Every Rose Has Its Thorn

I was linked a horrible thing yesterday.

I thought I'd seen every depraved, heinous thing the internet had to offer, been completely desensitized to pretty much everything not involving pre-teens, open wounds or animal abuse.

Obviously I had not considered the possibility of a Bret Michaels/Miley Cyrus duet:




Do you remember when I mentioned that part of your brain that asks, "WTF?" and "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" This is that same little loop of gray matter blaring warnings unheeded.

This is Bret Michaels, diabetic, hemorrhage-prone frontman of "Poison" and all-around celebreality douchebag dong in a bandanna. Also, this is Miley Cyrus, probably the most furiously masturbated over tween idol since Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan ruined both their careers. She has managed to so far maintain grace and dignity while staving off the more unseemly advances of both the Disney Corporation and rich spoiled slutdom. (It's entirely possible her father has threatened to beat the living shit out of her if she fucks up. That might be in her contract.)

Yes, lets put this lovely, very rapable 17 year old girl on stage with a raging 40 year old sex (etc.) addict. Brilliant. It will sell millions of YouTube dollars.


Now I can almost put a reasonable spin on this.

• Bret Michaels wrote a song for his new album "Nothing to Lose" which had backing vocals written for a young, female country-ish singer, ostensibly to score some of the sweet, sweet genre crossover record sales. Miley Cyrus is chosen as a leader in the genre.
  
• Miley scratches Bret's sexual sore laden back, so he scratches hers by allowing her to cover "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" for her upcoming album "Can't Be Tamed."
• Cross-promotion requires them to appear and sing together.

Fine. Sure. Everything's well and good in theory, but this is America, where we go through eleven pop idols before light brunch with mimosas. This is like storing matter and antimatter together, like mixing acids and bases, like putting Miley Fucking Cyrus on the same stage as Bret "Fuck Anything" Michaels.

And now there's a subtle controversy over Cyrus appearing in Michael's song because its lyrics are somewhat racy for a 17 year old to be singing alongside a grown man.

This we have a problem with? She's seventeen. That's old enough to legally do the horizontal Hokey Pokey with Bret Micahels in thirty-eight states. Are we really that up tight about letting her branch out into more mature lyrics, but are completely willing to put her in close proximity to a walking STI so long as its for her album? So long as it's time-tested dirty rock and not some new piece designed to get Michaels some incredibly famous jailbait?

Here's the cover of Cyrus' "Can't Be Tamed," for the record:

















LOL at bad Jessica Alba "Dark Angel" cosplay.

Look at the airbrushing on that girl. That's not the type of girl who dates a Jo-Bro, that's the type of girl to crack a pool cue over his head and call him gay.

When did we start applying double standards to our own double standards? Bret Michaels is a skeevebag. We've all known this since 1983. The rules were the same as going to the zoo: don't feed the Bret and don't get to close to it either. Don't go complaining when you throw your sinewy teenage pop stars into the Bret cage and they get eaten out up.

Which brings me back to my original question:

Who the fuck thought this would be a good idea?