Apple has cut the performance of Kanye West from the QuickTime stream of its special event in San Francisco.
In the original QuickTime Stream, Kayne West’s performance was included along with its attendant explicit language. The total run time (TRT) of the QT stream was originally 1:04:57. Now it clocks in at 48:15.
We’re not sure if Apple cut it becaus of the explicti language, because it just plain sounded so bad, or because West has been critical of the Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts during a national telethon broadcast and then again on the U.S. daytime show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, or for some other reason.
The link revised QuickTime stream is here.
[Attribution: MacNN]
A note about the aftermath of hurricanes: MacDailyNews and iPodDailyNews staff weathered four hurricanes between 1996-1999 (Hurricane Bertha, Hurricane Fran, Hurricane Bonnie, Hurricane Floyd) while living in Wilmington, NC and Surf City, NC. Direct hits, all of them.
In each case, people would get all fired up about the “slow” response, start screaming about why they couldn’t go back to their homes, etc. We did the same thing after our first hurricane. Until we learned a few simple rules:
• You can’t go back to your house if there are no roads leading to it and/or there is water where there wasn’t before.
• Bureaucracies are slow, love to wrap themselves in red tape and, if there are no roads for you, there are no roads for them, so it takes awhile to get assistance back into the damaged area.
• Get a generator if you want electricity immediately.
• Things cannot be instantly fixed.
• You won’t have Internet access or cable TV for quite some time. Count yourself among the lucky ones if you still have a roof over your head.
• The initial reports of lives lost were always too high.
• Get used to hearing bulldozers and dump trucks because they’ll be driving around while you’re trying to sleep for months.
• Don’t try to ride out a hurricane if you live on a sand bar (or in a bowl below sea level).
• People make mistakes, but generally, the government officials were trying to help the best they knew how before, during, and after each hurricane.
• We learned how to do it better each time. Louisiana will, too.
After each hurricane hit, new people would move in and the next hurricane would hit and they would start screaming about “slow” response and yelling to go back to their house via washed out roads and the rest of us would look at them and try to explain, usually unsuccessfully. Then they would learn and look at the next batch of newcomers and try to explain to them.
When the next hurricane hits somewhere, the government response won’t be instant, electricity won’t come back on immediately, and people who haven’t been through it before will begin to scream about “slow” response.
As for Katrina, response has been slower before: http://www.charleston.net/stories/default_pf.aspx?newsID=38758
Related articles:
Donate to The American Red Cross Hurricane 2005 Relief fund to help Hurricane Katrina victims – September 03, 2005
Hey wait a second, I’m Steve Jobs.
Kanye West was (and is) an embarrassment. Between his cra**y performance and his doltish social commentary, there was absolutely no reason for Apple to associate itself with him. And this is from someone that sometimes enjoys rap.
Good riddance.
MW: “school,” as in Kanye needs to go back to school to learn how to be a civilized member of society
Wait a second.. I’m Steve Jobs.
Actually, Kanye’s performance was pulled at the request of his label, and for no other reason. We appreciate Kanye’s support and thank him for taking part in our special event.
This is getting out of hand.
Frankly, Kanye was right. Although, Bush doesn’t really care about any people, let alone black people.
According to Barbara Bush, this disaster is “working out very well” for the poor evacuees who have lost everything.
A completely out-of-touch family.
Hey Ginger – You know what speeds up response? NOT SHOOTING AT THE FIRST RESPONDERS. That helps, anyway. I have a few friends that went up with their airboats only to sit around for two days because the “poor people” were sniping the boaters.
You know who REALLY doesn’t care about the poor people? The mayor of New Orleans and the Govenor of Louisiana. That much IS obvious…just take a look at that parking lot full of buses.
MDN MW:”since”. As in, since when is the Federal govt responsible for keeping my ass high and dry?
Thanks for giving a reasonable take on what a hurricane response is actually like MDN. Idiots like Kanye West obviously don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
What has been most sickening about this whole Katrina aftermath has been those trying to use it for their own personal political gain. It’s too bad he and other morons like him can’t come up with something that’s actually constructive to do or say instead.
The absolute easiest thing to do is to bag on a President that you didn’t like already anyway, as if he actually has control over everything including the weather. It wouldn’t have mattered who the President was, the response would have been basically the same.
But for him to claim that the response time was due to racism just goes to show how ignorant and racist Kanye himself (as well as those that agree with his rant) truly are themselves.
Kanye West’s performance was waaaaaaaaaaay out of line and totally inappropriate for the venue. Sorry, but Kanye and Yo Yo Ma are in two different, non-parallel universes. I have no idea what Steve was thinking to allow him there.
Was it Jay Leno who said, “‘Kanye’ is just another way to say ‘Kenny.'”
Think ‘Kenny Smith’ and you get the idea.
Bambi Hambi
Mac360
BTW – magic word is ‘answer’ as in Kenny’s way is not the answer.
