Public Enemy No. 1

No one can deny that Flava Flav (real name William Drayton) is a cultural icon. As a member of Public Enemy, he invented the role of the hype man (aka rap sidekick). His distinctive grill/glasses/giant clock combo make him one of the most recognizable figures in American pop culture. And yet ...

I hate him with every fiber of my being.

He's just a horrible little man.

Some of you may be asking, "why you be hatin', Sri?" I'll tell you why. Drayton is the worst thing to happen to television since that damned Head On commercial. His crimes against TV are legion, but I will attempt to briefly summarize his most atrocious offenses here.

1. The Surreal Life - This show combined all the intelligence of reality TV with all the basic human decency of has-been celebrities. It was kind of funny, but mostly just sad. When you get the call from The Surreal Life, you pretty much know your career is over. Drayton added insult to self-injury by forming the most disgusting couple ever with Brigitte Nielsen (Skeletor's long lost half-sister). At this point, I was actually pretty tolerant of the creepy couple - I was perfectly willing to have them ride off into the proverbial sunset, never to be heard from again.

2. Strange Love - But then, Nielsen and Drayton decided to parlay their disturbing romance into their own reality show gig. Highlights included Drayton yelling at Nielsen for giving their contact information out to his kids - turns out, Drayton is a deadbeat dad. Chuck D, Batman to Flav's Robin, made a public statement denouncing his former boy-wonder's behavior. Said Drayton , "What you see on the show definitely is Flav. It's just that you're seeing certain sides of Flav that Flav didn't want people to see." Funny. We didn't want to see them, either.

3. Flavor of Love - When the two "parted amicably," Flav went lookin' for love in all the wrong places. The three (three!) seasons of this show will go down in history as the most trashy, dehumanizing and perverse human activity ever caught on tape. I actually watched the series finale, in which the twenty-odd women who had been vying for Drayton's attention got the shock of their lives - in the end, he didn't chose any of them! Drayton decided to propose to one of his many baby mamas.

Congrats, you've just traded self-respect for 15 seconds of fame!

What are you going to do now?

4. Under One Roof - The one good thing about Drayton's new show on myNetwork TV is that it certainly will not last long. This is the story of an ex-con who moves in with his well-to-do brother and "turns his life up-side down." Guess which one Drayton plays. The writing is nauseating, the characters are two-dimensional, and the humor is so low-brow that it practically drags its knuckles. I'm not entirely convinced their creative team doesn't consist of four 15 year-old boys sitting around in someone's basement, smoking pot and playing Grand Theft Auto. "Oh, man! The housekeeper should, like, be Asian and stuff! And she never says 'me' or 'I,' cause Asians can't talk right, yo. Dude, dude, dude! Her name can be, like, Su Ho! Get it? Ho?!? Now watch me run over this cop."

Flava Flav, do all of us a favor. Stop yourself right now, and preserve what dignity you and Public Enemy have left. Or if you won't do it for yourself, do it for the children.