Let me get one thing off my chest, whether it was on the record, off the record, a throwaway comment, a personal observation or an official declaration, fortunately for President Obama he was right on the money. Kayne West is a jackass.
The golden boy rapper’s churlish treatment of country singer Taylor Swift at the MTV awards was pure-fool, and he may never live the moment down.
In the aftermath, ABC News employees overheard a conversation between the President and CNBC’s John Harwood on the matter, where Obama called West a “jackass”.
The comment was recorded, tweeted and lit up the internet.
The television network has since apologised and said that it was wrong for its employees to tweet the comment, but they didn’t realise it was considered off the record. But was it?
Obama is the President of the United States, and his words, every one of them is newsworthy. He’s gained much of his popularity because he’s used online social networks with real savvy, and this time it’s no different, because unlike many nasty asides that have been recorded during on-mic mishaps, Obama got it so right.
As one web commentator put it, “just when I thought I couldn’t love Barack anymore!”
Another world leader making headlines is French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He’s said that gross domestic product, inflation, and unemployment are all old-fashioned, Anglo-Saxon indicators of national wellbeing, and from now on, the country’s economic progress will be measured in terms of happiness – bonheur.
The French president has some heavyweights to help him back up this new measure, Nobel Prize-winning economists, the American Joseph Stiglitz, and India’s Amartya Sen, who have concluded that new indexes are needed to measure wellbeing and environmental sustainability.
Surely he’s hit the nail on the head, as isn’t this what corporate social responsibility programmes should be all about, creating bonheur for all?
