Whatever audience for high (or even medium) wit once existed has mostly decamped for Assisted Living. There remains a small slightly doddering crowd that's up for small, well-written comedies like Helen Hunt's Then She Found Me, which is currently playing in a release that will remain forever limited to older people who are not afraid to visit the "art" houses Mass market comedy (unless Judd Apatow and his heart-healthy pals are involved) is pitched largely to a young crowd that apparently likes to see pretty people — especially upwardly striving ones like Diaz's character — humiliated and abused in ways that are stupefyingly familiar.

I'm beginning to think that these kids represent a resentment demographic, less eager to laugh than they are to exercise spite and envy at peers who want to grow up sensibly rather than throw up mindlessly in some sleazebag movie.

While we certainly wouldn't put such harsh judgment past the author, 75-year-old Time critic Richard Schickel, the headline is an obviously, gloriously ironic point of departure into the very cultural lapse he laments. Like we care: We're just thrilled to see a mainstream reviewer meet his reader halfway in these troubled critical times; if only stick-in-the-mud David Ansen has preceded a few more pans with announcements like "My Balls Act Better Than Bruce Willis," maybe at least one of these tragic decampments could have been avoided.

• What Happens in Vegas Stays Sucky [Time]

Within three to five years, Miley will have to face adulthood. Fans grow up, and their youthful interests quickly dissolve. Her challenge will be overcoming the Hannah Montana stereotype. Miley's fans are not thinking about the fact that she will grow up too. As she does, she'll want to change her image, and that change will be met with adversity. It's next to impossible to fight, embrace, use or love your image. Trust me. I've seen this all play out before; it's the same ball game, just different players in a different time.

But Miley has an amazing support team. She seems to have good Christian values, with parents (including dad Billy Ray) teaching her important life lessons. She has management that has seen this phenomenon through before—Jim Morey's company—Jim managed me during my Puppy Love days. I hope Miley enjoys every minute of this brief experience before her inevitable reinvention takes place. It's going to make a fascinating book someday. I'll read it.

You see? "Puppy Love" is the obvious Osmond analogue to "Teenagers fuck," as we declaimed yesterday in waving off the Miley controversy, and Nostradonny's glimpse into his crystal ball saw this reality coming a mile away. Disingenuous apologies aside, Jim Morey's careful management of Cyrus's "inevitable reinvention" is off to a dynamite start, and we, too, look forward to reading her ghostwritten memoir sooner than later — particularly Chapter Eight, simply titled "Annie" and already promised as an excerpt to Vanity Fair in 2010.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Time 100: Miley Cyrus [Time]