I've written many times here about how much I hate the tabloid shows, whether it's Access Hollywood, TMZ, or Entertainment Tonight. One of the worst is ET's sister show, The Insider. Besides having a despicable host (Pat O'Brien -- what's with that little fake laugh he does all the time?) and the lamest writing this side of a junior high student newspaper, it's also evil and dumb.

Take last night's episode. I don't watch the show, but I didn't get to my remote quick enough to change the channel after the news ended and I caught the teaser opening. They showed singer John Mayer with a gun to his head, a rather raw photograph that looked like it was taken across the street from a bank. Was Mayer being held hostage in a holdup? Was one of Jennifer Aniston's exes there telling him not to see her anymore? OMG! Stay tuned to this breaking news!

And they teased the whole damn thing for the whole show. At least four times they said something about the dire circumstances that John Mayer was in, a gun pointed to his head. O'Brien and Lara Spencer said these teasers in very serious tones. Mayer had a serious look on his face. My God, this must be serious!

I pretty much knew what it was (it was either a video shoot or some equally innocuous event), but I had to stay tuned to see how long they pushed this tease and when they would actually reveal the answer. And when did they do it? At the very end of the show. You actually had to sit through 30 minutes of mind-numbing celebrity news shit (oh wow, we have footage of Britney Spears buying coffee!) and teases for Entertainment Tonight (the latest news about Miley Cyrus coming up in 17 minutes and 5 seconds!) to find out that the paparazzi photographed Mayer taking a self defense class. So he wasn't being held prisoner. I guess we would have heard about that at the top of the show (funny how something labeled as a "breaking development" can wait to the end of the show).

(And if you're wondering why I didn't provide a link to the Insider web site above, well, they don't deserve one.)