Tired of reiterating that you don’t care about politician’s sex lives? How about deconstructing whether or not you should care about how ‘your’ team is doing on Survivor: Race War? Here’s the liveblogged second episode on the endlessly sarcastic reappropriate, and Jeff Yang’s admission of guilty addiction on racialicious (formerly Mixed Media Watch).
Jen from reappropriate may hate this show, but she never misses an episode. Thank god, or I wouldn’t be able to get my fix!
I can’t believe I’m saying this.
So how is your team doing? Your ethnic group may not fit into any of the four American ‘races’, but the stereotypes constructed in editing so far are:
- The White team are privileged, whiny cheats, who are so entitled and busy making out that they never do any actual work.
- The Black team are acutely race-conscious, have no non-urban survival skills, were hampered by their arrogant male ‘leader’, but have been doing better since the women took over.
- The Latino team work really hard and will do great, now they have jettisoned the lazy guy.
- The Asian team work really hard and do great, are really good at solving puzzles, and have no lazy guy.
Judging from these well-constructed tropes, the Asians and Latinos are the strongest at this point. The Asian team is the odds-on favourite, due to their tremendous work-ethic, braininess, traditional healing arts, ability to shut down inappropriate humour, and team bonding without the distractions of bawdy exhibitionist cavorting.
Again, I can’t believe I’m saying this.
It’s all varying degrees of tragic for all implicated, but who do you think is coming off looking the worst out of this? I think the White team. Or is it just my innate prejudice? You be the judge.
Meanwhile (yes, more coup, I can’t resist), here's an excellent editorial from The Nation about how the military cannot take the coup’s 'popularity' for granted by repressing free speech. At the same time, it notes that the broadcast media as a whole now feels actually more freely able to cover the rampant corruption and human rights abuses they were muzzled on for the past four years.
And it looks the the military junta is now competing with the Security Council P-5 over Supachai, currently Secretary General of UNCTAD. The Thai army wants him to be interim PM, meanwhile the Security Council P-5 wants Supachai for UN Secretary General. Word is, Supachai is leaning towards Thailand; and who knows, with scheduling maybe he could fit in both jobs...