“Root of All Evil:” Special “My Name Is Earl” Edition

A recent (or future, who can keep track?) episode of Comedy Central’s “Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil” pitted twin sinister juggernauts Dick Cheney and Paris Hilton against one another.

As awful as Cheney may be (you know, the whole unnecessary wars and shredding-the-Constitution thing), at least he’s had the good sense to commit his treachery in secrecy. Hilton, on the other hand has publicly, ubiquitously slathered her lascivious, lice-encrusted cynicism over every molecule of modern society, leaving each of us tainted with the mean stink of hunger for celebrity gossip.

No, the genuine competition should have been between two shameless self-promoters, two who, by coincidence, both appear in gratuitous cameos in Thursday night’s hourlong post-writers’-strike return of “My Name Is Earl:” Hilton and NBC COO Jeff Zucker.

Zucker, of course, is the guy who led the parade in NBC’s valiantly inept trek from first to fourth place in TV ratings, yet maintained that he was a TV visionary and brags copiously about his lack of accomplishment before audiences larger than he merits. He appears in tonight’s episode at the very beginning, playing himself, a craven TV executive who will only be happy when all of Television is a lobotomized and product-placement-strewn wasteland of reality TV and wan punchlines.

Hilton appears in the latter half hour, again, portraying herself, a celebration of all that is brutishly brainless and awful and undeserving in this world.

“Earl” has never been particularly keen on plotlines that aren’t cartoonish, but, well, Thursday’s installment makes an episode of “South Park” look like “The Usual Suspects.” Earl (Jason Lee) is in a coma, thanks to Alyssa Milano’s poor driving skills. As Earl’s inept pals go about their inept motions to try to resuscitate him, Earl, in his sorry state, imagines himself in a sitcom world. Which means: The writers created an environment in which they could willfully create sitcom-style jokes that are intentionally not funny, with (to their minds, at least) impunity and, due to their very lack of wit, are supposed to be clever in some perverse post-modern fashion.

That’s where Paris comes in: She’s part of Earl’s dreamscape (or is it, nightmare-scape?), where all she’s asked to do is deliver, after every witless gag, her own Terry Schiavo-esque catch-phrase utterance, “That’s hott.” She does this three or four times, with a complete and utter lack of conviction, and for her troubles no doubt earns a larger paycheck than you or I will see anytime soon.

(Oh, and the rest of the show’s not very funny, either. Individual lines are clever, but given the stupidly capricious context in which they’re presented – amid inept and corrupt cops and paramedics, inept and corrupt faith healers, they kind of flounder.)

So, again, we return to the original “Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil” conundrum with which we began: Who is more evil, Zucker or Hilton?

Well, Zucker destroyed a once-proud broadcast network. But there are other sources for television excellence out there, so in the broader scheme of things, Zucker has only polluted a small portion of the broadcast spectrum. Hilton, on the other hand, has insinuated her offal everywhere, making it difficult for even the most discerning of viewer to avoid her. So again, much as she vanquished Dick Cheney, she here would appear to beat out Zucker.

Except that Zucker, in his role as NBC uberlord, decreed it acceptable that Paris further her despicable dominance in celebrating celebrity mediocrity on his airwaves, so …

Man, this is a tough one.

- “My Name Is Earl:” 8 p.m. Thursday, NBC Channel 4.