I am all for crossovers. Convergence, whatever you want to call it. I love things like the Heroes Comic books, or well-written blogs in the voice my favorite TV and movie characters. I love it that I can watch Rocketboom on my TiVo, or listen to Tim Goodman’s latest podcast when I’m running.
But sometimes, the crossover is so heinous, the crossoverer (crossoveree?) is so obviously slumming (in his or her mind, since Blogging is a noble calling), so desperately clinging to some kind of relevance, that I don’t want any part of it.
For example, Joan Rivers blogging the Emmy Red Carpet.
If you’ve ever flipped through any pre-Awards show coverage over the past several years, you’ve probably come across Joan Rivers, doing her Red Carpet interview thing. And, if you were interested in the person she was talking to, you might even have watched.
And when you watched, I’ll bet this is what you thought: “who is this person and why is she befouling my TV screen?” Because, within two seconds of Joan’s surgically dehanced mouth opening, it became apparent that a) she didn’t know who she was talking to, b) she didn’t know what she was talking about, and c) she thought she was much wittier than she really was.
I’ve been told that, back in the day, she was a pretty funny person. I’ve never actually seen any evidence of this, of course, and most of the substantiation of any claim to her wit seems to come from the fact that she was a guest-host on the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson was on vacation.
It is, of course, entirely possible that Johnny had her guest host precisely because he knew that she wasn’t any threat. Because, so far as I know, Joan Rivers hasn’t said a single witty thing in about four decades.
And she certainly isn’t going to start now, because come ON!! Does anybody seriously believe that Joan Frackin’ Rivers will be sitting with a godsdammed laptop at the Emmys Red Carpet, actually blogging the event?
Nobody, right? You know that she has hired ghostbloggers, who are already thinking shit up as we speak. And no doubt, really unfunny shit. Bad ghostbloggers, bad!! And bad on VH1, who seemingly encouraged this crap.
This all has the whiff of the last-ditch attention grab from someone who was kicked off of E!, kicked off of the TV Guide Channel (and by the way, I mean, how bad do you have to be to get kicked off of the TV Guide Channel?) and suddenly discovered this whole “blogging” thing.
Or do you think that Joan was sitting around one day and thinking that she’s really gotta get that Internet project off of the ground that she’s been thinking about since Melissa turned her on to Suck in 1995?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
I was going to be overly dramatic and say that this was obviously the Death of Blogging, but that’s already declared several times in the past and will be declared several times in the future.
However, the phrase “Joan Rivers, Blogger,” does kind of cheapen Blogging in a very real way. Not a death blow, but a kidney shot. Thanks, Joan!!
In the meantime, I’ll be sure not to check this out on Sunday and I urge you to do the same. Maybe she’ll get the hint, and just retire, already.
If ever there was a use for Twitter this must be it.