{"id":1321,"date":"2006-08-27T14:38:38","date_gmt":"2006-08-27T14:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1321"},"modified":"2006-08-27T14:38:38","modified_gmt":"2006-08-27T14:38:38","slug":"still_miles_awa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1321","title":{"rendered":"Still Miles Away From The Promised Land"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The concept behind the latest iteration of the Survivor series&#8211;segregating contestants on <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/items\/200608240003?src=newsbox-atrios.blogspot.com\">the basis of race<\/a>&#8211;is one of the most repugnant ratings stunts in the history of mass media.&nbsp; Unfortunately, the show&#8217;s producers are merely capitalizing on a disturbingly ominous cultural trend: it&#8217;s acceptable to be a racist again, at least in the former <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Confederate_States_of_America\">CSA<\/a>.&nbsp; For your consideration: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Virginia Senator George Allen&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9G7gq7GQ71c\">bone-headed &#8220;macaca&#8221; remark<\/a> directed at S.R. Sidarth, a Democratic operative who happened to be of Indian descent<\/li>\n<li>Tramm Hudson, a Florida congressional candidate, commenting that &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.prospect.org\/midterm\/2006\/08\/post_322.html#005869\">blacks are not the greatest swimmers<\/a>.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>A Baptist church in Mississippi that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8305.html\">voted out a 12-year-boy<\/a> who happened to be biracial because church leaders did not want his black relatives attending with him <\/li>\n<li>A white bus driver in Lousiana <a href=\"http:\/\/talkleft.com\/new_archives\/015578.html\">forcing black children to the back of the bus<\/a> to make room for white students.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the opinion of this liberal Northerner, we ended Reconstruction much too early.&nbsp; Of course, racist tendencies are not exclusive to the South and all of these incidents were quickly condemned in local media.&nbsp; But it&#8217;s so dismaying to see this kind of behavior nearly forty years after the peak of the civil rights movement.&nbsp; It makes me wonder if this current wave of bigotry is simply a continuation of our long and dismal xenophobic history or if it&#8217;s being provoked by other factors such as economic uncertainty or post-9\/11 fear of the Other.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Whatever the reason, let&#8217;s hope low ratings force CBS to make this season of Survivor the last.&nbsp; Hell, maybe the bad publicity will be sufficient to kill off the entire misbegotten genre of reality television.&nbsp; Except Amazing Race.&nbsp; That show is kind of cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The concept behind the latest iteration of the Survivor series&#8211;segregating contestants on the basis of race&#8211;is one of the most repugnant ratings stunts in the history of mass media.&nbsp; Unfortunately, the show&#8217;s producers are merely capitalizing on a disturbingly ominous cultural trend: it&#8217;s acceptable to be a racist again, at least in the former CSA.&nbsp; <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1321' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-lj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}