Poor Mojo's Newswire

. . . When the weak mock the powerful it's counter-hegemonic, it's iconoclastic, it's revolutionary. When the powerful mock the weak, it's bullying. Even if we weren't in a period of economic unrest, it would require a profound disconnect to think it a good idea to do a humiliation-based reality series in which the humiliation rolls downhill, a show in which the powerful make the essentially disenfranchised look like fools and then lecture them on their failings. Enter Mario Lopez and The CW. The "Saved by the Bell" star and the "TBL: The Beautiful Life" network have joined forces on "H8r," an astoundingly stupid and offensive reality series in which Mario Lopez's D-list friends confront people who dislike them and make it clear that it's unacceptable for anybody to have an opinion or express it on the Internet, or at least a negative opinion. So when The CW encourages you to tweet or Facebook during its programming, I have some advice: BE CAREFUL. Feel free to praise Blake Lively's fashion sense or celebrate the "Supernatural" stars and their cheekbones. But don't think that it's OK to suggest that a budding thespian on "One Tree Hill" is an inadequate actor or that one of the "90210" kids is much too old to be playing a high school student. Because if you do... Mario Lopez is coming for you, and when it comes to people who aren't tolerant of his friends, Mario Lopez is not a very tolerant guy. And Mario Lopez doesn't care how little money you make or what you do or even if anybody out there on the Internet cares about whatever mean thing you might say, because he's got a point to make, one that he believes in strongly: Even the lowest-level celebrity -- ESPECIALLY the lowest-level celebrity -- should be exempt from criticism. But feel free to love them and write about that. It's pretty insecure stuff, but I guess if Mario Lopez wants to be the Anti-Robin Hood, stealing dignity from the less fortunate and restoring it to Snooki from "Jersey Shore" and The CW wants to enable him, that's their mutual prerogative. . . .

. . . Are you kidding me, America? If it’s really so important to you that I emigrate to Canada, just tell me they serve state-subsidized nachos and kale chips on every corner and I’ll be on the next barge north, I promise. This is a public-service announcement to Jeff: I will meet you anywhere in America and physically fight you. I may not be muscular, but I’m from North Carolina — Tar Heels can scrap, son. I will step to your bullying, homophobic ass without batting an eyelash. And I will use your soul patch to wipe my chin after I eat a soup made of your tears. I end my hopeless reverie just in time to see Julie Chen turn to the camera with her robotic rictus grin and tell us the season is concluded, instructing us all to watch Rachel’s interview tomorrow afternoon on The Talk, another CBS show hosted by this talentless cyborg because she’s married to the president of CBS. Boy! I’m acting like “Grumpy McGrumpster” right now. Let me endeavor to explain: Friends, I was a political cartoonist for eight years starting shortly after 9/11. I covered the serial deceptions of a corrupt administration; the catastrophic results of ill-advised military invasions; and the manifold horrors of a world riven by disease, torture, genocide, and the murder of empathy by our body politic. But I never considered myself a cynic … until I watched Big Brother. And so I offer sour congratulations to the BB producers (and here I feel compelled to mention them by name: Allison Grodner; Rich Meehan; Curtis Colden; Jerry D’Alessandro; Chris Roach [perfect!]; Don Wollman; Michael O’Sullivan). Why do I offer congratulations? Because these producers actually did what George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the odiously mustachioed Thomas Friedman couldn’t do: They made me despair for my country. . . .