Maybe Karl Marx had it backward: History starts out as farce, then repeats itself as tragedy (and gets remixed ad infinitum online).
Take the latest moronic meme to go viral online, centered on Kanye West’s inane interruption of the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday night. The incident, in which the part-time rapper bum-rushed the stage and stole the mic during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech, earned West widespread derision, boatloads of free publicity and a “Kanye Interrupts” Twibbon that lets you overlay the immortal words “Ima let u finish” over your Twitter avatar. (Lucky you.)
It also spawned an avalanche of parody videos and a minor Twitter news skirmish over President Barack Obama’s supposedly off-the-record characterization of West as a “jackass.” In the parodies, West interrupts Obama (embedded above), Harry Potter‘s Hagrid and other notable figures, both real and imagined.
Internet celebrity Chris Crocker — whose teary-eyed video in defense of Britney Spears has been viewed more than 27 million times — also got into the act, but bombed with a pair of “Leave Kanye Alone!” clips. The videos, which showed up on Crocker’s YouTube page but were too lame to embed here, have since been taken down by Crocker, who apparently thought better of his attempt at recapturing the magic that catapulted him to online fame.
West’s distraction also birthed crappy journalism. CNBC asked Obama what he thought about the whole thing, and ABC News reporter Terry Moran tried to beat CNBC to the headlines by tweeting the president’s response.
“Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won,” Moran tweeted. “Now THAT’S presidential.”
ABC News quickly deleted the tweet and issued a Web 2.0 apology.
Now TMZ.com has posted an audio clip of Obama’s remarks, proving once again that it’s impossible to erase history — tragedy, farce or a sad combination of the two — from the internet.
