Posted on 08/25/2003 5:59:24 PM PDT by TheCure
David and Jeff fly into oblivion; Reichen and Chip Activate
The Amazing Race 4 Finale was, in a word, wrenching. To suffer through watching a team wantonly self-destruct before our eyes was indeed glumly wrenching. The hapless David and Jeff might have just as well steered their SUV into oncoming traffic or leapt out of their sky-dive plane buck naked---all before arriving at the trance-inducing Cairns airport.
Of course, if you were rooting for Reichen and Chip, or Jon and Kelly, this freakish anomaly made one giddy. For someone who was stumping for David and Jeff, I could only sit there mortified. I almost asked for someone to place a bath towel over my head. It was like watching the Titanic hit the iceberg; it was like... it was like knowing the race was over for The Goats even before the mid-hour commercial break. Highly surreal and depressing.
I just want to know which team trained that brain-scrambling microwave ray machine at David and Jeff---and why didn’t they wear aluminum foil beanies on their heads? Hello! Hmmm... let’s get on a jet to Sydney and use our noggins to somehow conjure unavailable tickets to an earlier Hawaii flight, when the only earlier Hawaii flight departs out of Tokyo, Japan. Yeah baby, those computers the airlines use are not to be believed. We’ll get on a nonexistent flight to Hawaii, you watch! We’ll hop on a cattle barge or something.
What’s so eerie and ironic is that Jon and Kelly went to the same Qantas international desk as did David and Jeff---they were right behind them in line!---and came away with a polar opposite impression of how to most quickly arrive in Hawaii. Chip and Reichen obtained the same itinerary at the domestic terminal. What the bloody hell happened? Was it the tight connection in Tokyo that scared them off? Did they make daft assumptions about their abilities? Whatever, obviously David and Jeff didn’t deserve to win. I guess their having a bit of trouble getting out of the Dodger Stadium parking lot minutes into the race was a sure sign of things to come. But, heck, I liked their style.
So, Reichen and Chip certainly deserved to win the Amazing Race 4. They both had their fair share of embarrassing vignettes throughout the race that might have plunged them into an early elimination, yet they always fought hard and onward to remain competitive. Nobody can, or should, take that, or their merited victory, away from them.
The flap that dapples their victory, however, continues to resonate. It must be said that it has absolutely zero to do with Reichen and Chip being a homosexual couple. What is at the heart of the intrigue is that these guys, along with the collusion of CBS, chose to market themselves as provocateurs of a highly-charged political agenda.
To tell the American viewing public that you are a “married” homosexual couple when it is not legally possible to consummate a same-sex “marriage” is a political maelstrom waiting to erupt. To tell viewers, as did Reichen, that your participation in the Amazing Race is a “personal vendetta” against all those who made you feel bad for being gay is fairly volatile stuff.
In fact, Reichen himself thinks their approach was “revolutionary.” In an interview with the gay publication The Advocate, Reichen went on to state, “Yeah, you know what? If the state isn’t going to recognize the rights that people want to have, then the people will go ahead and recognize that for the state.” Wow... that’s basic anarchist agitprop. Not particularly shocking to hardcore gay rights activists but it may be tad irksome, and tiresome, to have it slapped in your face in a weekly family network television show in early prime time.
Good god. Some people just want to sit down with their family and watch an exciting television show like The Amazing Race in the evening without having to have their eight-year-old kid walk up and ask why two men are kissing or why does the TV say that two men are “married?” Why didn’t Chip or Reichen, or CBS, have the sense to realize that these monumental cultural issues are political hot potatoes better left for more mature and serious venues. I guess one answer is that they just don’t give a bloody hell.
What is a sure example of this kind of media and identity politics elitism again comes from Reichen and his Advocate interview. He describes the “Christian right” as getting “pissed off” about their marriage claim and picketing the CBS headquarters. A CBS spokeswoman, Beth Feldman, apparently sticks her head out and yells, “’They’re married, they’re gay, get over it. What’s the problem?’ and turned back around and went in.” And, Reichen thought that was “great.” If a CBS rep had spoken to some protesting homosexuals in that manner there would have been a war.
It is somewhat amazing that three years after the gay Richard Hatch soundly won the first Survivor installment we still hear victimization pap such as this from Reichen, “When we first found out we were going to be on the race, we said, 'We're gay and we'd like to show America that gay people can do anything that straight people can do.' That's a stereotype of the homosexual male. We just wanted to prove that we could do anything.”
The underlying contempt for anyone who does not swallow every gay rights credo hook-line-and-sinker oozes corpulently from these type of ubiquitous manifesto statements. No one thinks this way about gays except gay rights advocates who think all straight people are closet homophobes and dolts.
Alas, Amazing Race 1 had Team Quido; Amazing Race 2 had Danny and Oswald (Team Cha-Cha-Cha); Amazing Race 3 had Ken of the Oh Brothers! team and Andrew who raced with his straight father. All gay men, all great racers. None had the effrontery to pursue a self-aggrandizing political agenda that would seek to alienate possibly millions of Amazing Race fans on a personal and cultural level. It is sad this course was pursued by Reichen and Chip; it is equally sad that CBS didn’t think enough of its total viewership to go for a lighter touch. Amazing Race 4 is a tainted episode for this reason.
From the Great Race to the Gay Race. More pro-homosexual agit-prop served weekly!
These numerous homosexual programs (with more coming) are going to backfire on the hollywood wackos and the homo movement. Many of the 95% plus straight people in this country are not going to sit back and have this stuff shoved down their throats via the TV.
They are shooting themselves in the foot, er, heels.
Yesterday, I was using the TV Guide channel to find a program on supervolcanoes, and there was a blurb about a new "reality" show, maybe on MTV...the girl, an absolute knockout babe farted loudly at the dining table. When they asked her if she felt better, she said, "Yeah, but I really need to drop some "kids" off at the pool."
Just when I think what passes for pop culture can't get any coarser, on TV, a hot blonde farts and announces she needs to take a dump.
Poop culture?
Last night on Fear Factor, the contestants had to go face down in a plate of "spaghetti and meatballs", ie. live earthworms and congealed bloodballs, and eat some of it to stay in competition for $50,000 bucks.
To think, I went to college and got a job...I could have just eaten worms.
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