First we had a deleted tweet claiming that President Obama called Kanye West a jackass for his stunt interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs. Everyone kind of shrugged and said they agreed with him. Obama made the remark off the record before a CNBC interview, and CNBC apologized that the news got out. ABC Nightline anchor Terry Moran tweeted then deleted the news, and CNBC issued an apology, saying Moran “prematurely tweeted before our editorial process had been completed.” Then TMZ posted audio of Obama saying it, which pretty much proved that it happened. Now there’s video of Obama’s offhand exchange, which was never meant to get out but is still pretty amusing nonetheless. After Obama says that Kanye’s a jackass he kind of realizes that nothing he says is off the record and wonders aloud if this sound bite will become like that crazy video of him swatting a fly – viral. (The fly part is in the audio, not the video show above.) Yeah, it will. CNN even aired it.

There’s been some speculation that the whole Kanye West incident was a set up by MTV. After all, this is the network that staged the Bruno Enimen freak out at the MTV Movie Awards. Plus Kanye and Taylor were both pre-scheduled for talk shows the next day, with Kanye to appear on the opening night of Leno’s revived show. I’m just not buying that explanation, though. Kanye’s apology on Leno was way too serious and Taylor was said to be bawling backstage. Sure this worked out to a lot of publicity for all the parties involved, but Kanye seemed really mortified, and I doubt it was staged ahead of time.

One really priceless thing to come out of this way overplayed and over-discussed incident is the “Kanye interrupting” meme. Someone commented with a link to the site Kanyegate, which has plenty of humorous Kanye photos, and there are photos and videos of Kanye interrupting just about everyone and everything with his unique brand of one-upmanship. E! Online and The Daily Mail have more. Kanye won’t live this down for a long time.