The "Race War" is Over

The ethnic experiment is quickly over on Survivor as race-based tribes are eliminated

By DAVID BAUDER / AP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- All the hubbub about the Survivor ethnic experiment turned out to be pretty worthless. Why? Because after only two episodes, producers merged the black, white, Asian and Latino tribes into two mixed-race gangs on the CBS reality show Thursday night. No explanation was given for the quick abandonment of segregation; it seemed to pass by so quickly as to mean nothing.

Jesus H. Christ. If any of these entertainment "journalists" had ever bothered to watch more than a token (no pun) episode of Survivor, they would have known that four tribes of five members will be merged into two tribes of eight three episodes into the season. It's basic math -- the contest couldn't sustain itself otherwise (or, more accurately, one or more teams would be so comically overmatched that it would be unfair).

So the show didn't "abandon" the tribes-divided-by-ethnicity concept due to negative publicity, as rocket scientist/brain surgeon David Bauder seems to be implying; they "abandoned" it because they were always going to abandon it.

Frankly, I never understood all the hubbub the concept generated, other than the predictable hand-wringing from uptight namby-pamby East Coast media douche bags. It's not as if the contestants were kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to participate. Also, one of teh main criticisms of Survivor -- and reality shows in general -- is that the players all tend to be lily white. Well, now they've got a show where Caucasians aren't the majority, and all they do is bitch.