"[T]he most distastefully bro-worshiping, wife-fearing season yet."

Linda Holmes at NPR with 10 elaborate reasons why "Sexism Is Silently Killing 'Survivor.'"

10. And finally, just as a general matter, this season has been almost entirely a story of men being unpleasant and dismissive of women.... You cannot sell, season after season after season, the idea that it is a coincidence that your show is morphing into a grody love letter not to men, but to bullies.

Oh, but that's what's so fun, when they get their comeuppance.

"He called me BRASSBANNER, a code name in the double-barreled style of the National Security Agency... Verax was the name he chose for himself, 'truth teller' in Latin."

In the style of the National Security Agency...

Also the style of "Special Agent" Phillip Sheppard from "Survivor"...
2 takes on Phillip and nicknaming. Malcolm says "ridiculous":



Cochran tries to extract meaning:



If you want to know who had the better insight, click here to see who won the season.

"Harvard law student hopes to buy a Segway after his $1M ‘Survivor’ win."

ABA Journal covers John Cochran's win:

He told the Hollywood Reporter he would like to spend some of the prize money on a Segway, a new apartment, investments and "a lot of wireless gizmos and stuff."

On the finale, Cochran said he would like to become a writer rather than a lawyer. Asked about his paper about Survivor, Cochran told the Hollywood Reporter it was “basically Survivor for Dummies” and wasn’t that great....

“It wasn't showing any great insight into how to manage the Survivor jury,” Cochran said. “It gave maybe a brief overview of maybe what sort of strategies work and what don't, but it's not especially insightful. That's why I haven't released it. It's just gonna shatter everyone's illusions that I've written some sort of brilliant thing. It's not brilliant at all. It's embarrassing, so I'm gonna keep it a mystery."

Ha ha. Is the new book going to be insight into Survivor or insight into modesty? Or... may I recommend... a memoir of traveling around America on a Segway? If so, scoot through Madison, Wisconsin, because we love those things around here.

"We predicted a moment like this. If the information were attacked it would immediately spread."

"The unintended consequence is it’s become incredibly demanded information — it’s everywhere."

NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, “It’s something that obviously is a concern.”

To Wilson, they merely prove his point: The “great thinkers in nanny state-ism” will do anything to maintain power.

He also bristles when gun victims — like the families of the Sandy Hook school victims — lobby government.

“I’m unhappy they were able to leverage their victimhood for the reduction of liberties of their fellow citizens,” Wilson said.

“They’re playing small ball,” added Wilson. “We’re playing a much bigger game.”

He’s such a passionate believer in his plastic gun that he laughs at the notion of someone killing him with it.

“That would be so ironic,” he said. “Even in death, it would be hilarious.”

Laughing at death, laughing at the government, it's 3D-printed-gun designer Cody Wilson — who's also a law student (at the University of Texas).

Wilson has not merely designed a 3D-printable gun, he's 3D-printed himself as a character on the national scene. Nice creative work, Wilson!

Now, will he become a lawyer?

Another law student in the news is John Cochran, who just won $1 million on "Survivor." He too designed himself as a fabulous character:

The first time, I went into [the game] so anxious that people are going to perceive me as a nerd, a socially awkward freak. And I'm formally still the same socially awkward, freaky, nerd guy. But the difference is that instead of those eccentricities and quirks being a source of embarrassment or anxiety for me, I've just accepted it as a reality of my existence... And that's immensely liberating because I got to focus on the game this time instead of how I'm perceived, which ruined my game the first time. Being able to focus on the game I've loved for half my life was a dream come true.

Nice creative work, Cochran! Cochran was asked — by Jeff Probst — whether he was going to go on to be a lawyer, and he said he didn't think so. He said he'd like to be a writer. He said he wrote a paper on the "Survivor" jury system when he was at Harvard, so I expect some cool books analyzing "Survivor."

"'Of course, a little later on, we'll be revealing who is leaving our show,' Ryan said...

"... turning Randy's chair slightly and giving him a pointed look. The veteran judge played coy, shaking his head and laughing as if he didn't know what Ryan could possibly be referring to."

Meanwhile, as for the contestants, Angie Miller got sent home: 1. for lacking the courage to play the piano during the Elton John song that had been chosen to give her one more chance to show off her singing-while-playing-the-piano style that they repeatedly told her was her best look, 2. for having the least heart-tugging of the visits home (despite the attempt to incorporate the Boston bombing into her story, she being a Massachusetts resident), and 3. because she was the last of the skinny girls and just as we learned early on that it's not a boy year, it's not a skinny girl year. That's just how these things go.

As long as we're talking about reality shows, here's a nice discussion of this week's episode of "Survivor," which links to this video of the subtly devious Cochran paying tribute to his mother, with whom he's watched every episode of "Survivor" for the last 11 years. Have you been watching "Survivor" or "American Idol" or some other reality show for many years with a son or daughter, analyzing the characters and the strategies, as a very important part of your parent-child relationship? If you watch that video of Cochran, you might think yeah, that's like the way it's been at our house, or you might think wow, I wish I had a kid that shared something like that with me. I'm sure many of you feel like saying reality shows are a waste of time and parents should want to do better things with their children. If so, don't just scoff at the people who've found a beautiful bond in the watching of a TV show. Say what you did (or will do in the future) that is so much better (as, obviously, many things are).

