It’s official.

The producers, directors, and everyone else in charge of

my two favorite television shows have lost their minds.

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First up – the show I still have hope for. True Blood.

Last night, we watched Eric Northman stroll out into the sun and certain death in a bid to defeat Russell Edgington. The problem here is that Northman, played by Alexander Skarsgard is the best character/actor/casting-combo on the show.

If Eric does not survive the season finale (which HBO just had to postpone for two weeks) it is likely True Blood will lose a lot of viewers …. Including me. For the record, I do not actually believe Eric will cease to exist ….not because I have read the books on which the series is based, but because it would be numbers suicide for the show. I just felt the need to express myself on that particular plot development.

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Now for the second –

 Dancing with the Stars which announced the line up for the new season yesterday.

Now I don’t want to say the producers were digging the bottom of the barrel when they lined up the “stars” – heck if Jake Pavelka and Kate Gosselin count as “stars”, then I guess Mike Sorrentino and Audrina Patridge do too even though I had never heard of them before.

No the one that really gets me – and I expect this was definitely part of the design – is the inclusion of Bristol Palin.

Is she a star? The only thing I know her to be famous for is a well-publicized series of spats with her ex-boyfriend/fiancée .

Now let’s put aside the fact that her mother — Sarah Palin — is one of the most easily recognizable figures on the American political scene. Let’s just forget that Mrs. Palin is one of the most divisive figures in American politics. And let’s definitely NOT even think about the fact that plenty of her supporters hope Palin will make a run for the White House in 2012…and what this might mean for why Bristol has agreed to be on the show.

No, Bristol Palin is not a star. Her claim to fame is not anything she has done but who her mother is.

Meh …..poor choices, producers, very poor choices.

The only reason TO watch this season? Florence Henderson.

But maybe it’s just me ….

If recent history is anything to go by, both traditional and new media are going to be flooded with verbiage on Sarah Palin’s appearance this weekend the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. Love or hate the former-Alaska governor, only a fool would argue the lady doesn’t have an attention-grabbing public persona.

Her supporters believe this the real Mrs. Palin. An attractive do-it-all-modern mom who shoots from the hip, holds nothing back and brushes off emotional punches like a prizefighter.

Her detractors blast her as a manipulative and dangerous talking head that spews vitriol without checking her facts first.

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