The Journey of a Thousand Mileys

I suspect it's pretty easy to slam Miley Cyrus these days. She does seem to walk around with a "Kick Me!" sign on her forehead that she put there herself. But that doesn't mean everything she does is her fault. (At least I don't think so.)

No, I'm pretty sure. Because there was an odd piece on the Huffington Post over the weekend about Miley Cyrus hosting Saturday Night Live. Mike Ryan took Ms. Cyrus to task, writing, "The most successful hosts of late -- Justin Timberlake, Emma Stone, Christoph Waltz -- never try to make the show about them. They try to integrate themselves into the cast, basically becoming a cast member."

I'm still scratching my head on this. The best I can offer is -- Hint: the actors don't actually make up their own dialogue. But that's what this passage seems to be suggesting, that Miley Cyrus was involved with developing the content of the sketches, and had the final say.

By the way, the thing has that me scratching my head on this is that Mr. Ryan isn't an outlying blogger voicing his random opinion about a TV show he watched -- he's the Senior Entertainment Writer for the Huffington Post. To be clear, the bulk of the article is fine, thoughtfully reviewing the individual sketches. But I don't even begin to understand the point of the review, nor that a substantive media reviewer would write such a thing.

Not only am I certain that Miley Cyrus wasn't involved with developing the content, but I would go a step further and say I suspect that she had utterly ZERO to say about how many sketches were about her, let alone what was in them (other than, "Hey, Miley, would you be okay saying this?") Perhaps I'm reading the passage wrong, but that's how it comes across to me. In the end, however much material there was on Miley Cyrus, it was 100% the writers' choice. Miley Cyrus did not try to make the show about herself. The writers did.

And rather than incorrectly blasting Miley Cyrus for supposedly making the show about herself, it would seem far better to give her some credit for being willing to have repeated fun at her own expense.