A NYT exposé of the "boys' club" at the "Today" show — replete with "Operation Bambi" and what it really means when they say there's a lack of "chemistry."

A great NYT Magazine article, by Brian Stelter (who has an entire book coming out: "Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV"). Stelter explains why the morning shows are so important to the networks, and why being #1 matters so much. I just want to excerpt some of the imputations of sexism:

Many executives at the network never grasped how profoundly hurt and humiliated [Ann] Curry remained — not just by her televised dismissal but by all the backstage machinations that led to that fateful morning. Curry felt that the boys’ club atmosphere behind the scenes at “Today” undermined her from the start, and she told friends that her final months were a form of professional torture. The growing indifference of Matt Lauer, her co-host, had hurt the most, but there was also just a general meanness on set. At one point, the executive producer, Jim Bell, commissioned a blooper reel of Curry’s worst on-air mistakes. Another time, according to a producer, Bell called staff members into his office to show a gaffe she made during a cross-talk with a local station. (Bell denies both incidents.)...

Meanness.  Women are very sensitive to meanness. It's a show for "created largely for women." But it's "managed mostly by men." As "Today" got into ratings trouble and some were blaming Lauer, "Bell had another culprit in mind: Ann Curry."

So insistent was Bell that Curry was the problem — that she was “out of position,” as he put it in an e-mail to his deputies — that he had been talking about it with friends for months. One morning-TV veteran suggested to him that firing Curry, who had been co-hosting for only about six months at that point, would be tantamount to “killing Bambi.” Undeterred, Bell hatched a careful three-part plan: 1.) persuade Lauer to extend his expiring contract; 2.) oust Curry; 3.) replace her with Savannah Guthrie. According to this source, Bell called his plan Operation Bambi.

Bell, a 6-foot-4 former Harvard lineman, was well liked by his staff. He was considered a straight shooter who would do anything for the sake of the show. (Bell denies using the term “Operation Bambi.”) The coinage, however, was indicative of a few larger truths about morning television. Though it is created largely for women, the business is, even now, managed mostly by men, including those who like to think in terms of war, sabotage and embarrassing James Bond-like names for things they do in the office. 

(If you're watching these season "Survivor," you, like me, may think: Phillip!)

Curry was sad after signing off, but also enraged. When critics blamed a lack of chemistry for her departure, she dismissed it to friends it as a euphemism for something else. “ ‘Chemistry,’ in television history, generally means the man does not want to work with the woman,” Curry was known to have remarked. “It’s an excuse generally used by men in positions of power to say, ‘The woman doesn’t work.’ ”

"French reality TV doctor kills himself after contestant dies."

The show is "Koh Lanta," the French equivalent of "Survivor," and a 25-year-old died of a heart attack during a tug of war challenge. The doctor wrote in his suicide note that he was "sure that I treated Gerald in a respectable manner, as a patient and not as a contestant" and that he could not bear "having to reconstruct [his] destroyed reputation."

Meade watches the NCAA tournament, but I do not.

I don't like it. And I do watch baseball and football. Not as much as he does, but enough to prove that I'm not averse to all spectator sports. But I do not like basketball. Meade tells me he guarantees that if I were to take a little time to learn a few things about what's going on in basketball that I could enjoy it.

He compares it to his learning to like "Survivor." At first, he spurned it. A fake endurance contest. Why, he's done real endurance races — 24-hour mountain bike races. What's this voting people off an island? But — motivated to share time with me — he learned some details — the strategy, the edit — and it became interesting. If I would learn a few things about basketball, I wouldn't just be putting up with it. I would actually enjoy it, as he now enjoys "Survivor."

"Did you ever notice how the women on 'Survivor' are all wearing bikinis?" I ask. The whole implied argument is painfully obvious. Basketball players in their slinky, baggy tank tops and immense, swishy skirt-pants.

But maybe women don't care so much about what a man looks like. It's the functionality of the body. The performance. This is Meade's theory.

I resist the theory. There's performance on "Survivor" too, I say. But would you enjoy "Survivor" if the women were all wearing big baggy T-shirts and big loose pants?

We compare football, which women are especially fond of watching. The big shoulders, the tight pants (bulge-enhancingly light-colored and shiny). There's something to see. That's a spectator sport. The men look like men. Basketball players are dressed like very unattractive women or horribly oversized children.

"And they're always falling on the floor, and then Dad comes over and gives them a time out," I say. "It's completely not sexy."

"I was on board the chopper with the door off — our pilot flew in nice and close to the top of the spire and hovered there for about 5 seconds as I stepped OFF, yes, stepped off..."

"...and onto the top of the rock which is only about 2 sq ft. Our director was holding my arm from inside the chopper as I stepped out to the rock — where our safety guy (who had climbed to the top – that’s right – climbed) grabbed my other arm to make sure I didn’t fall off the 125 ft rock and down to the ocean below."

Jeff Probst describes how they got that shot that begins the opening sequence in the new season of "Survivor." It disturbed me to see him there, and the video — here — of how he got there is scary too.

And here's that book "Stranded" that Probst wrote with a co-author – a novel for kids about kids stranded on an island.