ayo lagi

Somewhere in the evolution of television — perhaps when Steve Allen made fun of Jerry Lee Lewis’s incomprehensible lyrics on air, or when Cher first razzed Sonny — some great executive realized: “A**holes make great TV hosts.” The art of “likable meanness” is a tricky study for TV emcees, one that requires consummate detachment as well as an audience’s trust. Thus, Movieline is commemorating these skilled wiseacres by picking ten of the best a**hole hosts in TV history. Spoiler: The #1 winner is so great that he combines the best qualities of every single host on the list.

10. Chelsea Handler
Chelsea Handler is brash, monotone, and downright necessary. We haven’t had a sardonic female talk show host this unfiltered since Joan Rivers, whose show bit the dust soon after debuting. The irreverent host of Chelsea Lately uses her hardened, stand-up comic weariness to prod at celebrity guests like Sofia Vergara, who will never misremember her costars’ names again.

9. Gordon Ramsay
Hell’s Kitchen would be a neurotic mess of sous chefs without Gordon Ramsay, whose disparaging barbs make the reality-competition series a virtual quotebook of putdowns. More than any other figure in reality TV (even Simon Cowell), Ramsay owns the format’s hammy theatrics and opts to make himself a curmudgeonly spectacle.

8. Donald Trump
Donald Trump is so much of an a**hole anyway that what he does can hardly be considered hosting, but the Apprentice emcee’s bigwig bullying is compulsively watchable, as he has no problem out-barking lesser a**holes like Omarosa and Rod Blagojevich.

7. Gene Rayburn
Plenty of game show hosts qualify for “Legendary A**hole” stature, like Monty Hall, Pat Sajak, Alex Trebek, and Card Sharks’s Jim Perry. Match Game’s Gene Rayburn topped them all with a single trick: frequently insulting his contestants. With a long microphone and hundreds of questions about “Dumb Dora,” Rayburn may be the most unsympathetic emcee who ever lived.

6. Dick Cavett
Now, Dick Cavett isn’t an a**hole in the traditional, Trumpian sense. He’s a highbrow TV veteran who once coined droll one-liners for Jack Parr — classics like “Here they are: Jayne Mansfield.” During his time as one of the best talk show hosts of late ’60s and ’70s, Cavett interfaced with counterculture heroes like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, using his squareness to construct slyly dick-ish badinage. While a lagging hip factor would’ve dogged lesser hosts, Cavett used his to insert headmasterly cynicism into his chats — the kind of self-satisfied wit that might provoke a subject to spout, “Shut your well-educated mouth.”

5. Graham Norton
The outrageous BBC host has made a career of laughing in guests’ faces. Though his Comedy Central talk show The Graham Norton Effect never took off, he manages to have a dismissive, blithely condescending perspective on talk shows as a whole. “The only people who are desperate to go on the show,” he once said of his variety hour, “are people we’re desperate not to have on the show.”

4. Bill O’Reilly
Love him or really, really hate him, Bill O’Reilly is television’s reigning boor. Combining sneering interview skills with the unfeeling authority of one of Animal Farm’s shadier pigs, O’Reilly’s style has proven unforgettable and viral. Few a**holes get to exercise their skills against a range of foes that has so far included Jon Stewart and Barack Obama.

3. Stephen Colbert
Truthy news anchor Stephen Colbert turns his a**holery into a provocative question: Is the bastardliness real, or is his entire presence an ingenious construction? Either way, he’s a singular presence, one whose exquisite meanness (“Now, there’s nothing wrong with being gay — some of my best friends are going to hell”) is universally likable.

2. Anne Robinson
The Weakest Link was a fad that passed quickly in the U.S., but host Anne Robinson’s contestant putdowns are unforgettable. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the dumbest of you all?” she might chirp before an elimination round. She still hosts the UK version of Weakest Link, the original program that earned her the title “the Queen of Mean.”

1. David Letterman
Letterman scored the top spot on our Best Late Night Talk Show Appearances of the Last Decade list, and I conclude this list with the same question: Was there any doubt he’d snag #1? Letterman’s detachment and contempt is so palpable that even a guest as entitled as Paris Hilton has no choice but to succumbs to him. Letterman doesn’t suffer fools, mince words, or let you off the hook when you’ve just been released from jail. Best of all: He does the funniest Jay Leno impression of anyone on TV.