We’ve hit the bottom of the barrel.

That’s the probably the best way to describe MTV’s new reality dating show, ‘A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila’ – it’s the lowest of the low, a battle of the sexes for the tattooed heart of one bisexual Internet star.

It’s par for the course on MTV – a network, along with its sister channel VH1 that dabbles almost exclusively in sleaze crafted around pseudo-celebrities, from ‘The Hills’ to ‘I Love New York.’

But this reaches new depths. It’s a weekly hour-long trip through hell, but instead of Virgil as the guide, we have Tila Nguyen (aka Tila Tequila), a 25-year-old D-List star famous for having two million friends on MySpace.

She’s also a dabbling in the music business. Tila recorded a pop song called ‘I Love U,’ in which she offers the immortal words: ‘I think I love you, so don’t think I’m crazy when I tell you this. But if you ever hurt me, I’ll kill you!’

Fair enough.

Here, however, she has reached the pinnacle of her career. The premise of the show is simple: 16 men compete against 16 women; the last person standing wins Tila’s heart.

Yet the morals behind the show are beyond twisted. The star’s sexuality is treated like a sick joke, a carnival prize to be won by the girl able to do the most push-ups or the man best able to walk in high heels.

The contestants themselves are cardboard stand-ups impersonating humans: the men preening peacocks, the women a combination of comforting and conniving.

To paraphrase ‘This is Spinal Tap’: ‘The emotional growth of this show cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.’

Rather than try and explain much more of this, let’s just hear what some of the contestants on the show have to say:

      – Ashley, a male elementary school teacher from West Virginia, on Tila’s Vietnamese heritage: ‘I’ve never been with an Asian girl before, but I do love Chinese food.’

      – Ashli, a female caterer from New Jersey, on prospect of losing her virginity to Tila: ‘The thought of having sex with Tila, being intimate with Tila – I think that would be great!’

      – Domenico, an Italian expatriate swaddled in bikini briefs emblazoned with the colors of his home country, explains in broken English how cooking for a woman helps seduce her: ‘If you put a 20 percent the accent I got and 50 percent cooking the meal, then that makes a 200 percent chance to have the woman in the bed by the night.’

      – And finally, Tila herself on the pain of love: ‘It would hurt my feelings if I hurt anyone else’s feelings.’

Oh well. Here’s hoping Tila lets the winner live. I’ll drink to that.

Published on October 21, 2007 at 12:00 pm