TOO MUCH SKIN, OVERBAKED HYPE AND ROTTEN EXCESS MARK THE TURKEYS OF 2003.

Byline: Fred Shuster Staff Writer

There's no law, not even a local ordinance, against appalling taste. Everybody has the right to create - and religiously watch - a TV show about a couple of spoiled, unsophisticated, tattooed and pierced actress- model-whatevers who spend their days shopping, sucking up frappuccinos and flashing their thongs.

It's just another unreal trend in reality programs, right? The more young flesh you show, the more people tune in. But all this creme de la femme and pec du jour stuff can be as nauseating as curdled cheesecake. Especially on Thanksgiving Day.

In fact, we're having second thoughts about naming the year's parade of shame, led by the near-nude and fully crude, after our favorite holiday meal. Turkeys, especially when plucked, get enough roasting - why insult them by linking them to party girl and amateur porn star Paris Hilton, Hummer commercials, Rush Limbaugh's see-through hypocrisy or J.& B.Lo's ``Gigli'' fiasco?

Road kill might be a better name for these annual awards. But that could spoil someone's appetite - and we already expect a little discomfort from the following list of the year's most unlikable people, programs and events.

Airheads Inc.

So-called reality TV just got dumb and dumberer. With Anna Nicole Smith as spiritual den mother, the young, rich, pampered and dim got their chance to glint dully in front of the cameras. TV's tanned chorus line of shame included singer Jessica Simpson (MTV's ``Newlyweds''), rich party girls Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie (Fox's upcoming ``The Simple Life''), and even more rich party girls Ally Hilfiger and Jaime Gleicher (MTV's ``Rich Girls''). Add to the list model-actress-whatever Carmen Electra and tattooed love boy Dave Navarro (MTV's forthcoming ``Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen & Dave''). Who would've guessed the ``Girls Gone Wild'' infomercial was actually a brilliantly conceived TV pilot?

Elegant? Barely!

Flesh was sold by the pound as porn and strip-club culture continued its lap dance into our homes. Dime-store tattoos and piercings haven't been anything but commonplace for decades, but now they seem standard issue for high-school seniors everywhere. How-to-strip classes are part of mall workouts. Proudly dumb blonde Jillian Barberie adjusts her, er, charms and shows her lingerie on Fox 11 each morning, setting women's rights back about 400 years. Thongs are flashed by everyone from Britney Spears, who has morphed from Mouseketeer to potential amateur-night showstopper at Spearmint Rhino, to your plumber. Nothing says ``I love you'' like a stripper's pole in the living room.

J.& B.Lo

It was hyped as a glimpse of an actual celebrity romance blossoming on the big screen - but when critics finally got a look at Jennifer Lopez and pal Ben Affleck in ``Gigli,'' it became clear this was such a gobbler as to make everyone forget last year's stinkeroo ``Swept Away.'' When the Bennifer movie tanked, so did big plans for the lovebirds to marry in a lavish Santa Barbara ceremony.

From the front lines

During major combat in Iraq, every publication up to and including, we imagine, Boys' Life and the Tolucan Times was invited to get embedded with the troops. Only one reporter was expelled from the battlefield for giving away American military secrets - Geraldo Rivera. This carnival shill masquerading as an entertainer disguised as a news reporter can always be counted on to insert himself into every story while simultaneously inserting foot into mouth. Fox TV note: Pair him up with Barberie and a reverse Peanut Butter Cup and you've got a winner.

Reverse foods

The traditional Oreo cookie and Peanut Butter Cup just weren't good enough this year. So the marketing geniuses who we suspect had something to do with adding the intestinally distressing Olestra to potato chips decided to turn our fave foods inside out for fun and profit. Predictably, reverse Peanut Butter Cups and inside-out Oreos were duds. Reverse is perverse - bring on the deep-fat-fried Twinkies.

Wilted Rosie

Rosie O'Donnell, during the $125 million court battle between her and the company that once published her magazine, revealed what could be a rather unappetizing side of this self-styled ``Queen of Nice.'' After the lunch break each day, O'Donnell would unleash a torrent of rage at her ex-business partners, then make her way up the courthouse stairs, turning to wave at the cameras with a transparently bitter fake smile.

Ethics 101

In a smarter world, the sagas of perennial plagiarists Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass would be noted as a lesson in what not to do and then quickly forgotten. In today's climate, where notoriety of any sort is the most valued currency, both have managed to wring some dough out of their insipid transgressions. Can we now expect them both to join Grubman on a cable news panel devoted to media ethics?

