The Stunt That Made Me Sick
Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 3:40 am
>>At some point, aren't we all going to tire of this manufactured nonsense? The world awaits this nonsense with bated breath.
>>When they quit doing the MTV awards live, I stopped watching. I Want unscripted nonsense, unplanned chaos, dogs walking onstage unwanted.
>>And Lloyd Grove got sick because he saw crotch-to-face contact? Ten years ago they threw bloggers offline for masturbating cats with toothbrushes.
>>His wife must be one lonely woman if his tongue never ... oh, darling, don't stop!!
The Stunt That Made Me Sick
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... mainpromo6
Sacha Baron Cohens faked crotch-first landing on Eminem at the MTV Movie Awards was degradingto all of us, says The Daily Beasts Lloyd Grove.
- - - OK, that unsightly encounter on Sundays MTV Movie Awards between Bruno and Eminemaka Sacha Baron Cohen and Marshall Matherswas a complete fake. We have it on the authority of MTV flacks and the shows Twittering head writer, Scott Aukerman, that the two entertainment icons actually rehearsed the climactic moment in which Cohens flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion correspondent characterwearing white-feathered wings and a buttcrack-revealing thongwas lowered from the ceiling onto the rappers snarling face.
- - - Arse to arse, as it were.
- - - At which point Mathers screamed Are you serious?get him off me! followed by an explosion of bleeped profanities, and then stormed out of the Gibson Theater with his equally rage-filled bodyguards. It sure looked realwardrobe malfunction as psychodrama.
- - - Not since Mothra descended on Godzillaalso, by the way, a manufactured clashhas there been such excitement in the popular culture. But Im not so sure it was all that funny (never mind the camera angle on a giggly Cameron Diaz) and Im not sure I want to see Cohen psychically assault a bunch of unsuspecting fashionistas when his latest big-budget ambush mockumentary, Bruno, is released next month by Universal Pictures.
- - - The Cambridge-educated Londoner, who hails from an Orthodox Jewish family of impressive intellectual attainment, has gotten rich off of his comically thuggish and ignorant characters (namely Borat and Ali G) who regularly make fools of the high and mighty and, with increasing frequency, ordinary innocents in the service of cheap laughs.
- - - The white rap star from Detroit, who is equally talented but otherwise unlettered, has made a fortune of his own from bracing performances of occasionally misogynistic and homophobic dittiessome of it hate-speech directed at his motherwhile impersonating a not-so-comically thuggish character.
- - - Eminem, who likewise has product to move (his CD Relapse debuted May 19), had almost succeeded in rehabilitating himself from the debacle of a previous MTV appearance years ago in which he manhandled Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and bullied the bald, bespectacled Moby. On Sunday I even thought he might be a sympathetic victimthat is, when many fans believed that the faceoff was the real dealand wondered if he had grounds to sue.
- - - But prominent entertainment lawyer David H. Chidekel set me straight. The only thing that Eminem could really sue for here are damages, he told The Daily Beasts Cate Smithson. First, he could sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and second, assaultunwanted touching where you feel some emotional response. But Eminems case wouldnt be very strong, Chidekel went on. Hes a little nuttywhat, is he going to go to his shrink and prove that he hasnt slept in three days over [the incident]?...Everybody knows Sacha Baron Cohen does these kinds of things.
- - - Indeed, he does. New York magazines film critic David Edelstein offered a rare cautionary note amid all the raves for Cohens 2006 hit, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Cataloguing the movies many instances of cruelty and humiliation inflicted on people who believed they were only trying to be hospitable to a foreign visitor, Edelstein observed: Most clowns have a wide streak of sadism, but its tempting to think of Sacha Baron Cohen as a sadist with a wide streak of clownishness. As if to confirm Edelsteins speculation, at a premiere party for a different movie in Manhattan, the 6-foot-4 Cohen grabbed the throat and squeezed the windpipe of a working Daily News photographer who had the gall to do his job and take his picture. Cohen wasnt joking.
- - - All of which makes me less than amused by this latest display of cultural coarsening that sank us even lower, if possible, than the cheesiest reality-TV show. When I see a looming celebrity gluteus, something inside me fairly shrieks: Im a civilian, get me out of here! And as for Bruno and Eminem, a plague on both those louses.
