Among the most bizarre moments of the Game Awards 2022, there is undoubtedly the appearance of what the people of the web have renamed Bill Clinton Kida boy who at the end of Hidetaka Miyazaki’s GOTY acceptance speech took possession of the stage and microphone to give his opinion to the audience.
“Hey, I’m Matan,” he began as soon as he approached the microphone. “I think I’d like to dedicate this award to my Reform Orthodox Rabbi Bill Clinton. Thank you all.” His words which to most appeared confused and meaningless, but which certainly guaranteed him notoriety on the web and the attention of internet users. Miyazaki-san, fresh winner of the most coveted prize thanks to Elden Ring, looked at him confused, after which a guard took the boy away. Shortly after, with the cameras off, Geoff Keighely announced his arrest (although, as we will see shortly, things seem not to have gone quite like this). Bill Cinton Kid, however, is free, and yesterday morning his personal Twitter channel intervened to announce the arrival of a lot of information on the case. And so it was, since yesterday evening several overseas journalists took an interest in the case, interviewing him and publishing in-depth articles.
His name is Matan Even, he is 15 years old and is not new to gestures of this type. We’ve even already talked about it on these pages, even if we didn’t realize it at first: during BlizzCon 2019 he interrupted a World of Warcraft panel shouting “Free Hong Kong” over and over again, clearly referring to the protests that all were holding court in the Asian city at the time. In the fall of 2019 it is also appeared during an NBA game showing a shirt that reads “Fight for Freedom, Stand up for Hong Kong”.
During a chat with Polygon, Matan declared himself a Jew and repeatedly repeated that his only intention was to promote former president of the United States of America, who would vote without hesitation if he could, even if he’s not even old enough to do so. He further assured that his words did not hide any anti-Semitic message or associated with the far right. Although she wore Yeezy shoes, she said she doesn’t share Kanye West’s political views. During the interview, Maddy Myers of Polygon noted that Matan doesn’t speak with the same thick and indecipherable accent that she instead exhibited on stage at the Game Awards.
Even though Reform Jews and Orthodox Jews are two separate things, and Reform Orthodox do not technically exist as a group, Matan believes that Bill Clinton embodies the ideology of the Reformed Orthodox, whatever that means. “I just think that the best man, one of the best people in the world, who spreads good Jewish ideals to Jews all over the world, in different countries, is Bill Clinton.” Matan, therefore, continued to repeat all the time that his only goal was to praise the former president.
Polygon also contacted the Los Angeles Police Department, finding out that in fact the boy was not arrested. Matan says he was only removed from the stage while the police say they only drew up a report on what happened.
