Entertainment Tonight is turning my stomach

Honest to God! My ritual used to be to turn to NTV at 7:00 and watch Entertainment Tonight. It was a pretty good show and seemed somehow above the tabloid type entertainment shows and magazines around. True, they went overboard with the Tomkat wedding thing and the Jolie-Pitt baby thing and lately they have been getting on my nerves with Dr. Phil's 400 pound babies and 1200 pound man shows, oh and the Ugly Vanessa series was truly annoying (maybe people in the public laughed at Vanessa Minnillo in a prosthetic face and a "fat suit" because she looked like she had rubber slathered on her face and it was melting off). But, it was a fun, mindless half an hour a night where I could catch up on Britney's most recent hoohoo exposure and the latest celebrity arrests/rehab visits.

Then on February 7th of this year, I decided that I was sick of night after night of Anna Nicole Smith slurring, crying and growling into the camera and would not watch ET anymore. This is not entertainment, I thought. Why am I watching this person who does not entertain me and has no discernable talent other than being tabloid fodder? Well, the next day the poor woman died and I felt bad, very sorry for her and hoped she would find some peace in death.

Maybe she did, but we sure didn't. The show that I once thought of as different than the tabloids, is sinking to new lows in television (and that is hard to do in the world of Jerry Springer and Flavor of Love). Since Anna Nicole Smith died, almost every single minute of Entertainment Tonight, and it's sister show (AKA copy of ET with different co-hosts and the same stories) The Insider, has been about her, her baby, the alleged pain of her alleged partner, Howard K. Stern, Stern's siblings, potential daddies for Anna Nicole's baby and rehashes of Anna's last interviews with ET. I know this not because I watched it but because I watched the previews of the shows at the beginning, always with the hope that they could return to the good old ET I knew and loved. I cannot stomach to actually watch the show.

I mean it's disgusting. They had cameras on Howard K Stern when he was reunited with his alleged child because you know that a) if you were being reunited with your child after her mother just died, a camera capturing it all for the world to see would be a big necessity and b) an entertainment show must say "whoa, that kid just lost her mother, let's suck up all the pain we can and throw it out in the world. Yeah, now that's entertainment tonight!"

Maybe nothing else has happened in the entertainment world since Anna Nicole died. Oh, wait, there was something called The Grammys. It is true that ET did do a story on that. They interrupted Anna Nicole Smith is Dead and All Her Scummy Friends and Relatives are Degrading Themselves and Her Memory on TV Tonight to show us a two minute recap of the awards (I watched that night until the Grammy recap was over because I wanted to see more about the Dixie Chicks and their win).

One night I watched the previews of The Insider and I swear to God that host Pat O'Brien was standing in a cemetery next to a freshly dug open grave saying something like "will this be Anna Nicole Smith's final resting place? Tune in and find out." (My husband said "someone is watching TV now and saying 'no, that's Uncle John's grave. What are they doing next to Uncle John's grave?'")

So, ET is done for me. I don't know how I can ever go back to watching it again. Maybe if they announce that they were temporarily insane and forgot what the word "entertainment" meant and profusely apologize for making a sad situation into something loathsome. Other than that, bye, bye ET.