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By now, we imagine that nearly everyone is aware of Kanye West's incredible demonstration of his freestyling gifts on NBC's Friday evening "We Care the Most About Hurricane Relief Because Our Concert Was On First" telethon. (If not, here's a transcript.) We'll cut to the money shot, because we've already spent a good portion of the weekend recreating the exchange for friends who missed it: After West went off-book (kids, ask your acting coach!) to rant about the media's coverage of the hurricane (i.e., black people loot, white people find) and the government's response to the disaster, stunned co-presenter Mike Myers dutifully continued with the teleprompter script. West then punctuated the segment with the Sound Bite Heard 'Round The World: "George Bush doesn't care about black people." In the incredibly uncomfortable two seconds that followed, Myers registered a look of utter helplessness, as if wishing he could crawl into a protective cocoon of two hundred pounds of Fat Bastard latex, and NBC then quick-cut to a clearly unprepared Chris Tucker, who floundered about with some ad-libbed exhortations for people to help, help, help. And...scene. Live television history is made, Kanye West becomes a folk hero, and we're officially the 29,000th blog to offer a blow-by-blow of the events. SNL sketches to follow.

Predictably, NBC yanked West's love note to Bush from the West Coast broadcast of the telethon. To their credit, they replaced West's remark with a tasteful title card, not a pre-taped bit of Myers in full Austin Powers costume offering to "shag" any "sexy birds" who donated over $50 to the relief effort. NBC: Keeping it classy in the face of adversity.

Also: Blogger Paul Davidson offers Today’s Imaginary Conversation With Kanye West’s Monologue Coach