Paying the price for MTV's success

At this point, if you actually watch MTV you're either a) 12 years old, b) emotionally maladjusted or c) lobotomized.\nI hate to break the cold, hard facts to everyone, but it's true -- MTV is worthless, self-serving trash aimed at people with the mental capacity of a baboon. Straight up, yo.\nThat fact was never more apparent than at the channel's recent 20th anniversary "bash," which featured, as its headlining act, Kid Rock, a man (and I use that term loosely) with all the musical talent of a bowl of tapioca pudding -- perhaps even less.\nTo quote the immortal words of one Bart Simpson, "I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows."\nOf course, it's not as if MTV had ever been a shining example of modern mass communication. From the very beginning, it was geared toward teenagers with short attention spans and major disposable incomes (earned largely through hefty allowances from dumb parents like mine who, while thinking they were "bonding" with their kids, were actually providing them with the means to buy Dokken tapes. I should note here that I love my parents very much).\nBut in the 1980s, at least MTV played cool music. Have you ever actually listened to the Buggles? They're not that bad, especially compared with current sludge like Slipknot or Limp Bizkit.\nTwenty years ago, you could see a Who video on MTV. Granted, it was probably "You Better You Bet," which, compared to, say, "Baba O'Riley," was kind of lame. But does it matter? At least it was the Who.\nIn the 1980s, MTV also had a show called "Closet Classics," which played vintage videos from the early 1970s. Picture, if you will, the four members of Sabbath, standing on a platform and pretending to play "Paranoid." Ozzy is planted at the microphone, obviously stoned out of his mind, his long locks flowing as he bobs his head to the piped-in music. His fake vocals aren't even close to matching the track. Flashing in the background are huge, multi-colored pictures of bald women. Bald women, people. Does it get any better than that?\nSure it does! Just tune in to MTV late on Saturday night for "Headbanger's Ball," where impressionable little mushbrains like me can get their first taste of Slayer, Metal Church and Exodus. Or try out "Yo! MTV Raps" for some fly Public Enemy, Kurtis Blow or Run-DMC (minus, of course, those Aerosmith clowns).\nAnd what red-blooded, pubescent American male didn't fawn over Martha Quinn? Man, she had it goin' on. Not like these air-headed bimbos the network has now. And J.J. Jackson was The Man.\nBut that was then. Now, we are in hell. MTV hell. Today, the MTV daily rotation consists of about 20 videos filled with either mindless teen pop by girls with breast implants and boys without chest hair, or mindless, insipid (props to Morton Downey, another 1980s hipster) rap -- rock by boys with ugly tattoos and stupid earrings and backwards hats.\nOnce in a great while you might get some smooth, smokin' soul from Maxwell, Jill Scott or Alicia Keys, but the very next minute is another ballad from Elton John (who seriously needs to shut the hell up) or a mindless, cookie-cutter dance track from everybody's favorite, Madonna.\nWe are all responsible for this, because we're the ones who allow MTV to thrive and suck out the brains of our young people. That includes me, because it was my generation that first nurtured MTV and gave it life.\nIt is we who shoulder most of the blame for spawning Satan. We are the ones who pulled back the hair and saw 666 engraved on Damien's scalp. Yet we did nothing to stop it. We even encouraged it. For this, eternal damnation is indeed our fate.\nActually, I'd rather be in hell than up here. Satan is much less evil than Carson Daly.