If someone WAS proposing ICE Thunderdome, then obviously my response would be different. But this is not that. A lesson I learned from Trump 1.0 was to save my outrage for the big things. Half a million people could lose their legal status in days. A tone-deaf TV show pitch is small potatoes.
fair enough. it’s still weird and dehumanizing though
Yeah, as I said, bad TV pitch.
I understand what you're saying, as one of those affected, but here's the problem with that logic- that pitch can escalate just as quickly as everything else has. That's the issue I take with it.
You’ll forgive me though if I find myself not taking very seriously a pitch for basically The Amazing Race but you get a cash prize AND a personalized natz ceremony at the end. It’s just so far from ICE Thunderdome that I’m just struggling to gin up outrage given what they are doing right now.
it's less the pitch itself and the sheer ignorance of the optics we are definitely in danger and this project in its best form would still add to that
You do not in fact have to give fascists any benefit of the doubt. In what world do you think she's proposing a show that is legal or respectful of immigrants or immigration law? She shoots puppies and does photo ops in front of illegally imprisoned victims of illegal deportations. This isn't a game
I'd say while you're right, the letter of the pitch as far as we know is innocuous, a reality show version of that Yakhov Smirnov sitcom from the late 80's, I think its title was his catch phrase "What a Country." That said I think a lot of the response is understandably filtered by the messenger1/
delivering that letter: Kristi Noem's notorious tactical cosplay and extraterritorial detention center photo ops brings hard core Auntie Entity vibes. Or, you know, they could just enlist public broadcasting in collaboration to produceore sensitive accounts of the immigrant experience. 2/2
Hey, so, these people are monsters and everything they touch is rotten. So we can VERY SAFELY assume that AT BEST it will be a way to trick people into giving their info to ice so they can be kidnapped. There are no small wins with people who do press shoots in front of emaciated prisoners.
Hope that helps.
doing anything like this, even with the best intentions, at this moment in cooperation with noem’s department is a NO NO NO. at the least it’s whitewashing noem and her stooges. there’s nothing to defend here.
Yes, though I’ll say that my personal thought on the matter is that the public opinion battle over the use of cages was lost in the 1980s before I was born, and the immigrant rights movement has been playing catch-up ever since.
i still believe in the power of the people and that we will be free
It is a terrible idea by terrible people. Thinking even for a second that it won’t be about humiliating and degrading the contestants ignores everything we know about them. C’mon man.
Yeah. I feel like TV producers are famous for terrible pitches that are tone-deaf for reasons that would have been obvious if they ever ran the idea past some normal people. Bad ideas, but also not like… remotely comparable to jailing people without trial or kicking a million people out of status.
I think this is underselling the dystopian vibe it gives off. To me, its the idea that this could easily, and quickly, spiral into something much darker.
Tone-deafness is something the producers share with Noem et al - maybe the reason this got this far.
reality tv producers can also basically not pay the contestants a living wage and they can’t be apart of a union either
Yes! The reality TV industry can be extremely exploitative to contestants. No debate there.
This administration would end up sending the losers to Libya or CECOT. It would be the migrant Hunger Games.
From my perspective as a naturalized citizen, I think the pitch could be greatly improved by having at least one natural-born citizen as the placebo, to see how badly that person does in comparison to the contestants.
What happens to the losers on the show?
It is very hard to do this - I feel like I’m abandoning individuals. But you’re right. We have to focus on the big things.
