Joel McHale would like the Department of Homeland Security know that this woman is intent on destroying America

Joel McHale hosts "The Soup," E!'s weekly whistling past the boneyard of pop culture. We're ensconced at TV Press Tour, which this year thanks to a paucity of really interesting subjects to write about due to the writers strike and a sense of unease among the critics attending (since many colleagues have either lost their jobs or been moved to other ones, as TV's apparently not a compelling cultural touchstone), pretty much is the boneyard of pop culture.

So it only made sense for me to ask McHale, how would "The Soup" cover TV Press Tour?

He told me, "I would probably have to have you out in the fountain out there (probably not hard to manage), and you would probably have to have some high school girls with you (doubtlessly more tricky to arrange). My guess is that Bret Michaels would be at that party. And then the cast members of 'Deadliest Catch' would trash a room and then we're there. We're good."

We're in McHale's hotel room at Press Tour before his session with the general assembly. He has a selection of suits laid out on a bed; "I'll be wearing two suits to the press conference," he explains.

In gathering up the week's worst that TV has to offer and then chuckling derisively at it all, "The Soup" lays bare the entrails of a society in decline; as McHale puts it, "We are documenting the moral bankruptcy of America." Most of it, naturally, comes via reality television.

"That's the problem with reality television - that's why it is slowly eroding the higher learning functions of our brain, is because it goes for car accidents," McHale notes. They want rubbernecking moments where people slow down and watch. We try to tell people, 'No! Turn away! - Well, watch our show, then turn away!'"

And reality-TV's biggest fin de siècle provocateur has been MySpace revolutionista bisexual Tila Tequila (pictured above), whose MTV reality series pits men against women to emerge as her one true love (beyond her own sordid fame, that is).

"Tila Tequila has been just incredible, really," McHale marvels. "When you have a show where you can eat pigs' vaginas in competition to win a date with a woman, you're hitting some sort of higher plane that no other show has come near. She is truly trying to destroy America."

Then again, the rest of E!'s programming seems to exist solely for "The Soup" to make fun of. E! seems to write "The Soup" for him, I suggest to McHale.

"No, most of the people there are illiterate," he replies (while an E! publicist is sitting in the room). He corrects himself: "No, E! gives us a lot, with Denise (Richards), Pamela Anderson coming on, Paris (Hilton) for a while, "Dr. 90210;" it really has its nice little stable of disaster that we can draw from.

"Dina Lohan did not want her show ('Living Lohan') to be used, at all," McHale adds, turning to the publicist and asking, "Does anyone watch that show?" He continues, "We've definitely said some things. We've promoted her show quite well, though not in the necessarily in the most flattering way."

Is there a flattering way to promote that show?

McHale replies, "We could sit here for hours trying to figure that out."

Talk turns to pets, particularly my dog, and my efforts to locate responsible dogsitters for the duration of Press Tour.

McHale scoffs: "You do know that he's a dog and that a billion people on this planet eat them."

"Yes, but no one I'm leaving him with would," I reply.

McHale launches into a discussion of what his brother, who has lived in China, has seen in the open markets in small villages - dogs, deer with their front legs broken so they can't escape, all manner of animals available for the consumption of the mainland Chinese. In China, McHale assures me, my dog would go over big as "Kung Pao Rescue Mutt."

Just to keep up, I'm sure, his reputation as an equal-opportunity offender.

"The Soup:" E!, 10 p.m. Fridays.