Tosh-point-Bullshit

There's a new media "personality" who has displaced both Perez and Paris Hilton as the most noisome, aggravating, idiotic and annoying figure on television...it's Daniel Tosh, whose "comedy" seems to be really thriving on Comedy Central of late. (I run into it when I flip to that channel early to watch The Daily Show.) He is German. He is physically attractive. He is hot. But his material is absolutely moronic and his comments on it drag it even lower than it is to begin with. And his audience and their stupid canned laughter seem so fake. Why is this guy still on ANY channel, let alone Comedy Central, which is supposed to specialize in things that are actually funny? His jokes and video clips are all of the lamest, most anti-intellectual, sensational variety, and his comments on them are so insipid they make Joel McHale on The Soup look like a genius. Is this an experiment to see how low American audiences are willing to go?

Pop culture does NOT have to be brainless tabloid fodder with absolutely no redeeming artistic value. The great thing about Pop Art was the ART.

It's shit like this that makes me mourn the loss of great comedians of the past like Richard Pryor and George Carlin all the more.

Have you seen Chelsea, lately?

My cousin has gotten me into Chelsea Handler, whose entertaining gossipfest airs nightly on the E! Network. She's sort of like a blonde Parker Posey. I wasn't sure at first, 'cause it struck me as more shrill, brittle, bitchy celebrity gossip, a la Perez Hilton, and don't we have enough of that already? But unless I'm mistaken, I think Chelsea and her co-commentators are a cut above. I think it's because even though it's still shallow celebrity gossip, it somehow avoids being as mean-spirited and juvenile as Hilton and others of his ilk. It's a little more mature and sophisticated, and even though they ARE being bitchy and dishy and dissecting the minutiae of famous peoples' lives (a parasitic occupation if ever there was one), you sense that beneath the shallowness they're really just having a good time and not taking any of it too seriously. Or maybe I'm deluding myself, and there's really not much difference, in which case I'll just have to add "Chelsea Lately" to my ever-present list of guilty pleasures.