Rapper Jay-Z defended fellow entertainer Kanye West on BBC Radio for interrupting country singer Taylor Swift at MTV’s Video Music Awards last week. He says everyone’s blowing the incident out of proportion.
“Of course it was rude, because it was her moment, but that’s the way he really felt,” Jay-Z said. “I think it was rude, but the way they’re treating him… He’s on the cover of every paper. He didn’t kill anybody. No one got harmed.”
Indeed, the call for South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson’s reprimand did not appear as vitriolic, even though it was a far more serious transgression with potentially significant consequences to the security of the President and the cohesiveness of this Country. This Kanye West brouhaha is merely an entertainment sideshow, and for some, an invitation to discuss race in America.
He’s right. If Kanye were a white guy and Taylor a black girl, the same people calling him a racist would say it was just a harmless antic.