MTV’s The Challenge wasn’t the only competitive reality show last night to tackle racial issues in the most facepalm-inducing way: CBS’s venerable Survivor got in on the action, too. The early episodes of the season have been dominated by Colton Cumbie, a seriously awful gay Republican and proud bigot who calls his happy-go-lucky black tribemate Bill “ghetto trash.†Things came to a head last night when Colton’s team won the immunity challenge, thereby absolving them from going to Tribal Council to vote someone off … and yet Colton ordered his team to go anyway, simply because he wanted to get rid of Bill. Then, while the tribe sat in front of Jeff Probst, Colton took things to the race place: He told stand-up comedian Bill to “get a real job†(though Colton, hailing from a wealthy family, has never had to work) and Hilly Holbrook–ed his way into a conversation about how he does have black people in his life … like his housekeeper. (He then smiled in a self-congratulatory way at his ignorant crack, because he is terrible.) Then, an old-man teammate named Tarzan (we know) entered the fray to defend Colton and rant that he’s sick of conversations about race, because we have a black president now, so racism has been solved! Or something. It was crazy! Watch from between your fingers.
