The public can be surprisingly forgiving and forgetful when it comes to celebrity scandals, at least as long as they keep on coming one after the next, but it s going to be quite a while until anyone forgets the Kanye West stage storm-on that rained on Taylor Swift s parade at MTV s Video Music Awards. Kanye risked committing career suicide and made himself the target of endless ridicule and denigration as the celebrity and non-celebrity masses denounced his unexpected, immature outburst, and continue to do so. The now notorious VMAs incident has evoked angry tweets, outraged blog posts, parody websites and on-air/off-air criticism. Unsurprisingly, some have called for a Kanye West ban at the next Video Music Awards.

And this isn t the first of Kanye s unexplained and unbelievable stunts. Kanye also famously stormed onto stage to express his displeasure after his Touch the Sky video lost to Justice and Simian s We Are Your Friends video at the 2006 MTV Europe Music Awards, claiming amidst a plethora of expletives that the show lost credibility without his win. In a pre-performance to the 2007 Video Music Awards, Kanye thought that his song Stronge r would have been better to open the show instead of Britney Spears, so he rapped about how the VMA s choice was due to racism against him. And speaking of racism, people still remember, or if they forgot they are now reminded of the infamous Hurricane Katrina incident in which Kanye went off-script in a tirade about George W. Bush not caring about black people.

Few would deny that Kanye was way out of line, but when looking at the situation as objectively as possible, you wonder whether there s at least a shred of cred to what Kanye s saying. True, there s a history of racism in America, and some might question the validity of Video Music Awards wins. Indeed, spectators have often claimed that more deserving performers were robbed, and in the end the decision of best video is really a matter of personal opinion. But being nominated for a VMA in the first place shows that a performer deserves some recognition, and the performers themselves have nothing to do with the results. Taylor really had nothing to do with the decision, and Kanye had no right to take out his issues on her. It s unfortunate that Kanye only makes himself look like a fool and offends others by carrying out his supposedly righteous agenda. Even if Kanye s opinion really had any merit, he expressed it in a most inappropriate way and he s going to have to face the music for a long time to come.

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