Miley Hits Bottom

On their first date, my mother told my father, “I’m here to be entertained.” I guess it’s genetic, because this is pretty much the way I feel about life in general. So let me say I was grateful to Miley Cyrus for providing me with some big laughs this week. Listen, I didn’t even know the girl couldn’t sing, so I was very impressed to find out she can’t dance either. Always amazing to see a young person so multi-untalented.

And her incredibly bad Video Music Award performance gave us so very much more to enjoy as well.  There was Dennis Miller’s wonderfully succinct tweet: “Miley high, inch deep.” There was the brilliant remark from Brooke Shields who played the mother of Miley’s squeaky clean Disney character Hannah Montana:  “Where did I go wrong?” That’s not only hilarious, it actually says something kind of profound about the nature of Miley’s reality, if reality is the word I want. And there was The Onion’s excellent mock column by the managing editor of CNN.com explaining why she decided to make Miley the website’s top story: “It was an attempt to get you to click on CNN.com so that we could drive up our web traffic, which in turn would allow us to increase our advertising revenue.”

Some people saw Miley’s twerking buttocks as signs of the death of our culture, but I suspect the fact that people are looking to pop music for signs of the death of our culture is a sign of the death of our culture. The crappy poems in the New Yorker that no one reads because they’re so crappy are signs of the death of our culture. Miley Cyrus on your television set is a sign that the channel button on your remote control is broken. Or maybe it’s a sign that you’ve fallen asleep. Which is a sign that Miley Cyrus is on your television set. Which, for all I know, may be a sign of the death of our culture but I’m not sure because I was watching something else.

There have been many people who laughed at the many people who laughed at or disapproved of Miley. They argue that she is a top recording artist and is making millions of dollars wiggling her bottom, so there. It’s a good point when you come to think of it. I mean, who knew women could make money wiggling their bottoms? Why didn’t anyone think of that before? And why stop with that? This could create a whole new business model where women strip naked or even have sex with people for money! No, really, I know it sounds outlandish but this could be the next big thing! We could call it…  Money-Sex…  no, wait…  how about…  Screwing for Dollars…  no, that’s not quite it…

Well, never mind, give me some time and I’ll think of a name for it.