In 2006, a shocked world watched as Pluto lost its status of “planet.” Textbooks were rewritten and fourth graders everywhere had to come up with another mnemonic device to memorize the order of the planets.

After the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 13, our world celebrates the finding of yet another scientific breakthrough as Kanye West’s ego officially surpasses the blue whale as the largest living mammal on planet Earth.

For any of you who have somehow managed to avoid hearing about this, West jumped on stage during Taylor Swift’s Best Female Video award acceptance, snatched the microphone from Swift’s hand and exclaimed Beyonce Knowles had “one of the best videos of all time.”

Did anyone honestly find this very surprising? The big surprise to me was the world’s reaction to the incident. After all, the man once said “I’m the No. 1 artist in the world right now… I am the No. 1 human being in music.” I would’ve been more shocked if he hadn’t found some way to draw unnecessary attention to himself that night.

I feel like I’m kicking a dead horse by even addressing this subject, but I think there’s something more to be learned from it. We need to remember that not only is this far from the first time West has shown his ego to the public, but also that he certainly isn’t the first celebrity to attract some negative attention.

As an example, let’s look at 1966, when John Lennon notoriously claimed that The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.”

After that incident, many former fans boycotted the band and even publicly burned Beatles merchandise. Situations like this are destined to escalate when religion is involved, but the fact is that Lennon’s statement was taken completely out of context. Lennon was actually making this comment out of a mix of shock and sadness regarding his belief that Christians of the time were hypocritical. Moments later in the interview he said, “Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

I’m not about to throw all my Kanye West albums in the fire, but what he did was far more disruptive and rude than Lennon’s casual observation. After all, Lennon didn’t go to the Crystal Cathedral during the Hour of Power and grab the minister’s microphone, and West has no misinterpretations to hide behind. Still, it only took Swift two days to accept West’s apology compared to the Vatican’s 42 years.

While the fact that West interrupted Swift’s speech is bad enough, there is another part that has been largely ignored: what he actually said.

It’s obvious that he could have saved such a trivial comment for a later interview, so why didn’t he? Simply put: easy, free advertising. Why wait until later when you can say it now and shock millions of viewers into talking about you for the next two weeks?

In the apology West posted in his blog, he stated that “Beyonce’s video was the best of this decade!”

For those of you who haven’t seen Beyonce’s video for “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It),” it’s three and a half minutes of Beyonce and two other women dancing. Not exactly ground breaking, especially when you consider Beyonce’s confession that the inspiration for her “Single Ladies” and “Ego” videos came from a performance of Gwen Verdon’s “Mexican Breakfast,” choreographed by Bob Fosse.

What Kanye West did was rude, but it was nothing new. It’s just another publicity stunt to throw on the list, somewhere between Ozzy biting the head off a dove and the Gallagher brothers from Oasis breaking up every other show. So whether you love him or hate him, West is an intelligent businessman who knows how to get himself into the public eye. The only real shame here is that he thought it was okay to insult Taylor Swift while doing so.

But we need to remember that the incident didn’t stop with West. The most important part of the night was when Beyonce, after winning Video of the Year, invited Swift on stage with her to share the moment. Beyonce essentially taught us that you can make someone feel better about something even if you weren’t the reason they were upset to begin with. That’s a lesson that everyone can learn from.

– Thomas Hummer is a junior in English from Ames.