Not only can’t he sing in tune, he cannot even ‘Rap’ in tune.
YO!
I ain’t got no talent, cannot play an insturment, cannot sing, but sho’ can run my mouth in an offensive way!
WORD!!!!
Kanye West- non artist, non-musician, non-talented
An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can’t blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city’s infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists–myself included–did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency–indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
“Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
“The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire….
“Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
” ‘These troops are…under my orders to restore order in the streets,’ she said. ‘They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.’ “
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. “The projects,” as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night’s television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of “the projects.” Then the “crawl”–the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels–gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city’s public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city’s jails–so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations–that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit–but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals–and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep–on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters–not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American “individualism.” But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider “normal” behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don’t sit around and complain that the government hasn’t taken care of them. They don’t use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don’t, because they don’t own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
The welfare state–and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages–is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
MDN, thanks for the take: one of your best ever, b/c I actually learned something. Suicidal Gingerbread Man, perhaps you could reread the MDN Take? Or provide at least a link or some proof before you blatantly disregard a statement from someone who has been there?
You nicely aired your collection of disjointed opinions, which you may be silly enough to think are connected, but you know what they say about opinions. Why don’t you provide something of substance, or at least some thoughts, instead of boring and overbeaten party lines?
I’d also be curious to know what you’re doing about the survivors or about poverty – I’m not saying you’re not doing anything, but it’s certainly relevant to whether your “opinions” or beliefs are just talk or actually mean something.
i’ve heard worst come out of educated white peoples mouth such as princess micheal of kent telling a table of black executives at a 4 star restaurant in nyc to go back to the colonies. ignorance knows no color or social class, but racism and classism does.
or how about rush limbaugh refer to the mayor of new orleans as nayger instead of nagin.
oh what what about the sports caster in the 80’s who said something about the slave master taking his strongest black slave man and breeding him with his strongest black slave woman to create strong black babies resulting in the strong black athletes of today.
now, i’m not saying that black folk can’t be racist, believe me i’m half black, i’ve experienced a lot of reverse racism from black folk for being light skinned.
kanye was expressing his frustration of what he was seeing on tv in relation to the hundreds of poor people who where standed; who happened to also be disporportionately black. had this group been overwhelmingly white this would be a discussion of class and economics.
kanye has the right to speak his mind, as do you.
Wow, of all the ridiculous “takes” from MDN this one takes the cake.
You can try to be more ridiculous and insensitive than that, but I doubt you would be more succesful.
Robert,
well put, that’s what makes this so tragic and sad.
Do you have a blog?
The last “Steve Jobs”, do you know that you not only misquoted her (Barbara Bush), you took it completely out of context? If so, it’s sad that you’re so willing to distort truth for your political views. If not, please acquaint yourself with the facts before posting such drivelling nonsense.
And MDN if you can name me the last Hurricane you have bravely, and without complaint sat through, that destroyed an entire city let me know.
I have been through an earthquake too, but then again the earthquakes I sat through didn’t open up a hole in the earth and swallow buildings whole. I would assume that is because not all earthquakes are the same so perspective might be different from one person to another.
I guess because you have been through a hurricane or two that makes you an expert in being involved in a storm that absolutely decimates a city.
Those silly people sitting among the dead in the Superdome, complaining about their cable right?
Happens every year in Florida. God damn you are ridiculous.
Step: the entire quote.
“What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”
Yeah, lucky evacuees, eh?
For MDN, I have but one question. During your hurricane experience, how many days were you stuck in a sports stadium without proper access to food and medicine?
99 Cents a View….LOL….Greedy Bastard..He isnt even that great…
Steve, please stop imitating me.
Here is your context Step
“Accompanying her husband, former President George
H.W.Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in
Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the
poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated, “This is working very well for them.”
The former First Lady’s remarks were aired this
evening on American Public Media’s “Marketplace”
program.
She was part of a group in Houston today at the
Astrodome that included her husband and former
President Bill Clinton, who were chosen by her son,
the current president, to head fundraising efforts for
the recovery. Sen. Hilary Clinton and Sen. Barack
Obama were also present.
In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of
evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: “Almost
everyone I’ve talked to says we’re going to move to
Houston.”
Then she added: “What I’m hearing which is sort of
scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is
so overwhelmed by the hospitality.
“And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this–this (she
chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.” “
Robert – THANK YOU! It’s about time somebody told the G*ddamn truth.
IT IS VERY SIMPLE!! KANYE’S MUSIC AND PERFORMANCE IS AWFUL!!
yes, you’re right there where over 40 buses that the mayor could’ve used to evacuate a portion of the city. some but not all, but you fail to askt he question of who was going to drive the buses. the mayor can’t order someone to drive a bus. if you had the choice between driving a bus and hightailing it out of a disaster area with your family which would you choose? i doubt you’d choose driving a bus.
^
Ed. That was very eloquent.
no DRM? So what- it wasn’t worth “stealing” anyways.