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 West, who is married to Kim Kardashian, sparked dozens of
satirical memes on social media after his rambling, 13-minute
speech on Sunday - when he admitted he had "rolled up a little
something earlier in the night - while accepting the Video
Vanguard award for lifetime achievement.
Although most viewers saw West's presidential declaration as a
joke, a Maryland college student on Monday filed paperwork with
the Federal Election Commission to set up a political action
committee called Ready for Kanye.
Eugene Craig III, 24, chairman of the Young Minority Republicans
Fund, told Reuters he hoped West would consider running as a
Republican in 2020.
"We think he is a champion of a lot of issues and he has an
interesting perspective. (The PAC) is not just a joke," said
Craig, a student at Bowie State University.
West, 38, scored the award show's top hashtag, #Kanye2020,
according to social analytics company NetBase. The show became
the most-tweeted television program since Nielsen began tracking
Twitter TV activity in 2011, with some 21.4 million tweets sent
in the United States alone.
West's declaration of presidential ambitions triggered images of
his face imposed on Shepard Fairey's familiar 2008 Barack Obama
"Hope" campaign poster and pasted on Mount Rushmore alongside
the sculptures of U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Thomas
Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.
Fantasy opinion polls showed West running ahead of Donald Trump,
who has been leading polls among the many Republican
presidential contenders, while another viral post placed Kim
Kardashian, as well as sisters Khloe and Kourtney, outside the
White House.
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Music website Billboard.com suggested rapper Jay-Z could be West's
vice president and Taylor Swift could be installed in the State
Department.
The annual VMA awards show, which honors achievements in music
videos, has long been known for its outrageous moments.
Sunday's show was replete with liberal cursing, skits about
marijuana use, barely-there outfits, and an apparently accidental
flash of bare breasts from host Miley Cyrus, 22.
The Parents Television Council, which says it aims to "protect
children and families from graphic sex, violence and profanity in
the media, responded with outrage.
"MTV ... chose to perpetuate blatant sexualization – much of it
self-inflicted by the artists – and to celebrate the use of illegal
drugs," council President Tim Winter said in a statement.
MTV, a unit of Viacom Inc, said it had no comment on the PTC
statement.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant and Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Bill
Trott and Leslie Adler)
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