Dancing With the $$$$$

Have you heard about the new Dancing With The Stars lineup? Puhleeeeze!!!! Nancy Grace? Chaz Bono? George Clooney’s ex, what's-her-name-something Cannabis? Oy!

I’m not a regular DWTS viewer, and only checked-in last season because Kirstie Alley was showing everyone that she CAN dance and lose weight at the same time! Oh, and for a woman of  “a certain age” she could mash it up with the young-ins!

But the very idea of even imagining Nancy Grace twirling around to a hot salsa number produces GERD-like symptoms. What in the world was she $thinking$ when asked to set aside her newsy $credibility$ to shake-shake-shake that hooty-booty in front of $millions$ who are fans of her $serious$ broadcasting work? I’m $stumped$.

And Chaz? Well, I was a bit harsh on him in the Return To Gender post several months ago, so perhaps I could go easy on his participation in an exercise-inducing spectacle: however, the vision of Chaz dipping a chickie in a suave move makes my eyes hurt as it could end up being more of an embarrassment than the freak show the producers anticipate. Or maybe the exec’s hope for a Cher intervention. Unfortunately for them, Cher prefers to remain out of sight these days with regard to her spawn’s lifestyle, so that’s off the table as quickly as Chaz may be voted off the show.

Will I tune in to watch this mess? Probably not, for the lineup is so absurd and clearly formed to bring more viewers to the tube on the basis of morbid curiosity than anything to do with actual dancing that I refuse to play along (as if my lack of participation will make a difference). I’ll take exploitation only up to a point before hitting the delete button in my brain, and that is all the DWTS new lineup is: pure exploitation – on both sides of the camera.

Oh yeah, and then there is David Arquette, the guy with the permanent sads over the breakup of his marriage to Courtney Cox and an Howard Stern interviewee regular who loves to tell the world how sorry he is for whatever it was that he did or didn’t do to turn off Courtney (one of the turn-offs could be that he talks to Howard Stern). Now he has really slipped into banana-peel territory when he signed on to DWTS to show the world another reason why Courtney left his sorry arse in the dirt. Does he need the money? Doesn’t he get 50% of Courtney’s “Friends” royalties? Whatzzup, David? Do you really need more self-humiliation?

Oh well. I’m sure there will be excellent ratings for the show and endless comments and articles all over the interwebs about who is dancing well and how surprising it is for fill-in-the-blank to samba like there’s no tomorrow, so to speak/as it were/blah blah. And one can be certain that all of the entertainment-focused programs will hype every episode to gain access to the “stars” for a little extra interview so that they will have an insider view of what each performer thinks of their dancing partner.

After all, when it gets down to it, it’s all about what’s the entertainment tonight, right?