One of the few ongoing successes of the troubled summer concert industry, the Sharon-initiated Ozzfest was conceived to cash in on the wretched n| metal genre, and to position Ozzy as one of its heroes -- never mind the fact that his work in the Sabbath days and in his early solo career has about as much to do with joyless, angst-ridden, down-tuned bands like P.O.D., Drowning Pool and Adema as it does with Burt Bacharach. The only worthwhile act on the main stage of this year's Ozzfest is System of a Down, the radical political band from Los Angeles who worship at the altar of Frank Zappa. But the artistic bankruptcy of the festival has nothing to do with whether or not metal is dead.

The influence of Sabbath continues to loom large on the stoner-rock scene, as well as in the hardcore metal underground, with its infinite subgenres of even death metal and black metal. The thing is, while all of those bands have a lot more cred (and pack much more of that crucial kick), none of them sell like the n| metal boneheads. And as the myriad magazine covers and newspaper features prove, Ozzy today is all about money and celebrity, two things that never much mattered to metal bands in the past.

In striking his devil's bargain, Ozzy's public persona has been transformed from a cartoon that was dumb but cool to one that is just plain dumb. In other words, it's been bye-bye, Bugs Bunny; hello, Garfield.

Needless to say, the major vehicle for this has been "The Osbournes." I am not above laughing at metal's excesses -- "Spinal Tap" is as much a brilliant homage as it is a vicious spoof. Each week, the show invites us to laugh at Ozzy as the doddering old fool who is so wrecked by booze and drugs that he no longer has the capacity to work the TV remote, while Sharon is happily cast as a caricature of the Evil Genius, and two of their three kids (Kelly and Jack; eldest daughter Aimee famously opted out) are portrayed as typically whiny, spoiled, fucked-up examples of the teen demographic their parents are ever so eager to milk.

Some wrongheaded cultural commentators have lauded "The Osbournes" for showing us a "real" (i.e., fucked-up) family as opposed to TV's usual fictional fare, but that's a laugh. "The Osbournes" have about as much to do with how most of us live as the folks on "Friends."

You want reality? Noticeably absent from the show's frequent mocking of Ozzy is any discussion of his bladder problems, which have long been legend in the rock world. The reason Oz continually dumps buckets of water on himself through his concerts is to mask the fact that he's peeing in his pants, according to some who are in the unenviable position to know. A friend of mine who once visited the Osbourne manse reports that Ozzy has a "special bathroom" whose walls are lined with rubber because his aim is so bad. Somehow, MTV's cameras have avoided showing us all that.

As I said, I choose to believe that Ozzy isn't a complete moron, just a bit of a mess. But whatever his actual psychiatric diagnosis, there is something distasteful about the show goading us to mock him, while nary a word is ever said about his very real musical accomplishments. Would we want to visit a blues great in the old-age home and chuckle as he gums his oatmeal, or stop by a rehab facility to laugh at a jazz giant as he tries to kick his junk problem? Why don't we just drop in on Syd Barrett or put a sandbox in Brian Wilson's front yard and laugh at them for a while? Goofing on Oz is hardly any better.

No one ever laughs at Sabbath guitarist Iommi, whom Sharon is said to hate. (Legend holds that she once set Iommi up on a blind date at a tony restaurant, and when he was seated at the table, she sent over an elaborately wrapped box containing her feces.) The veteran Sabbath instrumentalists may now be fat, old and grizzled, but when they reunite onstage, they still deliver the goods, avoiding the dreaded curse of rock nostalgia through the undiluted force of the music's punch. Not so with solo Ozzy.

"I'm not the kind of person that you think I am/ I'm not the Antichrist or the Iron Man ... I try to entertain you the best I can," Oz sings on "Gets Me Through," the lead track on 2001's execrable "Down to Earth," which is reprised on the equally avoidable new concert album, "Ozzy Osbourne Live at Budokan." Having invited us to pull back the curtain to see "the real man" (who is in fact just another cardboard caricature and -- even worse -- a "professional entertainer"), it's become impossible to enjoy the old metal myth.

The Ozzy of yore may have sold his soul for rock 'n' roll, but he would never have auctioned it to be just another MTV cash cow, a Britney Spears with nasty old hair and a Brummy accent.

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