{"id":804,"date":"2009-09-14T09:53:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T09:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/09\/ego-check-kanye-west-out-of-control-at-2009-mtv-video-music-awards.html"},"modified":"2009-09-14T09:53:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-14T09:53:00","slug":"ego-check-kanye-west-out-of-control-at-2009-mtv-video-music-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/ego-check-kanye-west-out-of-control-at-2009-mtv-video-music-awards.html","title":{"rendered":"Ego-Check: Kanye West Out of Control at 2009 MTV Video Music Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Question of the Day: I came across <a href=\"http:\/\/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/09\/14\/mtv-awards-marred-by-performers-comments\/?hp\">this interesting piece<\/a> about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mtv.com\/ontv\/vma\/2009\/\">2009 MTV VMA&#8217;s<\/a> last night: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kanye_West\">Kanye West<\/a> took the mic out of the hands of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Taylor_Swift\">Taylor Swift<\/a> as she was accepting an award, and went on a massive ego-maniacal rant. The audience was shocked and appalled; Kanye got booed for the rest of the night. The MC tried to settle everyone down by making a joke about <a href=\"http:\/\/usopen.org\/\">Serena Williams outburst <\/a>at the US Open.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"kanye_west.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/124\/import\/kanye_west.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 20px 20px;float: right\" height=\"400\" width=\"400\" \/><\/span>But my question is this: aren&#8217;t the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.creativeloafing.com\/dailyloaf\/2009\/09\/14\/recapping-the-2009-mtv-vmas-kanye-taylor-beyonce-pink-gaga-and-more\/\">Video Music Awards<\/a> one big ego-festival? Isn&#8217;t <a href=\"http:\/\/mtv.com\/\">MTV<\/a> one big celebration of over-the-top me-ness? Weren&#8217;t Kanye&#8217;s actions in line with the true unspoken spirit of the night? Or do you not care at all?<\/p>\n<p>A message from a Buddhist, hip-hop loving friend this morning got me thinking: Are those of us who watch the VMA&#8217;s any better than Kanye? Or, rather, is he just the king of our ego-wackness? (credit for accompanying photo unknown.) <\/p>\n<p>Food for thought. <\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question of the Day: I came across this interesting piece about the 2009 MTV VMA&#8217;s last night: Kanye West took the mic out of the hands of Taylor Swift as she was accepting an award, and went on a massive ego-maniacal rant. The audience was shocked and appalled; Kanye got booed for the rest of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ego-Check: Kanye West Out of Control at 2009 MTV Video Music Awards - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/ego-check-kanye-west-out-of-control-at-2009-mtv-video-music-awards.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ego-Check: Kanye West Out of Control at 2009 MTV Video Music Awards - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Question of the Day: I came across this interesting piece about the 2009 MTV VMA&#8217;s last night: Kanye West took the mic out of the hands of Taylor Swift as she was accepting an award, and went on a massive ego-maniacal rant. The audience was shocked and appalled; Kanye got booed for the rest of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/ego-check-kanye-west-out-of-control-at-2009-mtv-video-music-awards.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-09-14T09:53:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/files\/import\/kanye_west.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ethan Nichtern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Ego-Check: Kanye West Out of Control at 2009 MTV Video Music Awards - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/ego-check-kanye-west-out-of-control-at-2009-mtv-video-music-awards.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Ego-Check: Kanye West Out of Control at 2009 MTV Video Music Awards - One City","og_description":"Question of the Day: I came across this interesting piece about the 2009 MTV VMA&#8217;s last night: Kanye West took the mic out of the hands of Taylor Swift as she was accepting an award, and went on a massive ego-maniacal rant. 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His writing has been featured in numerous print and online publications. He is the founding director of the Interdependence Project and the host of the I.D. Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popular weekly podcast (available on iTunes). He is currently on the part-time faculty of Eugene Lang College at New School University in NYC, where he teaches Buddhism. Ethan lectures regularly at universities and venues around the country on Buddhism, meditation, contemporary culture, and activism.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/enichtern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}