Trivial Nonsense Friday, or George Allen Emboldens Mark Burnett

With George Allen thinking, however fleetingly, that it's OK to call a dark-skinned person "macaca", and Conrad Burns joking about the "little Guatemalan man" who paints his house, and Mel Gibson's rants about Jews, and Pat Buchanan openly stating that immigration must be curbed in order to preserve white dominance, blatant racism seems to be gaining favor again in the U.S.

So leave it to reality show mogul Mark Burnett to seize on a zeitgeist when he sees one and tear the benign veneer off of the jewel in the crown, Survivor.

For twelve seasons, Burnett has given us an assortment of walking minority stereotypes and slurs. With bean-sneak Clarence Black in Survivor: Africa, Christian nutcase and immunity-idol-o-phobe Joanna Ward in Survivor: Amazon, preposterously fit Osten Taylor being the first person to quit the game for no good reason in Survivor: Pearl Islands, the oversexed stereotyping of Ted Rogers being accused of sexual assault by psychotic Ghandia Johnson in Survivor: Thailand, black Americans have not exactly been treated well by Burnett's editors. Even the snarkalicious Cirie Fields last season, no matter how funny and clever and game she may have been with her improbable fourth-place finish, was presented in confessional as the archetypal bobbing-head, fat, sassy black mama.

The rare Asians on the show haven't fared much better. Shii-Ann Huang was the too-smart-for-her-own-good calculating bitch. Daniel Lue, defying the stereotype of the skinny Asian male with his pumped-up musculature, was a first boot. And last season, 57-year-old karate black belt Bruce Kanegai was edited as the funny old guy doing karate chops and spending entirely too much time building a zen garden on the beach, who had to leave the game due to an impacted bowel that was described to the viewing audience in exquisite detail. That he was a talented artist and black belt hardly registered on the radar.

So with a tin ear worthy of George W. Bush, Burnett decided that the way to deal with the criticism of the lack of diversity on the show was to create a bigger cast and divide it into four tribes by what he calls "race" (which is actually "ethnicity", but why quibble when we're painting people with a broad brush?):

When the stunning news broke early yesterday that CBS would divide contestants on the next "Survivor" into four tribes based on race, we anxiously watched the traditional unveiling of the contestants on the network's "Early Show" because we had money riding on how fast "Survivor" host Jeff Probst would work the phrase "social experiment" into the interview.

"Survivor" executive producer Mark Burnett has been able to keep the reality series afloat for six years with stunts like pitting an all-male team against an all-female team. But a ratings plunge like the one the show suffered this past spring in its 12th edition -- fumbling nearly one-quarter of its audience compared with just two springs back -- called for something far more incendiary. Something that would whip the press into a frenzy amounting to millions of dollars worth of free publicity. Something "The Real Beverly Hillbillies" big -- something "Amish in the City" big.

So yesterday, on CBS's morning infotainment program, the network announced that for "Survivor: Cook Islands," which debuts next month, 20 contestants would be divided into the White Tribe, the African American Tribe, the Asian American Tribe and the Hispanic Tribe.

We'll pause here to give you time to re-hinge your jaw.

"The Early Show" was the perfect venue for a discussion about the "Survivor" cast's racial divide -- on-air talent for the CBS News program having been carefully selected nearly four years ago when "Early Show" was relaunched to include White Guy Father Figure Harry Smith, African American Chick Rene Syler, Asian American Chick Julie Chen and White Chick Hannah Storm.

About 15 minutes before the interview, "The Early Show's" ethnically diverse On-Air Gang took it outside the studio to see what the Common Folk thought of the shocking development:

"Now I'm just going to take this out into the crowd for a second because, the big twist . . . they're going to divide the tribes into race this time," Smith told the ethnically diverse gathering of Common Folk. Smith sought out one member of the Common Folk to speak for the crowd. He zoomed in on -- a white guy.

"What's your reaction to that?" Smith asked White Guy.

"Should be pretty interesting," White Guy responded.

So would feeding Christians to the lions be "pretty interesting", but should it be televised? Well, if we're talking about James Dobson and Randall Terry and their ilk, maybe. But I digress

Is this the worst television idea you've heard since Anna Nicole Smith got her own reality show, or what? Sure, let's take a high-ratings show and pit five white people against the marauding hordes. That'll foster a feeling of "out of many, one people", right? And given Burnett's history, I don't expect the editing to be significantly different from what we've seen for the last 12 seasons. Merge or no merge, this could get ugly.