Why I’m Not Watching “I’m A Celebrity…”

The title of the show is “I’m A Celebrity! Get Me Out Of Here!”.  Right?

I challenge you to find a celebrity in this list:

• Heidi & Spencer Pratt – From what I’ve seen on E’s “The Soup”, these are two profoundly socially-retarded Valley Brats from MTV’s “The Hills”.  They have already quit the show several times in two days, claiming to be “Super-celebrities”.  Self-absorbed jerks, maybe…
• Janice Dickinson – Badly-aging supermodel.  Arrogant twit who’s had more surgeries than most football players.
• John Salley – Former NBA player, last seen hosting Fox’s “Best Damn Sports Show”.  Seems like a nice guy.  What’s he doing in this mess?
• Lou Diamond Phillips – Has he done anything since “La Bamba”?
• Sanjaya Malakar – American Idol washout.  His hair will be listed as a separate celebrity*.
• Stephen Baldwin – The least of the Baldwin Boys.  Brother Alec’s “30 Rock” success had nothing to do with this, right?
• Torrie Wilson – Former pro-wrestling valet/wrestler who wasn’t even all that relevant there.  Divorced her pro-wrestler husband when she realized he was short*.
• Frangela – Snarky comments on every VH1 “I Love The (insert decade here)” series are enough to make them celebrities?  And I think NBC is counting the two members of Frangela as one celebrity.  They’d be the least of this bunch if it weren’t for…
• Patti Blagojevich – …who is, apparently, a “celebrity” because her husband is a felon** who tried to sell Illinois’ vacant US Senate seat – and because NBC was miffed that a judge wouldn’t allow Rod to go to Costa Rica and play.

NBC is counting on this show to run four nights a week for three weeks, and three more nights in the fourth.  Fifteen shows about a group of “celebrities” who make D-Lister Kathy Griffin look like a superstar.  And this is the network that cancelled “Deal or No Deal”, “1 vs 100” (about to get a second life as an XBOX Live game show), and “Identity”… and that so screwed up the simple matter of who hosts The Tonight Show that they gave 5 hours a week of primetime to Jay Leno starting this fall.  Does anyone wonder why NBC, as a whole, is about as relevant as MyNetworkTV***?

Hey, at least Wipeout is back (second episode of the new season is tomorrow night).  It’s still silly, but it’s grown on me.  So… good night, and big balls.

*This may not be, strictly speaking, true.
** Strictly speaking, he’s actually an “accused felon”, but I mean… we’ve all heard the tapes!
***…whose entire 2009-10 original primetime schedule is WWE SmackDown.  That’s it.  The rest of their schedule is reruns of syndicated programming.