By Rick Gardner, Torch specialist

Sorry Jeremy Piven, ZZ Top, and Sergeant Slaughter. All of you came close, but there can only be one winner. The award for the Worst Guest Host of the year goes to... Dennis Miller for his abysmal performance on the December 14 Slammy Awards edition of Raw. The political comedian hosted the worst Raw of 2009 on Monday night. Some of it wasn't his fault. A lot of it was.

Miller's opening monologue was painful to watch. (Sort of like the time The Miz hosted the Diva Search and the segment stretched out over five minutes.) Miller opened with a joke about the vocabulary of children from single-parent homes, which completely died, then he blamed the wrestling audience. He then made a bizarre reference to the Slammy Award statues having polished codpieces, getting the fact that he was not a fan out of the way in record time.

Next were the dreaded comedy photos. Every time such images are used, they die with the live crowd, and this was no exception. First, there were the worst pictures they could find of Vickie Guerrero and Nancy Pelosi, which Miller said could scare children. I am growing tired of the mean-spirited comments directed towards Guerrero, Mickie James, and other women on the roster. Very few women look like the swimwear models that they seem intent on hiring and throwing onto television with little experience. Very few swimwear models have the wrestling ability of Mickie James.

The audience was then treated to an image of D-Generation X with the heads of George Bush and Dick Cheney. WWE has developed an unhealthy obsession with Photoshop over recent years, despite the fact that the images rarely get any laughs. Indeed, it could be argued that Photoshop has received a far better push than Kofi Kingston in 2009.

The monologue progressed from terrible humor into a peculiar rant about global warming. I'm not going to promote my political views via this column, but Miller's small-minded take on such a pertinent debate was embarrassing no matter what side of the argument you agree with. Apparently, the main reason for disagreeing with the science behind global warming is that the statistics from 1906 must be wrong as the general public was still defecating in the woods at the time. I must have missed that when I was watching the coverage from the Copenhagen climate summit.

WWE has never been at the forefront of political satire. Who can forget the Barack Obama vs. Hilary Clinton match in 2008? Or the horrendous skit where Cryme Tyme argued with a George Bush impersonator? Or the debate between Scott Steiner and Chris Nowinski in 2003, where the wrestler who held the anti-war view was portrayed as an unpatriotic heel?

WWE should be commended for the "Smackdown Your Vote" campaign that aims to engage young voters, but when they feature political content on their shows, their heavy-handed approach oversimplifies issues. Added to which, the skits were amongst the worst that the WWE produced at the time, proving that politics and wrestling are a bad fit.

As Miller continued to clumsily read from his cue cards, he compared John Cena to Barack Obama - "One just got put through a table, the other has yet to bring anything to one." It is no secret Linda McMahon is running for Senate as a Republic candidate, but that is no excuse for Raw being used as a platform for such a one-sided tirade. Wrestling fans do not tune in to have political views forced upon them.

Dennis Miller then re-appeared throughout the rest of the three hours, making the requisite name-slip when introducing "The Show" Triple H, and continuing with terrible jokes ("I felt as out of place as Michael Moore in a Speedo at a Twilight premiere") accompanied by fake laughter from the announcers. It makes the announcers look like total fools when they are chuckling away at comedy that is falling flat with the crowd, undermining the credibility of the people who are supposed to be selling WWE's Pay-Per-Views.

The Slammy Award edition of Raw was the television equivalent of a train wreck. Dennis Miller not only failed to connect with the audience, he acted as though appearing on WWE programming was beneath him. The overbearing way in which he inflicted his political views on the audience was totally inappropriate, and his humor fell flat (or, to attempt a Dennis Miller-style joke, it fell flatter than a table that Michael Moore accidentally sat on at a Twilight premiere).

Politics and wrestling don't mix, as illustrated by the fact that Linda McMahon has not referenced WWE in her campaign's promotional literature. Raw is not the place for political humor, and should remain politically neutral in the same way that sports and most of the shows in prime time are.

I also reject the idea that Miller's humor went over the heads of the audience in Corpus Christi. His jokes were terrible, and there's nothing subtle about Photoshopping Bush and Cheney's heads onto D-Generation X's bodies.

One of the funniest parts of the night was when Miller deviated from the script, sarcastically thanking Vince McMahon for furnishing him with comedy notes, attempting to absolve himself from any blame for the bad jokes. Vince McMahon then walked to the podium, and castigated the audience for their lack of enthusiasm for Miller's routine.

Yeah Vince. It was definitely their fault.

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