The Buffoon Hunter

My hobby is buffoon watching. Early one morning I got lucky and caught a glimpse of the rare speckled, yellow-crested, white-cheeked, red-beaked fool.

He was anchoring a newscast.

Buffoons are always welcome on television and do good business there, too. Remember Tiny Tim warbling in falsetto and playing his ukulele? Dennis Rodman selling burgers? Paula Jones and Tonya Harding squaring off on “Celebrity Boxing”? Frizzed Richard Simmons in his infomercials, peering deeply into the swollen red eyes of teary, cellulite-challenged matrons lauding his weight-loss plan? Mr. Sensitive would then bawl with them, as his inner cash register went ka-ching, ka-ching.

Television has a new clown elite these days.

Think former stripper and Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith (not that Anna Nicole and “think” belong in the same sentence). She is less blond bombshell than shell, the astounding early popularity of her witless new “reality” series on E! Entertainment establishing her as this year’s pet rock.

And think Steve Irwin, the running, crouching, grimacing, recoiling, showboating, hyperventilating, croc-wrestling zany who titles himself the Crocodile Hunter and earns fancy money using animals as props under the pretense of helping them. More later about this movie star-come-lately and faux champion of animals and his latest NBC special that aired Saturday night.

At least E! Entertainment’s star bimbo is harmless. What’s most boggling about “The Anna Nicole Show” is not really her--she tries so hard to be outrageous that she’s not--but that 4 million Americans were desperate enough to watch this sucker when it premiered Aug. 4.

All of them taking in Anna Nicole and her forward-tumbling, panoramic breasts like paparazzi.

The show monitors her, um, life. And because it’s crafted so meticulously (heh heh), Sunday night’s Episode 2 was not made available in advance. As if it would change much.

Viewing the premiere was like watching someone hit herself in the face repeatedly with a cream pie.

How mindless was it? When her lawyer mentioned suicide bombers terrorizing Israel, a puzzled Anna Nicole responded like someone who had just beamed down from Pluto, wondering: “Who’s killing the Jews?”

It occurred to me that if her lawyer had mentioned New York’s twin towers and Sept. 11, she’d have been as perplexed and asked: “Who’s killing Americans?”

Anna Nicole has had enough awareness to get herself together for talk shows and win $88 million in a famous court battle over the estate of deceased 86-year-old Texas oil baron J.H. Marshall, her husband of just 14 months. So I suppose it’s possible she is not as dumb as she appears here and is a farceur playing to perfection a role that requires her to feign stupidity and slur her words as if she were on something a bit stronger than Pepsi.

Whatever the case, watching an imbecile and watching someone play an imbecile are equally low on the appeal meter.

Seemingly at peace with the tonnage she added since her cover-girl glory, our heroine carried herself like Moby-Dick in drag, as she and her entourage spent much of the premiere touring houses for her to rent. She tried out tub after tub and at one point got stuck under a table with her ample rear appendage facing the camera. Oh, ho-ho.

We met her lawyer, her personal assistant, her teenage son and her toy poodle (whom she admonished for breaking wind). We also met her slashing wit, as when she said she wanted to go home and masturbate, and later when she talked dirty to the camera while dressing for a party: “Bring it on. I dare you.”

Some shows are so bad, they’re good. This one dives below even that bar. No wonder half an hour of Anna Nicole passes like half a day.

On to another, darker facet of clowndom: the Aussie Irwin in his signature khaki shirt and shorts, fearlessly confronting “dynjah, dynjah, dynjah” in NBC’s “The Crocodile Hunter: Graham’s Revenge.”

What revenge? What a crock.

Graham is a big crocodile in the Australia Zoo on the country’s Sunshine Coast. He once chomped on Irwin the way I want to when he teases, pokes and grapples with wild animals in the name of educating the public. Irwin’s valuable message: Torment wild animals, and they get grumpy. Also, that he’s at great risk from animals he bravely invites to strike and bite him.

“Graham’s never forgiven me for gettin’ away with just a wounded hand,” said Irwin, setting up the premise for this show that found his mates and him moving the big croc and a smaller female to a bigger enclosure. “We make a mistake with this guy, he’s gonna split us open so badly it’s not even funny,” said Irwin, departing from form. He’s usually “shakin’ like a leaf.”

Irwin’s wife, Terri, his co-star in his Animal Planet series, “The Crocodile Hunter,” was there, too, engaged in the equally dangerous task of looking beautiful.

Would Graham get back at poor Steve, who shrewdly edged closer to the water where the croc had been relocated in case the animal wanted to take a swipe? “He has anger written all over his face,” reported Irwin about the submerged Graham, who was not visible.

Despite hype through the hour, and Irwin giving it the big “Ooooooh” while taunting Graham, the crocodile declined to take his revenge on cue. So Irwin bowed out much as Geraldo Rivera did years ago when finding nothing in Al Capone’s vault after a big buildup.

TV feasts on facile conflict as much as it does buffoonery. So Animals versus Humans becomes the gruel du jour, whether it’s “Animals That Attack” or “Shark Week” or Irwin provoking his own televised confrontations, creating a twisted reality that nourishes fear of animals in the wild as our natural adversaries and a belief they’re ours to exploit.

The last time I saw him on Animal Planet, he was pursuing venom-spitting cobras in Africa. It was a tossup who spat more, the snakes or Irwin as he picked them up by their tails and spun them almost like lariats. For their own good, of course.

“I think he’s starting to understand,” he said about a 6-footer, “I don’t mean him any dynjah.”

Irwin’s first feature film, “The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course,” has done brisk business, and in October he’s to host a new kids series, “Croc Files,” on NBC. What’s next?

If E! Entertainment’s hotshots are on the ball, they’ll have him wrestle Anna Nicole.

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