 "Photo: Nicolette McClendon")
Our View:These things are disrespectful and this is starting to get out of hand.
Raise your hand if you have a question or comment. Think before you speak. Wait your turn. These are lessons we have all learned by the age of six; lessons that Joe Wilson, Lil’ Mama and Kanye West all forgot.
We don’t really have to discuss Kanye West’s outburst at the Video Music Awards (VMA’s). We know just how outrageous his actions were. We know he was wrong, and after watching his interview with Jay Leno, it seems that he also knows he was wrong.
Rapper Lil’ Mama has also been discussed heavily since the VMA’s. Her unsolicited appearance during the finale performance has made her the butt of many “butting-in” jokes. We know that she’s from New York, as are performers Alicia Keys and Jay-Z, and maybe she was feeling the New York pride in the air, but that doesn’t mean that it’s okay for her to climb on stage during a rehearsed performance and try to look like she belonged there. She probably realized that when Jay-Z looked at her like she was crazy and walked right past her during the performance.
Representative Joe Wilson couldn’t contain himself either. During President Obama’s healthcare address to Congress, Wilson shouted “You lie!” when President Obama said that illegal immigrants wouldn’t be insured under the new healthcare plan.
According to former President Jimmy Carter, and other critics, this was an act of racism. It’s a tough one to call, but would a white president have had this same problem?
Racist or not, this was completely unacceptable. There are House rules that prohibit this type of behavior, but more so, people, -- especially fellow politicians -- should have the common decency to keep outbursts out of these settings.
We’ve watched a few well-known figures speak and behave more freely in the last week than we are accustom to seeing. With Serena Williams erupting at the U.S. Open, Michael
Jordan airing it all out at the NBA Hall of Fame ceremony, and now these class acts, it seems that people have truly forgotten how to behave.
his is a serious etiquette problem. It’s one thing to get upset at an official during a game or let off years worth of steam during an acceptance speech, but it’s another to take a microphone out of someone’s hand during their acceptance speech to tell the world why this recipient was not the most qualified, or to interrupt the PRESIDENT during an address and accuse him of LYING while he’s trying to clear up rumors. That’s just too far.
We live in a country where we’re granted freedom of speech, but we don’t need to exercise all of our rights all of the time.
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