By Crispin Sartwell

The Five Most Annoying People on Television

Television, America's greatest civic institution aside from Ebay, maintains a delicate balance of geniality and obnoxiousness. For example, while Oprah is still smiling in that friendly way on the air, she's also still snarling at lackeys like a fabulously wealthy poodle/pit bull mix as soon as the cameras are off.

Obnoxiousness can be an effective sales strategy. Mr. Whipple sold you toilet paper by giving you a headache. But for the five most annoying people on television, mere headache has proven insufficient. These people want to harm you. They want to slam red-hot skewers into your ears and wiggle them around.

(1) Ari Fleisher
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz asked the deepest question of all: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Of course, if there really is nothing, then "we" are not asking the question. In fact there's no "question" to ask. But whether or not there are "reporters" asking him "questions" at White House briefings, "Fleischer" is not saying anything. Next time you hear him talking, ask yourself in all seriousness whether he has said something rather than nothing. You may say nothingness is his job. But as Augustine argued so convincingly, evil is simply the absence of Being; Being is goodness; hence evil is nothingness. Thus we can conclude with certainty that Ari Fleischer - not, as you thought, Tinky Winky or Harry Potter - is the essence of pure evil.

(2 )Dick Vitale
I love college basketball. But if I have to listen to this buffoon yelling "ptper" (prime time player) or "diaper dandy" (freshman) one more time, someone will pay. I'm not prepared at this point in time to announce how they will pay. I have no truck with violence. I am a pacifist and I have a "shag" haircut. I weep for the homeless and I take in little voles off the street. It is unusual for me to cut out anyone's heart with an obsidian blade, and even when I do, I rarely devour it in a blood ecstasy.

(3) Big Bird
If whining out the numbers 1-10 for the 5,243,291st time were entertainment, Big Bird would be Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. The first generation of kids raised on Sesame Street responded by becoming the hardcore neo-nazi skinhead punks of the early eighties. They shot heroin and loved mindless destruction, yet they were the merest amateurs at nihilism. The second generation understood that resistance was useless, and with a frozen Big Bird smile, Al Gore welcomed them all - regardless of race, creed, religion, ethnicity, class, gender, disability, learning style, sexual orientation, age, or the size of their buttocks - to the Pure Void.

(4) Bono Vox

His bellow is comparable in intensity and profundity to the heat of the mighty Hippopotamus.

And like the heat of the mighty Hippopotamus as she sneaks up on you in the African jungle, the bellow of Bono is well-nigh unavoidable, especially if you watch MTV. As Hippo love is hard (so hard) both physically and emotionally, Bono can be hard to understand, hard to take, hard even to believe. And yet he is there, huge in his greatness, one of nature's most noble creations. For Bobo, like Bruce, is a Hippo who cares. And so as the sun sets over the great grey greasy Limpopo, we bid a fond fondue to Bobo and his world, in the confidence that he will never cease to bellow as long as he cares, and we care, and you care, and who cares.

(5) Santa Claus. Give the gift of love. Get this plump red shill the hell off my bigscreen. Actually, I'm surprised that Norelco and Bud Lite don't have Little Baby Jesus as their spokesavior.

So there you have it. Put Britney in a Burqa. Cancel Doug, once and for all. Gag Dan Rather. It's a beautiful day.

____