Bubbly, bumptious CeeLo Green dropped a surprise album on everyone last week via SoundCloud called TV On The Radio. (Good God, can someone please tell TV On The Radio that its next album should be called CeeLo Green?) He took old television theme songs and Goodie Mobbed 'em into new creations, singing over music from Taxi, Family Ties, and Knight Rider, among others. Green has had other nods to TV in the past with his records called St. Elsewhere and The Odd Couple, and who could forget his send-up of that wacky '80s sitcom "Fuck You!" and its less successful and watered down spinoff, "Forget You!"
It's a shitty thing for me to do but I can't help but think of Bill Cosby when I think of CeeLo Green, and it appears that I am not alone. Most every review I've seen of this new TV covers project adds an aside about rape accusations against him. Both of them are beloved TV stars — CeeLo was on four seasons of The Voice — and both of them have been accused of drugging and assaulting women. Cosby has a much harder burden of proof of innocence in my book, because of the sheer volume of alleged victims who have come forward. CeeLo, on the other hand, had only one accuser. The LAPD couldn't find sufficient evidence to prove any violence occurred, but Green received three months probation for providing ecstasy. But hey, he's jolly and cute, and guys who wear Charles Nelson Reilly glasses would never do such a thing anyway, right? He's like the reincarnated Rerun from What's Happening!! Nothing to see here folks, let's move on ...
Until he fucked up and took to Twitter and said this: "Women who really have been raped REMEMBER!!!" Yo C-Dog, you should've quit while you were ahead. So I'm not sure if I should be outraged at CeeLo for his insensitivity or outraged at the media for targeting a black man and ignoring the myriad honkies who do — and get convicted for — similar things. Because I need to be outraged, right? It's what we do.
Everyone has skeletons in their closet, so I thought, instead of getting outraged, it would be fun to dissect the dirt behind each TV show he took liberties with on his record. Because if CeeLo is the first celebrity to give someone drugs to take, then this season's Bachelor Chris Soules has a promising future in wave-function quantum mechanics.
Raking the Muck: Taxi
Taxi launched the careers of Andy Kaufman and Danny DeVito. Beyond that I always found it hella boring. Let's look under the hood though, shall we? The show's opening number, "Angela," was created by Bob James, who can pretty much singularly be blamed for the virulent rise of smooth jazz in the 20th century. Marilu Henner, who played Elaine, once slept with Tony Danza. Barf. Jeff Conaway (Bobby) had a sad life. He went from doling out hickies in Grease as Kenickie to becoming a struggling drug addict. He was on VH1's Celebrity Fit Club when it was decided he would be better cast on VH1's Celebrity Rehab. He died in 2011.
Raking the Muck: Knight Rider
Knight Rider had a dorkwad soundtrack and a ridiculous premise, kind of like its star, David Hasselhoff. Do I really need to tell everyone about The Hoff's dalliances with dypsomania? One of his wives has accused him of being violent, and he has been hospitalized several times for consequences from alleged heavy drinking. In 2007, his daughter shot that now infamous video of him gnawing on a cheeseburger while lying prostrate on the floor, seemingly tighter than a boiled owl. None of this compares to the real damage he's done by releasing his own social network called Hoffspace or recording songs like, "Flying On The Wings of Tenderness" and "Hands Up For Rock 'n' Roll."
Raking the Muck: Family Ties
Where to start with this of plethora of petulant peccancy? Meredith Baxter-Birney (Elyse Keaton) is an unrepentant lesbian, and if that wasn't bad enough, Michael J. Fox (Alex P. Keaton) exaggerated his impaired motor function from Parkinson's to gain sympathy. I know both of those things thanks to some painstaking research provided by Rush Limbaugh. And Michael Gross (Steven Keaton) devotes all of his spare time to model railroading. Die, nerd, die.
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