After we are all done stressing out to the max for the holidays, after all our family dramas have been thoroughly heated in the pressure cooker of our "perfect Xmas" mythology and all the sibling and parental issues have resurrected their ugly heads even though we've all been successful at playing grown-ups for decades, what are we left to do?Well, sit back down in front of your new 56" HDTV and get ready for the second half of the season. Unfortunately, the writers are on strike, and speaking for myself, I don't think I can bear any more "reality" television that revolves around skanky love (Rock of Love, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, I Love New York 2, The Real World, etc.) without becoming a serious threat to civilized society.
But I was gratified to learn of a pilot for a really real reality show: Gitmo TV, a secret photograph I was able to cadge thanks to a lead from a favorite streetwalker along Rosenthalerstrasse, who directed me to a secret group of offices where the program is being hatched. It's in Berlin due to concerns of secrecy. Here's the concept.
In the first two episodes we will get to know twelve inmates at Gitmo, eleven of whom are innocent Afghan, Somali, Yemeni, and Iraqi shopkeepers and peasants, but one of whom is a seriously ambitious al Qaeda member with visions of 72 virgins dancing in his head. The identity of the al Qaeda member is unknown to anyone except the show's producer. Each week, the inmates will be given challenges, both in teams and as individuals. And every week, depending on the outcome and the discussion among the judges (a Cuban, an evangelical death penalty advocate, an atheistic alcoholic, an Islamic mullah, a devout Mormon, and a secular Jew), the audience will vote by phone ($0.90 per call) for which one of the inmates will be selected for various "repugnant acts," in the words of newly minted US Attorney General Mukasey, which might or might not constitute torture, like waterboarding ("It's like swimming," according to Senator Kit Bond (R-his own ass)), electric shock, freestyle Tasering, rumping with a broomstick, and other recreational activities.
All of this, of course, will be shot in High Definition Television with previously unused technology like "Invadocam" that can show the introduction of the "Giuliani broom handle" into the rectum of a losing inmate.
The final episode, of course, will result in the execution of an inmate as the "true terrorist" as selected by the viewing audience in a manner also to be selected by the viewing audience for the ultimate in democratic action in national security. I don't think Big Brother, the Amazing Race, or Survivor will ever be the same again after this.
You saw it here first.
