Billy Bush takes the moral high ground (for once in his life)

“Access Hollywood” irritant Billy Bush, of whom I’m aware mainly through his shamelessly queasy ogling of starlets on the red carpets of awards shows I’ve been professionally mandated to sit through (and, of course, the trenchant analysis of 2007’s cinematic treasures he delivered in that stillbirth of a Golden Globes broadcast), is shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that infotainment TeeVee shows are brazen and lurid. Not his, mind you, but his competition.

In his blog (he can write! who knew?), Bush called “Entertainment Tonight” and “The Insider’s” six-figure acquisition of footage purportedly showing the late Heath Ledger snorting cocaine “Gross. Totally gross.” To further display his outrage, he unleashed some invective in preternaturally perky “ET” host Mary Hart’s direction:

"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."

And of course, “Access Hollywood” hasn’t been dancing over Britney Spears’ future corpse, and it gave Lindsay Lohan a pass when she was bopping around car-jacking and thoughtfully holding someone else’s cocaine for them. The day Ledger died, “Access Hollywood” cancelled other stories they were working on so they could present an orgy of speculative Ledger coverage.

But it’s interesting: Ledger, who had heretofore offended no one and seemed a genuinely serious and clearly talented artist, so the infotainment folks back off (maybe because the video isn’t really that interesting?), whereas the in-it-for-the-money-fame-and-glamour folks receive serious blowback for their missteps. Seems fair to me.