TMZ has posted the audio of President Obama referring to Kanye West as a "jackass" yesterday. It's an interesting listen for a number of reasons. One, Obama is responding to a reporter asking him whether his girls were as "ticked off" as the reporter's were about Taylor Swift's treatment at the VMA's. "I thought that was really inappropriate," says Obama. "Does that count as the first question?" the reporter asks, suggesting they were already on the record? Obama certainly doesn't explicitly ask to be taken off the record even after he's made the remark, though he does allude to not wanting the remark to be blown out of proportion. So much for that. Here's the rest of the exchange: (more...)

After reading Steve Krakauer's account of Kanye West's outburst at last night's MTV Video Music Awards, along with some priceless celebrity reactions, I was on Twitter when this tweet caught my eye. Hip-hop writer and "Media Assassin" Harry Allen, re-tweeting another tweep named Lemekh, had this to say:

No, White People: Tell Us What You Really Think Of Kanye West. http://twurl.nl/c5em6g about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck

The link is to a Twitter search of the words "Kanye" and "N***er." By the time I saw this, the search was dominated by re-tweets of people condemning the use of the word, so I paged all the way back to the first instance, and worked my way forward. There were lots of vile tweets from obvious racists, the most rewteeted one being this particularly disgusting one, but also from white people who claimed not to be racist, who seem to feel they've been granted permission by Chris Rock, or something, to use that word to describe "one of the bad ones." Rock has since clarified the rules on this, which are not all that different from my own. There were also lots of tweets from black people, mainly to express the feeling that West was making all black people look bad. While it hasn't hit the top of today's trending topics, the search has been widely re-tweeted. There's absolutely nothing wrong with calling out racists. It should probably be done more often. I'm sure, however, that any reasonable person would agree that calling this trend what "White people really think of Kanye" is overly broad, to say the least. While any vile, hateful, and even violent tweets are wholly unacceptable, ascribing them to all white people is obviously unfair. I emailed Harry for a comment on this article, and I'm awaiting his response. What I also found interesting was the fact that Lemekh, the man who originated Allen's tweet, and who cataloged many examples on his twitter feed, seems to have no problem using anti-gay slurs. The takeaway here is that, when it comes to bigotry, we always have a little farther to go than we think we do. Update: In response to my tweeted query, "Harry, you're a writer, are we that type?" Harry Allen responds:

@djkoolchris @TommyXtopher D.B.T.H.about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

That's "Don't believe the hype." So, either Harry was answering that question the way he responds to every Public Enemy fan who asks that, or he read my story and I made my point. Update 2: Harry Allen blogs at length on this issue.

video President Obama just can't seem to catch a break when it comes to holding the nation's attention with details of his health care plan. Perhaps the President should embrace a 'if you can't beat'em, join'em' mentality and stage his own outburst. It may be a good last resort before all is lost. Consider this. (more...)

VIDEO This week was full of shout-outs, mostly of the incongruous, impolite variety. First Joe Wilson at the Obama's joint-session health care talk. Then Kanye West at last night's Video Music Awards. And somewhere in the middle, Serena Williams did a little shouting-out of her own. (more...)

video It makes sense that everyone is talking about last night's MTV Video Music Awards for reasons other than the actual videos. This is MTV in 2009, and videos are low on the priority list. Instead, people are talking about the performances - Janet Jackson tribute to her brother, Lady Gaga's bloody fantasy sequence. But mainly, it's how Kanye West was even more of an ass than usual. (more...)