Tofu and Raspberry Pie

Today’s column marks a revival of a Thanksgiving tradition initiated in Calendar when the esteemed Cecil Smith was this paper’s television critic.

Let’s hear it once again for the annual TV Turkeys, in recognition of the lowest achievers in the business, and give them the bird.

As an ethical vegetarian of many years, however, I’ve renamed these unofficial awards the TV Tofus. This batch goes to:

* Anne Robinson, the imported-from-England-with-her-show host of NBC’s “Weakest Link,” who was billed as an intimidating, rapier-tongued, mean-spirited, ruthless dominatrix whose glower would make contestants tremble when not turning them to stone.

What a joke. Instead, her practiced snarl and calculated ad-libs continue to be benign self-parody. And as prime-time entertainment, gimmicky “Link” remains a lox.

* “Cheaters,” another of those lowbrow syndicated series granting society’s tree stumps the TV time they crave in exchange for turning their woeful lives into low-burlesque soap opera on the pretense of assisting them.

Here’s the way the process works: These programs dig up grubby little subcultures and give them the oxygen of prominence so that the rest of us can ridicule them and feel good about ourselves. They call it entertainment. In this case, we have TV aiming its laser glare at the “caught on tape” infidelity crowd, the show’s disgusting and cynical tone a perfect fit for this voyeuristic age.

* “The Sandra Bernhard Experience,” a fleeting talk show whose bizarre weeklong trial on A&E; appeared to be designed mainly as self-therapy for the host so she could address the camera as a shrink. It raised the question: Just how much of Bernhard babbling neurotically about herself can even her fans take?

Speaking as one of them, I’d say five nights of her talk show were at least four too many.

* KCBS-TV’s worshipful November ratings sweeps series on Judith Sheindlin of “Judge Judy,” the syndicated show that precedes the station’s evening news block. Celebrate your lead-in, in other words, and you celebrate yourself. With anchor Ann Martin dutifully assuming the role of adoring interviewer, this self-serving KCBS sham epitomized now-rampant cross-promotion by TV news, from locals to networks, in which ads for entertainment shows are masked as news stories.

In effect, this amounts to media lying to viewers they pledge to inform. Speaking of “Judge Judy,” do the words “out of order” resonate here?

* TV’s soft-touch, weepy junketeers--euphemistically known as entertainment reporters--who capsized and sank under Disney’s withering PR barrage at May’s $5-million bash aboard the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis to promote the movie “Pearl Harbor.” Jetted to Hawaii and pampered royally to put them in the proper frame of mind for this special media-targeted premiere, most of TV’s hemorrhaging hearts did what Disney expected of them by later opening their veins on camera and bleeding accolades for this mediocre combat soap opera.

Even if “Pearl Harbor” had been brilliant, their collusion with Disney in stumping for it would still linger in infamy.

* “Bob Patterson,” Jason Alexander’s unfunny new ABC sitcom that bombed deservedly, faster than you could say, “George.”

* Sit ‘n Sleep commercials with You Know Who grinning at the camera and screeching You Know What: “We’ll beat any advertised price or your mattress is FREEEEEE!!!” These words are as grating on radio, even without the pictures.

Go figure, but these spots have been running so long that they must be working. This seems to affirm an old saw about commercials: Although witty and truly creative ones usually please us most, they aren’t necessarily as effective as those we remember because they are so irritating. Yet lying on a bed of nails would be more fun.

* Talk-radio demagogues who employ a double standard by charging mainstream news media with being biased and unreliable only to cite them as sources when it suits their aims.

* “Inside Schwartz,” the ratings-challenged NBC comedy that, along with Fox Sport Net’s “The Best Damn Sports Show Period,” assumes that being a sports fan automatically makes you a grunting torn undershirt who will bellow at anything.

It’s a toss-up which is more annoying, these faux Stanley Kowalskis of sports TV or the smug smarty-pants on ESPN and their many smirking clones.

* Emmy voters who recently snubbed Emma Thompson’s transcendent performance as a doomed cancer patient in HBO’s “Wit” and gave an Emmy instead to Judy Davis for ABC’s “Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows.”

Davis is a fine actress whose work here as Garland far exceeded the movie in which she appeared. But hands down, this was Thompson’s year, and even though “Wit” got its own Emmy, omitting its nominated star was an egregious oversight.

* Screen clutter on cable news programs. Has it ever been worse or more maddening as these 24-hour networks try to outdo one another in attracting younger viewers who are accustomed to the Internet maze? What you get on TV are clashing images, visual stories--often deserving your complete attention--competing with factoid-type headlines crawling across the bottom of the screen.

* Jerry Falwell. You have to ask why?

In any case, gotta go. And remember, I will beat any advertised post-Thanksgiving awards or these TV Tofus are FREEEEEE!!!

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.