Because the world needs another reason to dislike Elizabeth Hasselbeck…

It’s official: I have joined the Hasselbeck-hating herd. That’d be Elizabeth Hasselbeck aka “Hasselbitch”, The View’s lone Republican.

This whole time, when everyone else was hating-on Elizabeth, I really wanted to like her. She is, after all, the panelist who most resembles moi, physically and demographically speaking. She’s young-ish, blonde, college-educated, fashion-obsessed, and unafraid to speak politics.

But that’s where the similarities end. Ideologically, I am most in line with a middle aged black comic who has been divorced 4 times. Whoopi Goldberg is my Sista! Who knew?

Still, make no mistake: it is not her narrow-minded view of Roe v. Wade that drove me to join the Hasselbeck-hating herd. Nor was it her insipid, literal-minded, overly judgmental stance on religion, education and/or values.

It was something far more important.

Today, as seen in the clip below, Hasselbitch’s sentiment left a taste in my mouth that no amount of Listerine will obliterate.

For those of you that didn’t watch the clip, I’ll sum it up as follows:

To everyone else’s horror (with the possible exception of Sherri “Is the world flat?” Shepherd), Hasselbitch squeals, “Guess who’s coming back you guys? New Kids on the Block!”

Without the smallest hint of facetiousness, mind you.To which Joy says, “You remind me of [your 2 year old daughter] Grace right now”. Among other things, verbal and otherwise.

If only I’d been around to really tell her how it is!

Among musicians bands err.. musical performers, NKOTB holds a special place in the darkest part of my soul. ‘Tis a place previously inhabited only by the likes of OJ Simpson and perhaps, a few sorority “sisters” from my college days (and you know who you are, backstabbing bitches!!).

This New Kids on the Block are the first “Formula Band” I was made aware of. Someone later pointed out that The Monkees came first, but in my mind, the New Kids will always be the first band to exist solely as the result of some creepy middle-aged pedophilic money-hungry puppeteer.

(Left) The New Kids on the Block… before they were old; (Right) Lou Perelman, The creepy, pedophilic con-artist Svengali behind later incarnations of NKOTB 98 Degrees, O-Town, N’Sync, et. al.

They cheapened the musical process, lowering artistic standards forever. Worst of all, they paved the way for the proliferation of boy bands, whose members’ only talents involve lip-syncing and dancing.

After the rise of NKOTB, boy bands went on to multiply like new strains of hepatitis. Meanwhile, countless numbers of genuinely talented, organic bands– possible modern-day Beatles equivalents–got dropped by their respective labels to make room for these musical caricatures, whose only genius lied in marketing. And the ability to lip-sync, perhaps.

Hell, even Eminem had substance!

All the while, kids growing up went unexposed to music created outside of a laboratory-type setting. Unless they were able to get their hands on non-mainstream magazines like The Face [R.I.P.], these kids never got to experience the solace that a teenager feels when reading the lyrics to a Smiths CD, or be wowed by the musical synergistic genius of, say, Daft Punk.

Growing up, I was alarmed sufficiently by this phenomenon to write a HS research paper on the topic. It read like a doom-and-gloom manifesto, and was titled something like New Kids on the Block Bring Death to Music and Culture.

In the paper, I predicted that the upcoming generation would be ruined by the diet of bubble-gum pseudo-pop they were ingesting. It was sugar for the soul, when what these kids really needed was some organic, unprocessed protein, like the modern day Beatles-equivalents the labels would later dump in favor of O-Town.

If we didn’t diversify the cultural diet being fed to these kids via the airwaves, I argued, their souls would fail to develop properly and would be forever scarred by malnutrition, like the poor kids in Africa.

They would grow idolize people with no talent, ’stars’ who were famous for nothing but fake tans and bad, bleached-out hair extensions.

Do you think I was on to something?

Yeah, me too.

Which is why I’m trying not to hate Hasslebeck so much. She can’t help it. She was raised on NKOTB.

Like she said to a disgusted Whoopi in the clip above:

“The New Kids on the Block are my generation’s Beatles”.

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• The formula band flurry/boy-band barfalon began with New Kids on the Block….
• Win NKOTB tickets!!