Obama calls Kayne West a “jackass”

 Posted by on 16 September 2009  Modern Life, Music
Sep 162009
 

I’m behind the times, I’m sure.  I love pop culture, but I tend to be behind the cutting edge by anything between a day and ten years (I recently discovered “Freaks and Geeks,” for example).  Nonetheless, here’s my post:

President Obama has called Kayne West a “jackass” due to his shenanigans at the MTV Awards show. 

His comment came from an off-the-record portion of an interview with CNBC. The swipe was only made known to the world because ‘Nightline’ co-anchor Terry Moran reported it to his Twitter followers: “Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential,” he wrote.

I’m sure the Republicans are going to make an issue out of this, but personally I think it’s awesome.  Sure, I’m Canadian, but I get to choose if I like a President or not and I like Obama.  I like him even more now since he has shown a couple of important characteristics:

1.  He knows about popular culture.  Yes, presidents need to know about foreign policy and economic models and whatnot, but they also need to know about what people are interested in.  This simple throwaway comment means that he is still in touch with the regular folk.

2.  He’s not an opinionless political machine.  The “jackass” statement proves that he’s still a real person with an understanding of common decency and he’s not afraid of stating it.

When the President of the United States starts calling immature, self-important entertainers jackasses for their idiotic actions, maybe it’s a sign that we are moving back into an era of civilized public behaviour.

Hey.  A guy can dream.

T. Keith Edmunds

  • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

    Yeah, my first thought was “Good for Obama!” too.

    Then I heard it was a leaked off-the-record comment.

    So my second thought was “Duh! Nothing’s off the record.” And then my third thought was “That must be an awful way to live.”

    But aside from all that ethical journalism stuff, why the heck wouldn’t he have said it on the record in the first place? Obama has a reputation as someone who rises above the mealy-mouthed platitudes of political speech. Everyone knows that Kanye was being a jackass — even Kanye, when he came to his senses.

    Not that I think the President needs to pronounce comment about every little pop culture thing, but this one was called for.

  • Colin Corneau

    He also said it good naturedly, too.

    It was posted to TMZ.com (at least where I heard it) so obvious for being leaked and off the record. I like how Obama is speaking out clearly about peoples’ responsibilities, instead of just their rights.
    People yelling about their rights without taking into any acount their corresponding responsibilities in society give rise to the sort of entitlement selfishness that led to outbursts like Kanye’s.