Imagine being a 19-year-old girl from Pennsylvania who has been nationally nominated for your award-winning songs 35 times in the past four years.  Imagine being nominated for the Best Female Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards and actually winning, only to have a belligerent Kanye West storm the stage in the middle of your acceptance speech to announce “Beyonce [Knowles] had one of the best music videos of all time.”  If you cannot imagine how you would handle a situation like this, you should talk to Taylor Swift, because she knows all too well what this feels like.

I am sure that unless you have been living under a rock for the past week, you have heard some part of this scandal.  Regardless of whether or not you are a fan of Taylor Swift, everyone seems to be in agreement about the fact that what West did was inappropriate and out of line, including President Barack Obama.    

Obama was asked off-camera during a CNBC interview what his feelings were about the situation, to which he replied, “I thought that was really inappropriate-it’s like she’s getting an award-why are you butting in?”  He then went on to compliment Swift before adding that West “is a jackass.”  Now I do not know about you, but if the president was talking about me in the first place I would be pretty excited, but if you heard that the president just called you a jackass-how do you come back from that? 

Although the initial reaction to West’s outburst was “poor Taylor,” Knowles remedied the situation very gracefully. When taking the stage to accept her Video of the Year award, Knowles had Swift come back onstage to deliver her Best Female Video award acceptance speech.  This was a selfless act on Knowles’ part that made West look even more ridiculous. 

Altogether, I feel as though the situation was blown way out of proportion and wasn’t nearly as exciting as everyone made it out to be.  Kanye West acted like a jackass-what else is new?  He got his 15 minutes of fame that day, and Swift and Knowles probably gained more of a fan base as a result of all the drama that ensued. So, it’s actually a sort of win-win situation.  The fact that the president was recorded calling West a jackass is just an added bonus.