Kanye West Cancels His Today Show Performance

I'm not a Kanye West fan. His music is too electronic. His poor me attitude is too centered around being the victim. He doesn't know how to take his turn. He dishes out insults and disrespect, and if anyone tries to call him on it, he storms out of the room like an angry toddler.

In a recent taped interview with The Today Show, Kanye West became upset when host Matt Lauer played (again) the clip of West interrupting Taylor Swift at the 2009 AMA awards, and Lauer also brought up a previous interview where West criticized President George W. Bush after Hurricane Katrina saying that Bush," didn't care about black people," And while I was never the biggest fan of George W. Bush either, making that big of a sweeping generalization was out of line. Apparently, Lauer tried to get West to watch a clip of President Bush addressing West's comments and becoming upset.

It was here that West declared he was being "set up," and withdrew his performance from the upcoming Black Friday show. Lauer apparently tried to explain that showing clips from related events was standard.

That may be true, but it doesn't make it right. It's hard to take Kanye West seriously when looking at his track record of opening his mouth and inserting his foot, but how many times should the media be allowed to replay ones mistakes before they are forced to move on?

Why was Kanye West invited to the Today Show in the first place? Certainly the producers saw some positive redeeming factor and were led to extend the invitation. Was it wrong for him to interrupt Swift at the 2009 AMAs. Of course, but he apologized to Swift at the time. She's written her song about it and moved on. If George W. Bush is that upset over West's Katrina comments he too can deal with West directly or not. He doesn't need Matt Lauer to force Kanye West into a "time out chair" under false pretenses so he can "think about what he did."

At least on Twitter, West has taken a sort of high road even as he has backed out of actually performing, saying that he accepts Lauer's and the Today Show's apology in advance. Pulling a performance on such a high profile day does not come without sacrifice, however. Kanye has a new album coming out, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," is being released Nov. 22, and could use the publicity, but somehow I think the album will get it anyway.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101113/ap_on_en_tv/us_tv_today_vs_west_13