BCT Editorial – 8/29/06

This page was last updated on August 30, 2006.

In need of mercy; Editorial; Beaver County Times; August 29, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“Why should the producers of ‘Survivor’ stop at exploiting race in their pursuit of cheap viewer thrills?

“If they’re going to stoop as low as possible for the almighty dollar, why not go for the almighty almighty - religion?

“What would make the religious wars on ‘Survivor’ so compelling wouldn’t just be the competition between Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims. Imagine the internecine battles as well. Producers could load the Muslim team with Sunnis, Shiites, Druze and Alawites, the Christian team with Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants, etc., and let them go at each other in the preliminaries.

“What would make this religious reality show intriguing is that it would be interesting to see how much (if any) energy the teams would have left after they had exhausted themselves fighting with their co-religionists. Would they still have the strength to take on and defeat the other teams to emerge victorious?

“As a final lowest-common denominator in terms of exploitation, the producers could declare that the results would show once and for all whose side God really is on and who the ultimate survivor will be for all eternity.

“Absurd? Absolutely. But nobody ever went broke overestimating the lethal combination of unconscionable programmers and unconscious viewers. A prime-time example of that will take place when the race-teams ‘Survivor’ hits the airwaves, no doubt to huge ratings because of the racial hype.

“May God have mercy on us. We’ll certainly need it.”

[RWC] I have to admit I’m getting a kick out of liberals expressing disapproval of the “Survivor” publicity stunt.

Why?

At the heart of liberal strategy is assigning everyone to one or more groups and then instigating conflict among the groups. How many times do we read it’s about rich vs. poor, heterosexuals vs. homosexuals, white vs. black, et cetera? What about the congressional black and Hispanic caucuses? What about all the various race-based, ethnicity-based, et cetera “clubs” on our university campuses?

It’s telling what the Times considers “absurd.”