Let's hunt and kill the Cyrus family*

* With thanks to Sensei Bill Hicks

Seriously...

How does this happen? I thought Papa/Cousin Billy Ray was bad enough 15 odd years ago but now we also have to deal with the evil/borderline handicapped fruit of his loins?

Let's just be clear. I am not referring to the individuals here. Maybe they're nice people who enjoy nothing more than sitting out in the car resting on cinder blocks in the front yard and playing banjo.

I'm referring to what they represent in our cultural wastelandscape. Billy Ray Cyrus pretty much put the last nail in the coffin of country music when he released... that thing. You know the thing I'm referring to. I won't say it. I won't even put a link so you can listen to it. The less said about it the better. I hate to accord that inbred walking mullet so much historical importance, but there is fairly strong argument to be made that there is a line that was crossed in the early nineties, a line he will forever be associated with. As Hank Williams III says, "The country music I'm hearin' nowdays, it's a bunch of fucking shit to me."

So yeah. I thought THAT was bad.

But now we have this attention-starved, jizz-soaked nymphet who has become, for some godforsaken reason, a really twisted pop-culture icon. She's 17 and she has already been selling sex like an auto-tuned syphilitic whore for a few years now.  Is this what tween (btw... I also hate that term) girls are striving to be? Great. Let's just buy everyone some of these and let them run rampant through the blood-drenched streets. Let's also go knock on Britney Spears' door to thank her.

How have we let this happen? Are we so desperate for spectacle that we will turn to any poor confused adolescent and scream "DANCE YOU FUCKING MONKEY!" whislt throwing wads of cash at them?

Phew. I'm glad I got that out of my system. Back to our regularly scheduled programming...