Miley Cyrus and Gaga reflect the values and expectations of their audience. They and MTV get rich providing “entertainment” that is consistent with the tastes of many Americans. Decadence sells because America has become decadent. Hardly would call it “art”.
If you have looked over your kid's shoulders (before you took over the TV) you would have seen that the morphing of the mean has been underway for over a decade. MTV was bad enough when it first started with fisheye views of performers' noses. Then it expanded into a social crusade.
Much of this dreck is presented as 'edgy' because that gets people to look. Next season it is passe.
From the naughty start of soap opera infidelity to today's splatter flicks (to video game slaughter and hardcore porn) has been a long road, each step desensitizing and normalizing increasingly perverted and salacious and violent behaviour until that is presented to children and teens (and even witless adults) as normal life...and thus, for many, it becomes so, because the bar of their expectations has been inexorably lowered by the media.
Even on "comedy" shows, 1/4 of the cast are homosexual, intelligent Caucasian males are a rarity, and Christian values have been all but pushed off the screen.
But let one show like Duck Dynasty squeak through, and people flock to it. That tells me there is hope for America, that most people aren't buying what MTV has to sell (although many are).
There is still a lot of decency here, it just isn't being sold on TV.