Kanye West's MTV rant at Taylor Swift sparks wave of internet virals



His onstage outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards sparked outrage - and got him branded a 'jackass' by Barack Obama.



But Kanye West's bizarre attack on Taylor Swift has inspired a wave of creativity among the online community.



A slew of internet virals loosely based on his tasteless critique of the country starlet have spread rapidly around the world.

The images are all loosely based on rapper West's attack on Swift, 19, which began as she collected an award for Best Female Video for You Belong To Me.

After grabbing her microphone, he shouted: 'Yo Taylor. I'm really happy for you, I'm going to let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time.'

He was booed by the star-studded audience and ejected from the theatre.



But the rant was watched by more than 27million around the world and has been viewed about 2million times on the MTV.com website alone.

The clip has since been removed from YouTube - although the off-the-cuff (and supposedly off-the-record) moment Obama called West a 'jackass' is still available.

Click here to hear Obama call Kanye a 'jackass'

From TMZ

Meanwhile, inventive Facebook users have taken his words as a jumping off point, superimposing them on a number of famous images and celebrities.



These have included West-style attacks on George W. Bush, Neil Armstrong, Adolf Hitler and Usain Bolt, the Berlin wall



The audio viral of Obama's attack has now been released online.

The US president's candid thoughts on West have provoked a huge debate standards of journalism in the Twitter age.



ABC News said it was wrong for its employees to tweet that Obama had called West a 'jackass'

Kanye interrupts Obama (in a spoof of the Joe Wilson controversy last week):

The network said some of its employees had overheard a conversation between the president and CNBC's John Harwood and didn't realise it was considered off the record.

The network apologised to the White House and CNBC.

Harwood had sat down with the president to tape an interview following his appearance on Wall Street on Monday.



Although they are competitors, CNBC and ABC share a fibre optic line to save money, and this enabled some ABC employees to listen in on the interview as it was being taped for later use.

E-mails shot around among ABC employees about Obama's comments, said Jeffrey Schneider, ABC News spokesman.

Before anything was reported on ABC's air or Web site, at least three network employees took to Twitter to spread the news.

One was Terry Moran, a former White House correspondent. He logged on to Twitter and typed: "Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a 'jackass' for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT'S presidential."

When ABC News authorities found out about it, they had the tweets deleted after about an hour, Schneider said. But the news was out.

Harwood said there was no explicit agreement with the president that those comments were off the record.



But he said it is broadcast tradition that such pre-interview chatter is considered off the record until the formal interview begins.



Harwood is holding to that: He would not discuss what the president said before their interview and has no plans to do so on CNBC.

He said he was aware that it was likely someone outside of CNBC was listening to his conversation with the president.