Word: contests
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...stay cool. Men had doused women with water in the past too. "Why do you think so many guys were out there with video cameras?" asks Gordon Ludwig, an attorney representing one of the first men arrested. But this year, Ludwig says, "it was like a wet-T-shirt contest that got out of control...
...when asked if he is satisfied with U.S. economic support, his answer is, "Absolutely not." He is blunt about Morocco's relations with Algeria, which he cites for prolonging the dispute over the Western Sahara. The King refuses to take part in a meeting that simply becomes "a contest on who will speak the loudest." Yet he is not above praising Algeria's President for his sense of humor...
...paraphrase Jay McInerney, the sort of person who would watch Survivor. It's not just the larvae-eating contest (which ex-Survivor B.B. Andersen, 64, helpfully describes as "like having a booger in your mouth"). It's the gladiatorial concept: stranding 16 people on a tropical island to scrabble for food and shelter, all for the delectation of sluggards licking Cheetos dust off their fingers in their air-conditioned living rooms. It's the Machiavellian twist: having the contestants vote one another off the island until there is a single million-dollar winner and 15 rejects. It's the suffering...
More abstract and worrisome is the overall message the shows send: that life is an elimination contest, that difference means discord. The Real World is a sort of teen-friendly Adam-and-Eve story--seven young people, set up in a coolly furnished paradise, are bound to screw it up. Survivor and Big Brother change the reference from Genesis to Lord of the Flies and No Exit. But if what they show can be ugly, it's insulting to the audience to assume viewers must take this as a model for life--that's like saying Chinatown is an immoral...
...away as California, while those who lined up outside the studio had only a 1 in 50 shot of scoring a seat at the taping. If they did indeed come for the camp, the show outdid itself, though the producers' efforts were sometimes a bit forced. The contest was held at the dance club Webster Hall, and the theme ingredient, Dungeness crab, was lowered from a disco ball. "Do they get the joke, or do they think it's serious?" asked Flay afterward. They hired Australian former talk show host Gordon Elliott as emcee. They get it, Bobby...