Kanye West
Stephen Dalton, The National, September 2009
WHEN PRESIDENT OBAMA branded rapper Kanye West a "jackass" for his one-man stage invasion at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York last Sunday, the throwaway insult must have cut deep. Not only has West been a highly vocal champion of Obama over the past two years, even performing at the incoming leader's Youth Inaugural Ball in January. But for a prickly egomaniac sensitive to even the slightest criticism, it is hard to imagine anything more humiliating than a public slap from the commander in chief.
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