Kuddly news

There's rarely been a more ridiculous sight in TV news than KCOP's (Channel 13) 11 p.m. newscast - the one in which a cutesy couple, Rick Garcia and Lauren Sanchez, standing within sniffing distance of each other's armpits, practically nuzzle while stumbling over the night's TelePrompTer reading. What makes the thing even more absurd is the sense that these two apparent lovebirds were thrown together by KCOP's marketing department.

Clueless cable news

Admittedly, all-news networks have a gaping maw to fill each day. But seeing New York's most feared motorist, party flack Lizzie Grubman - who served a month in jail after she backed her Mercedes SUV into a Hamptons nightclub crowd and high-tailed it outta there - as a CNN expert panelist was pushing the envelope beyond even our comprehension. Or how about the theme music the cable networks commission for their ``big stories.'' The garden-variety murder trial of Scott Peterson, for example, has inspired an eerie little musical snippet that includes two sharp drum reports, apparently representing the victims in the case. The Iraq situation has its own martial beat. At least in the Michael Jackson saga there's plenty of music to choose from - which might be the only airplay Wacko Jacko's songs get in the foreseeable future.

Flop city

The full 2003 TV season gets a vote for feathery morass of the year. Among stinkers unceremoniously plucked from the sked were ``Skin,'' ``Tarzan'' and ``Coupling,'' which possibly could have resulted in a hit if all three shows were melded into one soft-core porn, corn and torn T-shirt fest. But they'd still need a part for Cheetah.

Hummer bummer 

They look like self-storage lockers on wheels. They hog nearly two lanes of traffic. They cost almost as much as the gross national product of some Third World countries. Their drivers are normally spotted glued to their super-duper cell phones, oblivious to everyone around them. But a TV commercial for this unholiest of SUVs, the Hummer, might be even more annoying than the actual product. The quick-cut clip, in which a serene blonde sits behind the wheel as a cityscape passes by outside, contains the musical equivalent of an especially nasty tongue sticking out, immediately suggesting the nursery school whine: ``Nyah-nyah-nyah-NYAH-nyah. Look what I got.'' To borrow from the ad's tag line, we'd like to slip the entire concept into something a little more metal - like a great big recycling bin.

Real good Rush

Booming AM radio voice Rush Limbaugh revealed his own fowl feathers when he was flushed out as a longtime opiate addict by the National Enquirer. The tabloid revealed that the self-styled moral watchdog of the far right had been illegally buying and popping thousands of the powerful painkiller Oxycontin, a numbing drug known on the street as hillbilly heroin. After he learned of the Enquirer's scoop, and that he was under investigation for the black-market drug purchases, Limbaugh checked into rehab. Limbaugh, of course, had railed for years that drug addicts should be gray-barred, not hospitalized.

Perennials

Each year, some things don't change. You can always count on Madonna, Jackson, J. & B.Lo, and Spears to make gobblers of themselves. In 2003, we had Madonna become a celebrated children's-book author, Jackson in a TV interview defending his interest in sleeping with young boys (exhibit A?), J. &B.Lo playing up the domestic tranquillity angle for ``Gigli'' promotion, and Spears getting even more famous at the same time her record sales droop. All of which is perfectly understandable. Meanwhile, we long for the time when Paris Hilton was just another place to stay in the City of Lights.

Fred Shuster, [phone]

fred.shuster(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

17 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 10 -- cover - color) Clockwise from top left, a Massachusetts turkey, Paris Hilton, a turkey, another turkey, well it's really the same turkey, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, same ol' turkey, Jillian Barberie, Rosie O'Donnell.

Turkey: The Boston Globe; Hilton: Chris Pizzello/WireImage.com; Affleck: Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage.com; Spears: Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer; Barberie: Steve Granitz/WireImage.com; O'Donnell: Michael Winston/WireImage.com

(11) Here's hoping not too many ``Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'' contestants have Jessica Simpson as their ``phone-a-friend.''

Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage.com

(12) Dave Navarro and Carmen Electra...Vegas oddsmakers are working on it.

Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com

(13) Liza straight up

We loved the claim that David Gest, Liza Minnelli's soon-to-be ex, was battered by the ``Cabaret'' crooner after she acquired superhuman strength when downing vodka. That would be news to Popeye.

(14) Jayson Blair

The New York Times

(15) Lizzie Grubman

Ron Galella/WireImage.com

(16) no caption (Rush Limbaugh)

(17) It's your Aunt Madonna reading a heartwarming children's story of how the pop princess kissed the ... oh, never mind.

Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com