As Pure As The Driven Slush

Russell Brand’s performance at the MTV VMA Awards has got a lot of people upset, but what can you expect from a man who shows up to work the day after 9/11 dressed as Osama Bin Laden? The most incredible thing about that stunt in context to his appearance as host of these awards is that he happened to be working for MTV at the time. They fired him on the spot.

Brand is evidently a young, hip, British Don Rickles type of insult comedian with a Phyllis Diller hairdo. I think of him as a reactionary comedian, in the sense that his comedy, such as it is, depends on eliciting the expectation of a visceral response from the targets of his routine, not so much by himself as much as by his audience.

In his opening act at the VMA Awards, he immediately requested that we vote for Barak Obama, even though he acknowledged there were many here in this country-“I think they’re called racists”, he said-who don’t think America is ready for a black president. He went on to say that he believed America to be a forward looking country, otherwise they would not have elected that “retarded cowboy” (Bush) for eight years, going on to say that in Britain Bush would not be trusted with a pair of scissors.

He mentioned McCain and Sarah Palin as well, but mostly in the context of the pregnancy of Palin’s unmarried teenage daughter. He expressed mock sympathy for the girl’s boyfriend in that one minute he was enjoying himself having sex and the next thing you know there he is being dragged to the Republican National Convention, going on to say that was the best possible inducement to chastity.

This all provided lead-in to an extended jab at the boy band and Disney stars The Jonas Brothers, who appeared and performed at the awards show. Brand mercilessly derided them for their public vows to remain chaste until marriage and their choosing to wear “promise rings” as a sign of this commitment, Brand saying he would be more impressed if they wore the rings on their penises.

The Jonas Brothers were recipients of several other such jabs by the comedian. Former American Idol season six winner Jordan Sparks defended the brothers, explaining that not all boys and girls wanted to be sluts. Brand then apologized but tempered this with the explanation that a little sex every now and then was all right.

It is worth noting here that Brand is a known hedonist and sex addict. He spent a month at a rehab facility, at the insistence of his management, during which he spent a harrowing period as the roommate of an Arizona pedophile who had “eloped” with his thirteen-year-old stepdaughter. Brand toughed it out and stayed at the facility for the duration of his commitment. Yet, he has the reputation of a man with a voracious sexual appetite. He traces this to the time when, at the age of seventeen, his father availed for him the services of a Hong Kong prostitute.

Some security guards caught him once having sex with two female companions in a public bathroom and ordered him off the premises, to which he later returned the same night. He has said he finds it impossible to achieve any degree of sexual satisfaction and finds himself continuously trying to fill that void, oftentimes with two female partners at a time, seldom with the same one or two women two nights in a row.

When you look at his life, then, it becomes easy to see why such a lifestyle commitment publicly made by the Jonas Brothers is so incomprehensible to him. At the VMA Awards, he pointed out the Jonas Brothers could have sex with any woman they wanted.

Russell Brand, frankly, is not funny to me, but by the same token, I don’t view him as particularly offensive. Had he not, at almost the very beginning of his routine, made such an overtly partisan request that we in America vote for Obama for “the world’s sake”, I doubt that his other political comments would have raised many eyebrows. He would be just another big-mouthed leftist comedian to his detractors, but otherwise the story would have gone away by now with little notice, if any.

The Jonas Brothers-now them I find offensive. Their alleged music is just a part of the reason, though assuredly quite a big part. I’ve admittedly only heard bits and pieces of it. Nevertheless, if you one day accidentally swallow a heaping tablespoon of shit, I hardly think you are required to eat the entire bowl before you know what you’re dealing with.

That said, they are not the first trite, mediocre musicians, nor will they be the last. I do not particularly mind that they have made a commitment to chastity either, but putting the two together is just a little much. I have to wonder if the public commitment, such as it is, is just another part of their overall show business package. Perhaps it’s an inducement for parents to feel good about allowing their kids to watch them, listen to them, buy their recordings, all on the grounds that they are pure and wholesome family entertainment, the type of teen idols you want your own kids to emulate. All the while, you and your kid are all getting fucked, but good.

For this reason, I do find them offensive, and Russell Brands bit about them at the VMA Awards, while admittedly over-the-top, was as funny as anything I’d ever heard him do. This in fact has attracted as much notice-and criticism-as his political comments. I think Russell has their number, and it makes a lot of us wince in embarrassment. One time the camera panned over to the Jonas Brothers, sitting in the audience, looking like deer caught in the headlights.

The oldest of the Jonas Brothers is twenty-one years old.