RACE TO THE FINISH: In an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News, Survivor host Jeff Probst admitted in a kinda, sorta, backhanded, gosh-maybe-but-you-never-know way that he wasn’t totally on board with this season’s big twist on the show that segregated the contestants into four, racially discreet tribes — for the first two episodes.
“I wasn’t entirely comfortable being a spokesman for racial diversity,” Probst told the Daily News. Which means that either Probst has hidden his Klan membership really well, or he’s got a rather inflated sense of the social importance of Survivor. I’m betting on the latter, but considering the brief but furious tempest that erupted in the media when the show’s “twist” was announced, it’s not surprising that Probst mistook the 13th season of an increasingly moribund reality TV show for the civil rights movement.
Probst admitted that playing the race card was “very dicey” — but so good for generating press, no? — though the reaction convinced him that “Americans are really frightened about the subject of race, afraid what they say might be considered offensive.”
Well, what Americans have to say about race might just be a little bit more complex than what you see on most reality TV, but the only hint of fear I picked up on was entirely generated by network press reps and pliant media.
There’s a lot to be said about race today — it’s just that a bunch of people chosen for how they look in swimsuits and their willingness to look sweaty and unshowered in front of TV cameras, all for a chance to win a million bucks, might not be the best people to listen to on the topic.
