Kanye West, Massive Tool

Is there a bigger asshole on the planet than Kanye West? Not likely.

MTV wants Sunday’s conflict between Kanye West and Taylor Swift to be viewed in only two places: on its TV channel and on its Web site.

At the network’s Video Music Awards, Mr. West, who has a history of televised outbursts, “once again took umbrage when the awards process didn’t go the way he wanted it to,” as the Associated Press put it. When Ms. Swift accepted the award for Best Female Video, Mr. Kanye jumped on stage and told the audience, “Taylor, I’m really happy for you, and I’m gonna let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time.” Ms. Swift looked stunned; the crowd began to boo. “The television broadcast cut away to a wide shot of the stage, and then to a taped segment featuring the comedian Tracy Morgan,” Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times says.

But what about the viewers who didn’t catch the moment live on MTV? Many went to YouTube, the world’s largest video sharing Web site, where they tried to find copies of the video clip. But MTV’s parent company Viacom — which is embroiled in a long-running $1 billion lawsuit with YouTube — engaged in a game of media whack-a-mole, flagging illicit copies of the videos almost as soon as they appeared.

Underexposed President to Appear in Back-to-School Special

Thank goodness someone finally got around to giving Barack Obama some face time on television. You so rarely get a glimpse of the guy, you get the feeling he's camera shy or something.

President Barack Obama will appear in a back-to-school television special with singer Kelly Clarkson and basketball star LeBron James next month.

Obama is appearing in a 30-minute documentary that will air at 8 p.m. Sept. 8 on BET, MTV, VH1, CMT, Comedy Central, Spike TV and Nickelodeon, all of them Viacom networks. Obama also plans to deliver a back-to-school speech to the nation's students on the same day.

Viacom owns CBS, so consider this a free commercial plug from one of Obama's networks. How kind of them.

I saw Karl Rove on televison last night giving advice to Obama on how to curtail his precipitous slide in the polls. One of them was to get out of people's faces on a daily basis. Never has a politician been more overexposed than this guy and people are sick of him. I doubt Obama's in the business of taking Rove's advice, but he might want to consider giving us a break.

Yeah, I know, wishful thinking.