Kanye's Apology, Obama's "Jackass"

By Marcus Gilmer in Miscellaneous on Sep 15, 2009 2:00PM

Last night, Kanye was scheduled to appear alongside Jay-Z and Rihanna on the premiere of Jay Leno's new show, but the host took the opportunity to bring Kanye out and talk to him about Sunday night's Taylor Swift Thunder Theft. Kanye's apology seemed as genuine as you can expect from him. And for the conspiracy theorists who still think it was staged, well...we can't blame you. We're suckers for conspiracy theories. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, but, as we pointed out yesterday, to pull off such a stunt would require a level of self-awareness on Kanye's part. So let's just blame Leno for slipping something into Kanye's drink on Sunday night.

Meanwhile, perhaps to the funniest thing to come out of this is ABC's Terry Moran failing to know the difference between ON and OFF the record. While observing an interview with President Obama last night, Moran tweeted, "Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a "jackass" for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT'S presidential." It was immediately removed but nothing ever truly disappears from the interwebz (via The Swamp).

An ABC News spokesperson explained what happened to Politico:

In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview. This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again.

Insert "You Lie!" joke here.