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Entertainment Tonight recently reported that they had a 2-year old video of Heath Ledger, in which Heath is supposedly seen doing a crapload of drugs. ET was going to air the video on the first day of sweeps. I find this completely disgusting and distasteful - who knew that Billy Bush, host of Access Hollywood (which is ET’s competition), would think the same thing. He posted his strongly-worded disappointment on the Access Hollywood website, stating:

I don’t often comment on our competition, but because we have so much of it in the “entertainment show” genre these days, we are often lumped in a group together. The fact is, we’re very different, and that stems mostly from the difference in scruples of the respective Executive Producers.

“Entertainment Tonight” and “The Insider” ran a promo tonight for their Heath Ledger drug use video, which they “reportedly” (love that lawyer enforced word) bought for a couple hundred thousand dollars. A still frame of this video which shows Heath apparently doing cocaine ran on the east coast feed of “ET,” but on the west coast feed, the tasteless still shot was replaced with a shot of someone’s feet (Heath’s, I guess). The voice over by Mary Hart had not changed, however. She still spoke of the incriminating scene and still promo’d the full video tomorrow.

Yes, the still shot was just a taste. Tomorrow is Day 1 of the sweeps ratings period.

Gross. Totally gross.

Well said. But then he goes on to say this:

Wow. I don’t always leap to the side of publicists, because objectivity is sometimes an afterthought. They are hired to shape an image, but –

Heath Ledger’s family has not even had the chance to bury their son. We know he had problems, but this kind of salacious opportunism is poisonous.

I struggle with every type of borderline exploitive material. I’m a constant pain to our Executive Producer as I worry too much that things go too far. Ask him.

I am shocked that Mary Hart would read this crap. I know her and she is a very nice lady, but its clear to me she’s “checked out” of that place, basically taking whatever they put in her hand and reading it with the same excitable veneer you’d expect to hear at a 50’s sock hop.

Mary gets paid a lot of money. She must have the clout to say ‘no.’ Their Executive producer used to run “Hard Copy.” She doesn’t hit the brakes for anything. But Mary, you are the June Cleaver of entertainment news; this cannot be OK.

Let’s see how long the outrage lasts.

Billy, Billy, Billy… You had me - then you lost me. While I appreciate your jabs at the plastic, perma-smile that is the robot of Mary Hart, I can’t help but think that you are one big ol’ hypocrite. I just happened to catch a few minutes of Access Hollywood the other day and all I saw was slow-motion videos of Heath’s body being taken out of his apartment complex from different angles, followed by footage of his family arriving at airports and such. How does this make Access Hollywood any better than Entertainment Tonight?

So, Mr. Billy Bush: thanks for speaking up, but in the end you are just the pot calling the kettle black. I mean, the lesser of two evils is still evil, no?

Photographs Courtesy Getty

Posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 4:27 pm by loyalj and is filed under Celebrities & Pop Culture.

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