Eric Jamison / AP

A mixed martial arts fight, like this one between Sean Sherk, right, and BJ Penn on May 24, is distasteful, barbaric brawling, not art, says columnist Bryan Burwell.

But sadly, instead of halting the slide, CBS is driving the bus directly into the cultural abyss by putting this bastardized form of mixed martial arts on national television for the first time, instead of allowing it to wallow in a corner on cable TV with all the other cartoonish “reality” fare.

Mixed martial arts and all the other ultimate fighting leagues want the world to embrace their bloody human cockfighting as a replacement for boxing as a real combat sport, and now they have CBS as a co-conspirator in this fraud. The only thing missing from this TV farce was Caesar raising a thumbs up to Kimbo Slice, or Aunty Entity shouting “Two men enter, one man leaves.”

Yet the defenders of EliteXC reason that the world has proclaimed them as legitimate simply because their barbarism is now on network television. But television doesn’t automatically legitimize you.

It’s just the electronic version of the ladder. The higher you climb, the more of your rear end we can see.