- - - Lloyd Grove is a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
>>When they quit doing the MTV awards live, I stopped watching. I Want unscripted nonsense, unplanned chaos, dogs walking onstage unwanted.
>>And Lloyd Grove got sick because he saw crotch-to-face contact? Ten years ago they threw bloggers offline for masturbating cats with toothbrushes.
>>His wife must be one lonely woman if his tongue never ... oh, darling, don't stop!!
The Stunt That Made Me Sick
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... mainpromo6
Sacha Baron Cohens faked crotch-first landing on Eminem at the MTV Movie Awards was degradingto all of us, says The Daily Beasts Lloyd Grove.
- - - OK, that unsightly encounter on Sundays MTV Movie Awards between Bruno and Eminemaka Sacha Baron Cohen and Marshall Matherswas a complete fake. We have it on the authority of MTV flacks and the shows Twittering head writer, Scott Aukerman, that the two entertainment icons actually rehearsed the climactic moment in which Cohens flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion correspondent characterwearing white-feathered wings and a buttcrack-revealing thongwas lowered from the ceiling onto the rappers snarling face.
- - - Arse to arse, as it were.
- - - At which point Mathers screamed Are you serious?get him off me! followed by an explosion of bleeped profanities, and then stormed out of the Gibson Theater with his equally rage-filled bodyguards. It sure looked realwardrobe malfunction as psychodrama.
- - - Not since Mothra descended on Godzillaalso, by the way, a manufactured clashhas there been such excitement in the popular culture. But Im not so sure it was all that funny (never mind the camera angle on a giggly Cameron Diaz) and Im not sure I want to see Cohen psychically assault a bunch of unsuspecting fashionistas when his latest big-budget ambush mockumentary, Bruno, is released next month by Universal Pictures.
- - - The Cambridge-educated Londoner, who hails from an Orthodox Jewish family of impressive intellectual attainment, has gotten rich off of his comically thuggish and ignorant characters (namely Borat and Ali G) who regularly make fools of the high and mighty and, with increasing frequency, ordinary innocents in the service of cheap laughs.
- - - The white rap star from Detroit, who is equally talented but otherwise unlettered, has made a fortune of his own from bracing performances of occasionally misogynistic and homophobic dittiessome of it hate-speech directed at his motherwhile impersonating a not-so-comically thuggish character.
- - - Eminem, who likewise has product to move (his CD Relapse debuted May 19), had almost succeeded in rehabilitating himself from the debacle of a previous MTV appearance years ago in which he manhandled Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and bullied the bald, bespectacled Moby. On Sunday I even thought he might be a sympathetic victimthat is, when many fans believed that the faceoff was the real dealand wondered if he had grounds to sue.
- - - But prominent entertainment lawyer David H. Chidekel set me straight. The only thing that Eminem could really sue for here are damages, he told The Daily Beasts Cate Smithson. First, he could sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and second, assaultunwanted touching where you feel some emotional response. But Eminems case wouldnt be very strong, Chidekel went on. Hes a little nuttywhat, is he going to go to his shrink and prove that he hasnt slept in three days over [the incident]?...Everybody knows Sacha Baron Cohen does these kinds of things.
- - - Indeed, he does. New York magazines film critic David Edelstein offered a rare cautionary note amid all the raves for Cohens 2006 hit, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Cataloguing the movies many instances of cruelty and humiliation inflicted on people who believed they were only trying to be hospitable to a foreign visitor, Edelstein observed: Most clowns have a wide streak of sadism, but its tempting to think of Sacha Baron Cohen as a sadist with a wide streak of clownishness. As if to confirm Edelsteins speculation, at a premiere party for a different movie in Manhattan, the 6-foot-4 Cohen grabbed the throat and squeezed the windpipe of a working Daily News photographer who had the gall to do his job and take his picture. Cohen wasnt joking.
- - - All of which makes me less than amused by this latest display of cultural coarsening that sank us even lower, if possible, than the cheesiest reality-TV show. When I see a looming celebrity gluteus, something inside me fairly shrieks: Im a civilian, get me out of here! And as for Bruno and Eminem, a plague on both those louses.
- - - Lloyd Grove is a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.