The only thing less surprising than Adam Carolla's atrocious performance last week on "Dancing With the Stars" was his reaction to the judges' reaction.

He called Carri Ann Inaba the b-word. You know, that word that rhymes with witch.

Hey, wasn't this show supposed to be fun and entertaining?

Nobody really expected Carolla to be the second coming of Fred Astaire. And it takes some degree of chutzpah simply to agree to be on "Dancing With the Stars." You're setting yourself up for potential embarrassment in front of millions of people.

Or, perhaps, you're agreeing to be on the show because you have a movie opening and you're looking to juice the box office a bit.

Hey — doesn't Carolla star in soon-to-be-released movie "The Hammer"? What a coincidence!

It's not like yours truly is assigning motives to Carolla. Appearing on Howard Stern's radio show, he said just exactly that. "What I would like to do is make it through a few weeks, get some publicity for the movie, meet everybody and then after three weeks it's enough," he said.

To all appearances, Carolla tried really, really hard when he danced with partner Julianne Hough, the former Utahn who has teamed up with Apolo Anton Ohno and Helio Castroneves to win the "Dancing" mirror-ball trophy the past two seasons.

But trying really, really hard doesn't make you really, really good. And even the casual viewer with no dance background other than watching TV shows could tell you that.

Hey, you don't have to have voice training to know when "American Idol" finalists are slaughtering Beatles songs.

So when Inaba gave Carolla and Hough a 5 (out of 10), it wasn't necessarily nice, but it was well deserved. Hough did the best she could — probably better than anyone could have asked of her — but you can't make chicken salad out of, um, chicken droppings.

Carolla, however, took offense to Inaba's judging, uttering the b-word in her direction. Which was not only unkind but uncalled for.

Predictably, he tried to rewrite history the following day on Stern's radio show.

"It wasn't directed toward her," Carolla said. "It was more like, 'Ain't that a (b-word).'"

Of course, Carolla has a history of denying bad behavior. A couple of years ago when he yelled and cursed at yours truly — and there are a hundred-plus witnesses to it, not to mention a transcript — he quickly followed up by saying, "I wasn't just yelling at critics."

So his denial that he was cursing at Inaba rings a bit hollow.

(If, perchance, you think I'm enjoying watching Carolla set himself figuratively on fire on a top-rated TV show, the absolute truth is — I am.)

Ah, well. At least we won't have to go through another round of tabloid stories about how Hough is in love with her partner.

Carolla is no Ohno. He's no Castroneves.

Carolla is what he is. And ABC had to know that when they put him on "Dancing With the Stars."

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com