When the star of the night, wore a faux meat dress (cow couture) to the VMA’s, every vegan critic and entertainment reporter had to take it out on someone.
That person, turned out to be the other new blonde star of the night, Chelsea Handler of New Jersey, now living in California. Of Chelsea’s first MTV Video Music Awards MC hosting gig, here’s what other media outlets had to say:
Entertainment Weekly says Handler was “too paint by numbers.” Her jokes about Kanye West, they dubbed “edgy-but-boring.” How can you be both edgy and boring? That’s such entitled analysis.
The Washington Post critiqued Handler’s opening monologue, labeling her banter “a string of flat punch lines that felt a few degrees below crass.” Hello, this girl’s from New Jersey originally. Chelsea’s humor is a NJ art form. But perhaps, I see The Post‘s point. On the Chelsea Lately Show any press is good press, and that was a compliment.
The New York Times were the most scathing. New York has its own late night talk market of hosts to gun for. Here’s what they said: “among the worst [hosts] in the show’s history.” Ouch.
“Here, she never looked comfortable, undone by nerves, brittle material, and the wattage of those around her.” Okay, so she’s not Carol Burnett yet. Noted. Although they like Chelsea on her Late Night Show (“consistently funny”), they went on to describe her as being “purposefully out-of-touch, with brief, alarming flashes of off-color racial humor.”
Chelsea’s whole gig is the: gay, lesbian, black, disabled, fat, Asian, redhead, Jewish, Catholic schtick. Like… used all together, as many times as you can get these words into one the sentence. She’s really proud of herself, when she can.
In fact, a perfect show for Chelsea is when all of these words are used at least 30 times (each), in a Chelsea half hour TV format. Guests have to be at least three of those labels, to even make it onto her show.
Or if a celebrity guest (who brings in ratings), they must at least be prepared to say three of these words while Chelsea interviews them. In this role, Handler is very funny. She crosses all the taboo lines that many mainstream media gatekeepers are not. So to label Chelsea Handler ‘alarming’ with ‘off-color racial humor’ is to miss the point of why she was even chosen as host this year. Handler would have loved that racist compliment, the best.
When she returns to her late night hosting gig, she should just wear a slab of meat on her head for the duration of the whole show for a laugh. The Hollywood Reporter now under new management, decided to grill Handler too. Not really. They just ran with what The Times ran with.
A note, to Handler’s team, to start including THR news references into their programming content perhaps. (That’s like a Hollywood, “hello”). Janice Min, is the new girl in charge.
In California, everyone loves Chelsea Handler. She’s naughty. And Jewish-Catholic zany fun. She’s also one of the few female hosts the Awards Show has had. Maybe critics just don’t like female hosts, because she wasn’t that bad in her first MC hosting gig.
It’s rational thinking just to blame the faux cow-couture dress Lady Gaga wore as the show stopper of gross, on these Vegan critics testy words, instead.
There’s nothing that annoys a testy vegan media critic more than plastic meat. They can’t even choose not to eat that. Or question whether it exists or not, is real or not, to entertain. Poor Chelsea Handler. She did a stellar job.
I would like to see Chelsea get funnier on her show. Like, she could use the words ‘Muslim, Iran, terrorist, Arabs, Middle Easterners, mosque, hummus’ … for instance, more so than she does, on late night talk. Carol Burnett certainly would have, if Burnett had the spotlight today, to entertain.
~Posted by Horiwood.Com, Hollywood California USA. 9.13.10~
