By Cathy Maestri
InstantRiverside.com

Kanye West was rude and thoughtless on Sunday night when he took the microphone from Taylor Swift and said Beyonce should have won Best Female Video instead.

And now, it’s clear that no one knows that better than Kanye West.

He had the guts to not only honor a commitment to appear as a musical guest on the debut of the “Jay Leno Show” on Monday, but sit down and apologize again — quite sincerely — beforehand.

(It should be noted that Serena Williams’ apology for her obscenity-laden U.S. Open tirade was polite and well-scripted, but not exactly totally sincere. And Rep. Joe Wilson’s apology to the White House for his “You lie!” outburst during President Barack Obama’s address to Congress last week was admittedly forced and anything but sincere. Heck, he won’t even admit that he was wrong.)

Though Leno had asked dumb questions in a faked interview with Obama, he hit West with the hardest question of all — what his late mother would have thought about the incident.

Honestly, we nearly cried, too.

It became clear that West hasn’t dealt with the death of his beloved mom, other than throwing himself into his work and drinking. We hope he sorts it out during this break he’s promised himself.

But on Tuesday, it got worse for poor Kanye as word spread that ABC’s Terry Moran stupidly Tweeted an off-the-record comment during a CNBC interview; Obama apparently referred to West as a “jackass.”

Ouch.

ABC then apologized to the White House and CNBC — but not West. Nice.

So, here’s hoping West can take that time off, get his head together and come back with some huge, fun, splashy benefit that makes everybody happy. Including Kanye.