Kanye for President

I will not lie. When I saw the e-mail from Kerri Harrop about Kanye West's off-prompter tirade, I half expected it to be a throwaway moment (with an invitation to a DJ dance party at the bottom). I now feel that it represents one of the most significant moments of commentary in years, an intrusion of honesty of Howard Beale-ian proportions. Kanye's process, from stammering, uncertain, inarticulate, passionate attempt to express the fullness of his heart and mind (while his heart was undoubtedly POUNDING in his ears and throat; *you* try going off script live on network TV) to perfectly concise, what-do-i-really-need-to-say-here line of the decade, is and was awe-inspiring. Though, as my comrade Josh Feit notes, you can watch Kanye collect himself on camera, the really exciting thing to imagine is what was going on in his head for the hour before he took his mark next to Mike Myers--in the limo, in the make-up chair, in the green room, surrounded by his entourage and a retinue of producers, PAs, directors, lighting people, and go-betweens. You have to wonder at what point he decided to get real and say what any reasonable man might say when confronted with the opportunity to insert a dose of reality into the paltry coverage of this horror. You have to wonder if he could even hear his handlers ask him if everything was all right, if he even considered reading the script, or whether his blood was so hot in his veins that he just decided right then and there to say fuck this and fuck you, I must communicate what I believe. Give that man an Emmy. Give him the Nobel Peace Prize, bitch!

The most amazing thing about the aftermath of Katrina, I think, is the degree to which it has proven that all of our systems for dealing with real calamity are just abstractions which, when tested, fail to become real. It has proven that the Republican small government industry is, and has always been, a venal lie, no better than casino gambling. It has proven that television news (in the absence of the instantaneous sentimental bathos that was 9/11 coverage) is too paltry to contain the reality it pretends to capture; even the anchors are starting to lose it. And now, here, it has proven that sometimes, the fake-ass platitudes that celebrities are always called upon to deliver in times of collective anguish are trascendable--that sometimes famous musicians are not completely full of shit.

So, yeah: