The Kanye West/Taylor Swift/Beyonce kerfuffle from Sunday night’s Video Music Awards is theratening to take over the entire work week, with the outspoken MC yesterday calling the blonde country singer to apologize after she appeared on the morning yakfest The View and people still looking for the damn thing on YouTube. (All this post-publicity, it should be said, isn’t really helping dampen my cynicism about the whole thing.) Who better to bring up the rear on a big old manufactured media event than 50 “Curtis Jackson” Cent, who in flusher times two years ago tried to hold his own against Kanye sales-wise and failed—and who yesterday appeared on Canadian music channel MuchMusic to defend Swift’s honor?





OK, so here is my question. I know the Best Female Video prize was Taylor’s first Video Music Award, but come on, the girl has won American Music Awards and CMA Awards and ACM Awards and Teen Choice Awards. She sells records. She’s been in the business for years now. And the more I hear people talk about her the more the talk sounds kind of… infantilizing? Like, let’s say this particular run-in had happened to Miley Cyrus, who’s younger than Swift by about three years. Would the hue and cry from this country’s self-styled moral police be as loud, or as “how can you do that to a young girl“? Would punches be threatened in her honor? I don’t think I really need to answer this question!


50 Cent Offers Kanye A Knuckle Sandwich [YouTube]