In which I try to find meaning in an asinine moment on an awards show hosted by a network that hasn't been relevant in 15 years.

Kanye West is a douchebag. Let's just get that out of the way from moment one. The man is an opportunistic showboat who, despite the sheer number of Twitters denouncing him last night as said douchebag, has probably done wonders for his own and Taylor Swift's respective careers through a heinous act of douchebaggery that stood out in a festival devoted to opportunism and showboating. What he did and said, however, in a country whose national mindset moved beyond Perez Hilton and E!, would start a national conversation that is finally starting to peek its head out of the dormancy its laid in since about 1970, with a few rare and all-too extreme exceptions. Was Kanye West's disregard for decorum and human decency also compounded by being the kind of latent racism that so few want to talk about?

I posed this question last night, vaguely, among friends, and was hit with resounding "yes's" and their polar opposite, the suggestion that it was one man's opinion, to the point where I was asked if preferring hot dogs to tacos was also an act of racism. Let me clear one thing up- whatever the hidden unspoken meaning was to the stunt, no one can be blamed for seeing it as more than one man's opinion. Every artist in that room had opinions about who should win, and stayed silent unless given the proper forum (read: not embarrassing a 17-year old on national television). So Kanye himself elevated this discussion out of the realm of mere opinion by framing it as a question of not MTV being wrong, but Beyonce being wronged. By drawing the limelight to it in such a blatant way, there was a not-so-thinly-veiled accusation made toward MTV that they had committed some kind of social injustice by not giving the award to Beyonce. Disregarding Kanye's other foot-in-mouth moments that would lead me to believe there is subtext to this, he chose to elevate what he was saying and its importance by the choice of venue to state his belief.

Now, is said subtext racist? Well, to 180 on what I initially thought, I don't think that it was racism, at least by the classic definition. While Kanye might be uber-sensitive to issues of race (which he honestly can't be blamed for, seeing as the racial culture of America has proven itself over the past year to be subtler than, say, Birmingham in 1963, but just as nasty), this moment goes beyond race, and should start the afore-mentioned discussion. Racism itself is far from dead, but the more prevalent culture war is one of a bizarre class system- of urban versus suburban/rural. Kanye was not just saying Beyonce's song was better than Taylor Swift's song, he was implying that Beyonce's music is more worthy of attention than Taylor Swift's music. Seeing as both songs and both artists are products of corporate music culture, to declare that Beyonce's song, the prototypical hip-hop/pop song, is better than Swift's, the proto-typical Nashville country song, is to say that Top 40 hip-hop is inherently superior to Nashville country. (Full disclosure: I think both songs are awful, and yes, that is coloring my opinion.) Now, maybe it is a stretch to imply that the two music forms are acting as shorthand for entire cultures, but I don't think so. For years there was a modernistic value system- suburban values were the excepted ones (think about black families depiction on TV with the Huxtables and the Jeffersons) and the past 20 years or so has slowly turned the tables with a post-modern value system, saying that no one lifestyle is better than another, and therefore all art is subjective. A good rap song is just as valid as anything John Adams or Wynton Marsalis is doing. This is symbolic- in the 1960's there was a subculture of people (most black, but not all) saying "we want the right to live as you live." In the 90's the same subculture says "we want our way of life validated even if it not agreed with." Live and let live, if you will. Now it is slowly moving toward "our way of life is superior." Kanye is basically implying that hip-hop is a higher art form than country music, and that the society which produces hip-hop is better than the one that produces country music. Basic culture wars. Is it anything new? Not at all, but it would be nice to hear someone talk about it.

For those who think I'm ascribing Kanye with motives he didn't have, imagine to yourself Rhianna winning a VMA. Or Alicia Keys. Now imagine Kanye doing the same thing. Yeah... wouldn't happen.