Everywhere I look I'm seeing top ten lists. In no particular order here are the people whose presence on the tube deeply offends me.
Ty Penninngton-the "host" of Extreme Makeover. His breathy and contrived way of talking really really really irritates me.
Charles Gibson-a smug loudmouth who, except for the "news" people at Fox, is the most local TV of anybody on a network news show
The Kardashian Women who can't even get people to watch the youngun's sex video for free
Barbara Walters a hard unlovely imperious and profoundly silly woman
All the comedians Keith Olberman uses on his show--none of whom happen to be funny
Tom Brokaw--who died and left him historian? He was a lightweight when he was on the air and he ain't no different now. He fronts the books, folks, he don't write them.
Flava Flave--I only watched him once, that being the episode where the young woman went number two on his rug. She said she wanted to get his attention. Do I have to elaborate?
Don Rickles--I seem to be alone in finding him trite, dull and a jerk. Somebody should've flattened him a long time ago. Ninth grade humor.
Trey Parker--another icon who should be pumping gas. Hate South Park and the new show (to judge by the promos) looks even worse. Fart jokes in the promos?
Tim Russert--smoke but no fire. He loves the theatricality of asking pointed questions but twenty minutes after the show is over you realize you haven't learned anything. The political equivalent of a Vegas lounge act.
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17 comments:
May I add Rachel Ray, who's made her living cooking meals anyone with a hot plate could top. And her voice and flirtatious manner makes me cringe. That my husband finds her cute makes me wonder what he saw in me.
I canceled my cable service yesterday. Problem solved.
I'm with you on Baba Wawa and Don Rickles. Some of the others I've never heard of. And I agree with Pattinaise about Rachel Ray. She was kind of cute at first, but now she's just grating. I think I've had my fill of Nancy Grace, too.
Not Olbermann himself? His shtick is wearing awful thin. My list would be anyone who hosts a show on any cable news network between 8-11PM. I'll stick up for Rickles. The HBO doc on him this week is an inch deep but fun.
I think about the various people who parade across the thousand channels of network and cable TV, from sad old Hugh Hefner to the Fox News pit bulls, and you know, I'm hard pressed to find anyone I can really tolerate. The worst, to my mind -- the snide and extremely unfunny no-name stand-up comics who infest the E Network and Comedy Central as Greek choruses on these phoney "25 Most Shocking Celebrity Meltdown" suckfests.
Here's a few more: Oprah, Springer, Ellen Degeneres, the entire FOX News talking heads team, especially Sean Hannity, anyone involved with Gray's Anatomy and, come to think of it, 99% of what's on screen these days. I don't think I've watched anything on a regular basis since The Wire and Rome ended.
Your list is mostly too kind, Ed, though it seems your problem as stated is let with celebrity ?recovering? crack junkie Flave than with his show...but the enire field of Reality Game Shows, particularly those that pretend to be about profound emotion, is at least as offensive as anything JERRY SPRINGER the show has ever coughed up.
I totally agree with you about Don Rickles! I never thought he was funny... even when I was in 9th grade.
Hate South Park?
Pistols at dawn, Gorman!
Brokaw: 'Who died and left him hostorian?'
Hilarious! Laughed out loud, Ed. And I agree--Brokaw barely finished college from what I heard (was at the U of I for only about a year, contrary to what the U of I would like you to believe), and then hit gold with an oral history that I personally found rather underwhelming.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone's SOUTH PARK act has grown stale, but I DEFY you to find anyone who didn't, at one point, nearly wet themselves watching TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE.
"Haans Brix?! Oh hi, howarrya Hans?"
"The gwaytist actoh in the wooold: Arrec Barrwin!!"
I rest my case.
I had to turn Team America off after twenty minutes. I just don't get off on making fun of people from other countries. I don't care how big a prick China's evil dictator is, you don't make fun of the way people from Asia talk. No laughing, or wetting here.
Um, Ed please make a top twenty, (don't let unemployed comedians comment on it such as someone stated Comedy Central does) and include Rosie O'Donnell because she's a dipshit hypocrite.
Peter Jennings. Sadly that's who died and left Brokaw the historian.
I don't watch tv so I can't comment on anything else. Except maybe to bash Gray's Anatomy or that Housewives show. I grew up with Melrose Place, therefore I don't need to see it again and again fifteen years later. You can make the characters doctors or housewives but it's still Melrose Place.
Uggh. tv is so boring. Rinse and repeat, that's all it does.
Actually, it wasn't a Chinese dictator. He was North Korean. Does the name Kim Jong-Il ring a bell? You know, the leader whose country Bush wanted to go to war with before he turned his attention to Iran? For someone so sensitive about not making fun of other people you could at least try to distinguish between North Koreans and the Chinese people. They are ethnically different in spite of what you might think in America. Anyway, the movie wasn't about making fun of the way other people talk. It was a pretty even handed satire of jingoism, both left and right.
There's a lot of good television available, actually. Maybe not a lot of Great television, but there's some of that, too. More good new television than most years, and with luck or good sense the producers will actually start agreeing to cough up some reasonable amount of money for web rights and such so 2008 in the US can also be a pretty solid year for tv.
I've solved all those annoyances by not watching TV any more, except for PBS's As Time Goes By, and even that has too much canned laughter. It's refreshing to return to the real world, meet real people, walk through a fine day, lunch with pals, live according to my own music. It's like breaking out of jail.
Richard Wheeler
Haven't watched any Flavor Flav on TV, but Public Enemy still is one of the best hiphop groups there ever was.
Like I said, I only got twenty mintues into the movie, therefore I can't remember the social satire situations correctly. It seems as if you felt it a personal attack. I'm sorry that you felt anonymously attack Mr. Anonymous. But good for you for using jingoism in a blog comment where you felt safe anonymously attacking back. It's a nice sounding word that will forever make me think of Django Reinhart whenever I hear it.
wow, you guys are a bunch of intolerant, angry people. Lighten up!!
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