No wonder Kanye was angry about his Today Show interview with Matt Lauer. Unfortunately, he was angry for the wrong reasons. Ye tweeted furiously about the Today Show production team rolling footage of the MTV incident under him as he was speaking yesterday. But that's standardfare for television interviews. It's called providing the viewer with context.
The real crime here was the suffocating paternalism on display from Matt Lauer who was basically scolding and reprimanding Kanye West for his 5-year-old controversial comments about George Bush during the Katrina telethon. It's like "the man" sees Kanye has become vulnerable and is letting him have it after all these years.
It's not the first time this has happened either. After the Swift incident, Ye was subjected to a similarly uncomfortable dose of paternalism when he had to sit down to "explain himself" on Leno's late night talk show. Why do media figures want to be Kanye's daddy so badly?
Watch Kanye's interview with Matt Lauer from the Today Show below
Unfortunately, Kanye allows this to happen because he falls right into his role as a petulant child. He sulks and delivers short answers as he's scolded, rather than turning the tables on his wannabe parents.
Matt Lauer wanted to frame the entire Bush incident as a very "serious" matter, and Kanye aided and abetted him by talking about the incident as if they were discussing something as serious as nuclear proliferation. The "look at Bush's face and feel his pain" moment Lauer was trying to set up was ridiculously overkill, and Kanye should've called him on it and made a brief, lighter-hearted statement addressing Bush's reaction. Instead, the guilt from his actions seemed to run right over him like an 18-wheeler.
It's fine for Kanye to look back and say that his outburst was a moment of frustration and that he recognizes now that he could've channeled it better, but he doesn't need to fall all over himself to make amends for having an opinion. That's not the Kanye we know and love. And while personal growth is always a good thing, a muted Kanye is not.
