Insightful take on VMAs

TAKE OF THE DAY: N.Y. Times critic Jon Caramanica, who has written numerous insightful critiques on contemporary mainstream music, particularly hip-hop, succinctly summed up Sunday night’s record-breaking VMAs in his review of the show: “MTV made much of the fact that the 2011 edition of its Video Music Awards… would go hostless,” he began, “but that it went off without any apparent supervision came as a surprise. This was maybe the most bleeped award show in history, and certainly among the lewdest: Lady Gaga’s opening monologue, in drag, channeling Andrew Dice Clay and Denis Leary; Cloris Leachman swapping foul talk with the Jersey Shore cast; Justin Bieber making phallus jokes with his girlfriend, Selena Gomez, during the preshow. The flat toilet humor of last year’s host, Chelsea Handler, had nothing on this. But what a surprisingly enjoyable mess this made.” (8/30a)