Ricky Gervais isn't funny

There was a critic writing about cult films. He made a startling realization watching Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor. When the movie was released, people thought that Jerry was making fun of Dean Martin. But watch a few Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day telethons and you realize he was doing himself. Buddy Love was the other side of Lewis's own personality.

And now...you have Ricky Gervais. In The Office.

I thought it was rather cruel for a successful comic to make a TV show about an office worker who desperately wishes he were a comedian and imagines himself to be a comic genius. But looking at Gervais hosting the Golden Globe Awards, you realize that his character, David Brent, was Gervais himself.

You could probably make a pretty good joke about the fact that Robert Downey, Jr, had a serious drug problem and has been in jail. But simply stating that he's been in rehab and in jail is not a joke. You could make a joke about the rumors that Tom Cruise is gay, but simply saying he's gay isn't a joke.

And I didn't understand his "joke" about Justin Bieber. He said "The only way that he could have impregnated a girl was if he borrowed one of Martha Stewart's old turkey basters."

Why, specifically, Martha Stewart's turkey baster? And why couldn't Justin Bieber get a girl pregnant otherwise? I can think of any number of impediments that might render one incapable of impregnating a girl, but why attribute any of these to Justin Bieber? What is he referring to? What's the joke?

Gervais throws together some elements, says things that sound like jokes, and the shallow, dim-witted celebrities act like it's the funniest thing they've ever heard.

Justin Bieber should keep his hands to himself

Look with your eyes, not with your hands!

Teenagers touch each other more that regular people. I don't know why. They don't know any better.

The blog Shadow & Act (there's link to it to your right) a blog concerned with black cinema, posted a video of Bieber in front of reporters with Esperanza Spalding, the woman who beat him for the Grammy. He complimented her hair. Then he touched her hair.

Apparently this is a common problem. Black people have whites wanting to touch their hair all the time. It's terribly rude. Esperanza was a good sport about it. My impression was that Bieber was relating to her as if she were another teenager. She's ten years older than he is. She went to a conservatory, for God's sake. She doesn't need some sticky teenager pawing her hair.
But I just watched an episode of The Soup. We see Justin Bieber at a wax museum admiring a wax figure of himself. And what does he do? He starts touching the hair.