So the MTV Video Music Awards were on Sunday and, as you’ve probably heard by now, Lady Gaga sported a dress (and hat, and purse, and shoes) made out of meat.  To which spectators across the nation responded with….zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Sorry.  That was me nodding off for a moment there…and it was also the reaction of VMA spectators.  We may need to take a step back to truly understand the importance of this event: a pop star accepted an award during a televised ceremony wearing a dress made out of steaks and no one gives a damn.  Welcome to 2010.  (And if you don’t believe me, check out the Los Angeles Times Ministry of Gossip poll — last time I checked, something like 60% of respondents think it was an absolutely pathetic move on Gaga’s part.)

In a somewhat unrelated aside, this is not the first gross misuse of meat I’ve witnessed in my life.  Once I worked as a counselor in a Christian summer camp run out of my church.  Though only a mere teen at the time, even then I knew that my coworkers were crazy.  Not bat-shit crazy, not psychopath crazy, but filled with the desire to entertain crazy (word of the wise: beware these types of crazies above all others).  So in order to entertain the urban youths our summer camp was catering to, during a certain “comedic” skit the head counselor stuck a patty of ground meat in his hairy arm pit.  Watching this, I couldn’t help but think: why?  After all, what a waste of food!  And forget China, there are starving kids right here…in fact, I’m sure some of the kids in the audience would have been better served by taking that meat home for dinner.  The head counselor took umbrage and his response was something like, “Oh, it was worth it to hear the laughter of a child.”  And it’s true: the kid’s laughed their behinds off.  But my point was that they would have been equally entertained by a counselor dressed up like a clown.  Or a puppy.  Or, for that matter, a really bouncy ball.

Somehow, I feel Lady Gaga would have been on the head counselor’s side.  She definitely wants to entertain us.

Yet, she seems to have shot herself in the foot in the ole entertaining department.  Because for Lady Gaga, entertainment=shock.  And after making the pantsless option pretty much standard fare (I love the Go Fug Yourself girls’ take on things…especially this), wearing bubbles and then a gun bra on the cover of Rolling Stone, the girl may have shocked us out.  Of course, I’m just repeating what a thousand people have already said here but where can Gaga go from here (other than down, that is)?

And before her little monsters jump all over me, let me state that I’m actually a Gaga-o-phile.  She had me with the lyrics to Paparazzi: “I’m your biggest fan/I’ll follow you until you love me”…what girl hasn’t been there?  And though I do think Gaga’s meat dress was bordering on the tacky/tasteless/unsanitary, I generally want to defend her from most of the criticism thrown her way, the latest case in point being Camille Paglia’s “demolishment” of her in the UK Sunday Times Magazine.  Note: I’m linking to the original article but the Sunday Times is a pay site (ugh, I know).

To sum it up, Camille Paglia doesn’t think Gaga is sexy enough to merit all this attention (odd coming from a noted feminist).  Drag queens look way better.  Lady Gaga is the end of sex.  Nor is she original in any way, stealing her entire image from Cher, Madonna, Jane Fonda/Barbarella, Gwen Stefani and Pink (of all people).  Oh, and of course, the millenial generation can’t even begin to understand how unoriginal Gaga is because we are unoriginal and always stuck in our Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, yadda yadda yadda.

Okay, Camille Paglia: yawn.  Like we haven’t heard all of this before.  Listen, I like Madonna too, I admire how she’s managed to stay relevant for so long.  But Madonna’s heyday was the 80s and 90s, a time so distant from now not necessarily in years but in attitude.  We’ve since lived through 9/11, we’ve lived through Katrina.  It takes a lot more to scare us now and it takes a lot more to impress us, as well.

Gaga impressed us — for a bit at least.  A lot has been made of her being the first truly great pop star to come along in a while and how she’s saving the music industry.  But I honestly don’t know if she’ll be saving it for much longer.  And, unlike Paglia, I don’t think the answer is for Gaga to take a cue from Madonna and radically change her style.  I honestly believe she just needs to realize that, yes, when she keeps upping the crazy — keeps taking it further and further — we will talk about her the next day.  But we’d also have talked about her if she came out looking her usual wacktacular self — no pants and some wild head gear.  Because the girl’s got talent — she can sing, she can dance, she can seriously perform.  And there’s no need for a meat dress when a really bouncy ball will do, if you know what I mean.