Los Angeles, California.—CBS previewed the latest season of its popular “Survivor” television series to an audience of Los Angeles media critics yesterday.The network announced that as a result of the Obama administration’s negotiations with the island of Palau – and $200 million in advertising paid for by the federal government -- contestants on “Survivor: Palau” include several former detainees released from Guantanamo Bay. The detainees are members of a Uighur ethnic group affiliated with a designated terrorist organization that seeks to establish a radical Islamic theocracy throughout South and Central Asia.
While some critics complained the contest was shaping up to be “a bit of a mismatch” -- pitting a college cheerleader and a travel agent against religious extremists who received military instruction at an al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist training camp – others praised the series as a “microcosmic experiment in facilitating global harmony.”
In the episode previewed, the former Guantanamo Bay detainees lose a coconut chopping contest, putting them at risk of elimination. “They kept sawing back and forth with the blade,” said one critic. “That seemed to really slow them down.”
The ex-detainees go on to win the next challenge, but are disqualified after hurling at their opponents the same noxious cocktail of feces and bodily fluids they threw at guards during a March, 2003, prison riot.
One critic, excitedly describing the show’s last segment, revealed that the ex-detainees announce their intention to protest the Tribal Council’s democratic procedures by detonating a plastic bottle filled with their own methane gas. Then, in yet another dramatic turn of events, the ex-detainees win immunity after the show’s producers interrogate them in an overly aggressive manner in an attempt to discover the bomb’s location.
“The thing is, though,” said the critic, “they don’t discover the bomb.”
CBS officials had no comment on the content of future episodes.
Associated articles: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/194/story/771303.html; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/world/10palau.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper; http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/04/the_uighurs_in_their-print.php; http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/24/nation/na-gitmo-release24; http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/tg92.htm; http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Information_paper:_Uighur_Detainee_Population_at_JTF-GTMO; http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h0PvMT3xGXLwI-2KwkOThMJToprwD99A604O0; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/31/AR2009103102140.html
