Public outbursts and their consequences seem a lot more common, of late. Last week, Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) heckled the president during an address to both houses of Congress, and now faces a possible Congressional censure. This week, Serena Williams lost her cool (not to mention $10,500 in fines) when she lashed out at a line judge at the U.S. Open. Kanye West appeared on Jay Leno's show last night to apologize after he broke script at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards and grabbed the microphone from Taylor Swift to praise Beyonce's video.
For more on public outbursts, we talk to Randy Cohen, who writes "The Ethicist" column in the New York Times Magazine and Latoya Peterson, editor of the online blog Racialicious.
Watch Kanye West on The Jay Leno Show apologizing for his outburst:
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Comments [2]
Kanye West doesn't like white people.
Aren't journalists supposed to check facts before reporting a story? Mr. Hockenberry & Mr. Cohen, and another guest, all repeated the comment that the line judge "made a bad call" during the Williams match. The only replay CBS aired was from a bad angle (behind the baseline). Shouldn't the host and guests actually try to find out if the judge's call may have, in fact, been the correct call? And it was just plain bizarre when Mr. Cohen cited ONE example of a congressman beating another decades ago to justify his outlandish comment that "we've always been a thuggish and racist nation." It reminded me of why I stopped reading his "Ethicist" column in the Times long ago: he really has no qualifications or expertise to write about ethics, and his reasoning is inconsistent and sloppy. He seems to just make stuff up as he goes along. His thoughts would be more at home on gossip TV shows such as Extra and Access Hollywood than the NYTimes.
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