs. Harrington
***I have no idea if this is real, but it is funny.***
As I predicted in my previous post about the Kanye West & Taylor Swift incident, Kanye West, according to People.com, has apologized. To recap, Kanye was, I guess, dissapointed that Taylor’s video won best female video at the VMAs instead of Beyonce’s. He stole the microphone from Swift to make his opinion public. As I later learned, he was most likely drunk when he did this and further I don’t even understand what his point was about Beyonce’s video being one of the best ever.
Well, People.com is reporting that Kanye wasted no time in apologizing.
I still do not think this is enough, and really there is nothing that can excuse what he did. Further, if he were truly sincere, he could have not used all caps, which just makes me cringe. I will be interested to see what Taylor does and I would be so pleased if she wrote a song about this. When she got dumped by the Jonas brother she wrote a song and got in on her album, now hopefully we can see the same thing here. Maybe that will help put a stop to the trend of celebrities acting and thinking they can just apologize it away.
I tried to go to Kanye’s site to get the first hand source, but it is currently down. I don’t know if it has been slammed or maybe he has rescinded his apology.
As I finished my first blog post about the incident on the Video Music Awards tonight, I found out that tonight there were a few shining stars in the show.
First, to MTV, thank you for kicking Kanye West out of the show.
Now, I would like to say the MTV that, while your VMA show is supposed to be a raucous party, maybe alcohol needs to be banned in the future. Apparently when Kanye went on his tirade at the 2006 MTV Europe awards he had been drinking:
I may add these incidents to my pre-prom don’t drink speech next year.
Second, to Beyonce Knowles. She looked out raged when Kanye made his outburst during the show which I think was a general emotion and showed that she was in not one bitter than Taylor Swift won. This is probably in part because, as she says, she knows what it is like to be a young kid being nominated for an award because she was only 17 when she was nominated with Destiny’s Child.
Most importantly, after winning video of the year, she called Taylor Swift up on stage to finish her speech.
In the interest of fairness I went and watched the videos that were in question on the VMA awards tonight. I wanted to do this to see if Kanye West had a point, even though he was out of line as I mentioned earlier. I watched Beyonce Knowle’s video, and I fail to see how it is “one of the best videos of all time.” At a minimum, Waterfall (Destiny’s Child) was better than this and I could probably name four videos from country that are better, let’s see:
See It in Color
Concrete Angel
Waitin’ on a Woman
You’re Gonna Miss This
It is a catchy song, but “You Belong with Me” is, in my opinion, better video, it actually tells a story and is clever and creative. Beyonce’s video is different and kind of cool, but to me it is just dancing to music and doesn’t add anything to the song like Taylor Swift’s does. And, even if you did think it was better, it is not “one of the best videos of all time.”
On a side not, I think “Put a Ring on It” is a great song for weddings when the bride throws the bouquet and I often wonder if writes think about that when they write songs. I bet they do.
In case anyone hasn’t seen the videos in questions from the VMA awards tonight, here are links to both.
Tonight I was watching the Bear’s game and went to make a tweet about the game and I occasionally like to scan through the trending topics. Well on Twitter (and on Facebook) there were a lot of posts about Kanye West. So, I followed the link on Twitter to search for the story and it said that Kanye dissed Taylor Swift. I was outraged because, as anyone who knows me knows, I adore Taylor Swift. (Yes I’m a 29 year old man and I’m okay with that.)
So, I read a story about it on Rolling Stone and I couldn’t believe it.
Before I passed judgment, I wanted to see it for myself. So, after several Google and YouTube searches involving people’s personal responses, I finally found the clip, posted below.
So, I watched the clip and it was surreal that anyone, I don’t care how famous you are, would go on stage and do that. It was almost as bad and as when Faith Hill had a tantrum when she lost to Carrie Underwood at the CMAs in 2006.
That maybe wasn’t quite as bad because she was at least off stage, but she had to know the camera was on.
