Obama vs Kimye: Mr President faces Kris Jenner's wrath for disparaging remarks about Kanye West and Kim Kardashian

Whilst playing diplomatic chess with Vladimir Putin over fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden and worrying long-term about America's waning global influence, Barack Obama would do well not to goad attacks from some of his own country's most popular entertainers.

But the Nobel Peace laureate has done just that, attracting a diatribe of articulate indignation from Kris Jenner for his comments about power couple "Kimye", otherwise known as her daughter Kim Kardashian and her boyfriend, Kanye West.

Speaking to Amazon in an interview for Kindle, President Obama complained of the distorting influence of materialism on the American Dream - and appeared to make several digs at the couple who have recently had their first child, North West.

Of success, he said: "People felt that if they worked hard they could get there. It was achievable. But I don't think people went around saying to themselves, 'I need to have a 10,000 square foot house.'"

Waxing nostalgic about his own humble childhood, Obama said: "We weren't exposed to the things we didn't have in the same way that kids these days are.

"Kids weren't monitoring every day what Kim Kardashian was wearing, or where Kanye West was going on vacation, and thinking that somehow that was a mark of success."

On Friday Jenner, the Kardashian matriarch, and star of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, used her own talk show on E! to hit back at the President in defence of her new grandson's parents, saying: "I read this, and I thought, 'Wow - it's really great that people aspire to get a great job ... but I wasn't aware that we could only set the bar so high, and only dream so big.'

"I was taught work hard, dream big, and you could have whatever you wanted."

Buoyed by obsequious applause, the like of which might make Kim Jong-Un blush, she continued: "I bet the President has some friends with 10,000 square foot houses. And you probably wouldn't mind going over there, Mr President, while you were asking them to have a party for you when you were campaigning.

Defending the famous pair, she lauded their work ethic and insisted that they had had to work hard for all they own.

She said: "I find it so odd that he's picking on Kim Kardashian and Kanye Went. Kanye West, first of all, doesn't go on holiday, ever. And Kim Kardashian is the hardest-working young lady in the world. She never sleeps, she never stops, she never slows down and works so hard for what she's got."

The President - who has a well-known penchant for his long-time supporter Jay-Z - has form here. In 2009, after Mr West stage-bombed Taylor Swift's acceptance of an MTV Music award, he called West "a jackass" - a barb he stood by two years later in an interview with The Atlantic.