Dancing With The Stars is not fighting fair

March 28th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

Thanks to Jose Canseco’s nonsense, I’ve touched on this ever so briefly at the MLB FanHouse, but I believe it deserves a longer treatment.

The other night, in between a little light reading and some nachos with the girlfriend, I was forced - forced, I say! - to take in the inaugural episode of the newest season of Dancing With The Stars. I really wanted nothing to do with this show; it’s everything that’s bad about American Idol with an even more vapid, self-absorbed cast and a significantly more annoying set of judges.

Still, I told myself: watch it for the girlfriend, be a nice guy, and hey, Clyde Drexler’s on the show! You might get some decent blog material out of this somehow.

Well, I did. And it has nothing to do with the athletes on the show.

My question: how in the hell is Joey Fatone allowed to compete in this thing? He is a professional dancer. He made millions and millions of dollars largely for his ability to dance around on a stage while Justin Timberlake and that other dude pretended to sing lyrics they didn’t write. This was his occupation, an incredibly lucrative one. And now he gets to rock people’s worlds on Dancing With The Stars? If I were the other contestants, I’d be furious. Sure, I guess there’s nothing mandating that the show be purely amateuristic competition, but that certainly seems to be the ethos, especially since 99% of the “jokes” come from the contestants’ lack of dancing prowess.

What’s worse, Fatone is hurting the long term blog prospects of this show. How are we supposed to make fun of Clyde Drexler or Laila Ali or Apolo Anton Ohno (remember him?) if Fatone, a professional dancer, is wiping the floor with them every week? At some point, sympathy’s going to take over.

Anyway, I looked up from my book the other night just long enough to watch twinkle-toes Joey pull off a flawless routine, and for some reason, I got really pissed. And I have absolutely no idea why.