Kantroversy: Getting Off on the Loving to Hate

Current Events update: Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift's moonman acceptance speech. And it caused the world to explode in righteous indignation.

Are we not punishing Kanye for providing exactly the kind of theatrics we’ve come to expect from him, the kind of famously egotistical outbursts that have turned him into a divisive but iconic figure? Sure, the public's loud, unceasing vitriol is amusing, only because people seem so energized by their own hate and capital-S Shock! at what happened. "How dare he!" we like to proclaim as if we're coming to Taylor Swift's defense within her earshot, but villifying the man isn't any kind of brave act or political statement. Calling him a "douche" is about as meaningless and ineffectual as, well, calling someone who can't hear you a "douche."

Kanye was being exactly the kind of outlandish, self-involved artist we, to some degree, WANT him to be. His reputation for such behavior provides us with a set of expectations, a certain sense of character background and foreshadowing in the great Joyce-ian narrative that is the ensemble piece of pop culture. He provides that dramatic conflict that not only attracts and titillates viewers, but it also laces his own music with hidden layers; by establishing a public persona, he can peel it away within his lyrics.

I hope that if he takes this "time to think" that he's proposed, he gets the chance to watch the frustrating documentary "Shut Up and Sing" about the Dixie Chicks' fallout after their anti-Bush sentiment. Oh, Kanye, interrupt European dance-pop gurus Justice if you must, but never create a victim out of a conservative-values figurehead; you'll find yourself ceremoniously turned into a joyless symbol of "the wrong." Kanye's never hesitated to bait the public before with egotism or grand overstatements, but beware of baiting the piranha-like "moral defenders". They're unforgiving, despite their credos.

I think Kanye dramatically underestimated how much the public views Taylor Swift (as a 19 year-old white, "pure" country artist) as an innocent child rather than the uberfamous musical colleague Kanye probably sees her as, or at least saw her as in the environment of the Video Music Awards. This will never (and shouldn't) affect his album sales, but my worry is that the demonization of Kanye--"he interrupted a little girl!!!"--doesn't become a long shadow hanging over his career, a darkness the public chooses to hang over his head, requesting act upon act of contrition. He always has been an envelope-pushing entertainer and, sheesh, are we not entertained?