In any event, I am starting to see a disturbing trend of public figures acting out in ways that are clearly inappropriate. Kanye couldn’t have thought that what he did was appropriate. Especially, and maybe this shouldn’t matter, considering that this is a 19 year old girl who has done nothing but be a shining role model in the media. Kanye apparently proceeded to flip the bird to the crowd while Taylor was crying backstage.
Then we have Chris Brown who decided that he could beat his girlfriend Rihana to within an inch of her life.
What these people all have in common is that the apologized about what they did after the fact and that was supposed to make it all better. And it seems like we in a America are all to willing to forgive. Now, this may seem contradictory on my part because I have posted that I think Michael Vick should be allowed to play football again, but that is different. The biggest difference is that Vick not only apologized, but he also spent 18 months in custody. Additionally, I don’t have to forgive Vick for him to keep playing football, no one does.
Here is a picture of Kanye leaving the show. Look at his right hand, maybe we will see what the really cause of the outburst was:
I would almost guarantee that tomorrow Kanye West will apologize to Taylor Swift. I would encourage her not to accept it. It can not be sincere. How can a person walk all the way on to the stage, take the microphone from someone, make that statement, and then walk away and flip off the crowd and actually be sorry. President Obama accepted Congressman Wilson’s, I know that, but that is the problem. We live in a society now where public people can do or say what they want and then apologize and it’s okay.
I am not saying we should never forgive people and I am not saying that we shouldn’t move on when conflict occurs, but we also need to hold people accountable when they act irresponsibly when they should know better. The governor of a state should be allowed to just disappear for a week and then just be embraced back into the fold by his state or by his wife.
So, I say, do not just forgive Mr. West. I say boycott his music and his antics until he can behave like an adult. I was thinking about Jay Leno’s return to TV tomorrow, but I will not watch if Kanye is still going to perform. I have occasionally thought of listening to his music because my good friend Jenny likes his music, but that will never happen now. This act stupid and apologize culture needs to end!
Well, thanks to the trending topics feature of Twitter I found out pretty quickly (actually I was pretty late in Twitter terms) that Ellen DeGeneres will be the new host of American Idol. (You see my wife said to my about hour before I found out that, “Ellen is going to be on Idol,” and I thought she meant my aunt Ellen, so later when I saw the trending topic, she laughed at me.) Here were the trending topics tonight:
So, my initial reaction was a little concerned because I didn’t want this to turn into a scenario similar to when Dennis Miller went to the Monday Night Football booth throwing out witty comments like this:
Now, I’m not saying Dennis Miller wasn’t funny, it just wasn’t the right place for him. I am worried that the same fate might be fall Ellen here. I really think Ellen is quite talented. I didn’t think I would like her show, but I actually find that she is very quirky and funny and runs a good show. I of course only watched it because Taylor Swift was on, but the show was good none the less. So, I still wasn’t sure what Ellen was going to bring to the table because I don’t want to hear Simon Cowell keep saying, “This is a singing competition not a…” insert random weird British saying.
Well, after much reading and think, I may have found the answers in an article on CNN.com:
This made me realize that Ellen’s role will be to help the contestants out with their stage presence and how to conduct themselves as a star. This was the one area Paula Abdul had over the other judges because she had been a performer before. Ellen hopefully will be able help them with their ability to be a star. That is a quality the judges talk about throughout the season about “Being it.” Ellen is “It” and hopefully she can teach what that means to the contestants.
I support this decision by Idol. The chemistry will be odd, because Ellen is different than the rest of the panel. I think Paula will try to pick on Kara Dioguardi, and Randy Jackson and Ellen will kind of hang out together in the cool area. I am still not convinced by Kara, but maybe she will feel more confident since she is not the outsider coming in. I will admit I am little surprised they went back to the 4 judge system when they had an easy out. The must really like the idea, and Idol is rarely wrong.
. So, I followed the link on Twitter to search for the story and it said that Kanye dissed 
. I was outraged because, as anyone who knows me knows, I adore Taylor Swift. (Yes I’m a 29 year old man and I’m okay with that.)
