Your Saturday morning "authenticity" update.

1. "A Little League coach went viral for his dad joke on the mound. It taught a bigger lesson" (NYT) quotes Jake Riordan, a Little League coach in Kentucky: "I don’t really take anything in life too seriously. It’s like, it’s Little League baseball. But I think consistency when you’re a coach is pretty important. So I’m consistently loose and goofy, and they play that way. I think that one of the best things we can do as a coach or leader is just to be authentic — to be yourself. I think, believe it or not, kids or players of any age can see through the bull crap."

2. "Jeff Probst Reflects on ‘Survivor’s’ Resurgence After 2025 Emmy Nominations" (Entertainment Now): "While Probst has been open about his friendly rivalry with the other competition series hosts in the past, he argues that [Alan] Cumming and RuPaul 'take on a more performative role' for their respective shows. 'It’s not their true selves,' said Probst, referring to Cumming’s 'dandy Scottish laird' persona on 'The Traitors' and RuPaul’s extravagant drag transformation on 'Drag Race.' Alternatively, Probst said that the man viewers see on each and every episode of 'Survivor' is his authentic self. 'That’s me,' he said. 'The vulnerability is that I’m exposed and vulnerable in the same way that the players are because I don’t do do-overs.... '"

3. "Ding Yuxi’s Tear‑Filled Gaze Goes Viral, Highlighting Authenticity and Shifting Masculinity in Chinese Reality TV" (Trending on Weibo): "Actor Ding Yuxi – known to his growing legion of fans for his curly hair, gentle demeanor and the boy‑ish charm that has anchored his rise in dramas such as “十年一品温如言” – was caught on screen with what Chinese netizens have affectionately called “酒汪汪的大眼睛”, literally 'wine‑soaked big eyes'... a playful twist on the more common “水汪汪的大眼睛” (big watery eyes).... Fans celebrated the moment as a rare sign of authenticity in an industry often accused of presenting polished, pre‑packaged personas.... viewers reposted the clip with captions praising his 'authentic vulnerability,' while others dissected the scene, wondering whether the tear was spontaneous...."

4. TO COME! I SAID I'D DO 4. DO YOU DOUBT MY SINCERITY? 

"[Trump] would fire the absolute wrong person.... [He] had no idea what was going on, and he would just make something up."

"He just had to choose a name... And maybe that was the only name he remembered of the people sitting around.... Our job then was to reverse engineer the show and to make him not look like a complete moron.... to make the person who he fired look not as good."

Said Jonathon Braun, who was a producer on "The Apprentice" (and on "Survivor"), quoted in "The Star-Making Machine That Created ‘Donald Trump’/The inside story of how the producers of 'The Apprentice' crafted a TV version of Mr. Trump — measured, thoughtful and endlessly wealthy — that ultimately fueled his path to the White House" (NYT).

The article is adapted from the book "Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success," by NYT reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.

Isn't selective editing like that the norm in these competitive reality shows? I remember reading Television Without Pity contemporaneously with those old "Survivor" and "Apprentice" episodes, because sophisticated fans enjoyed watching the show and analyzing the edit. The ultimate winner would get a "hero's edit," and the loser's mistakes would be highlighted. The show had to make sense, but still keep you guessing. That was the method, already developed on "Survivor," but here's Braun trying to impose an interpretation of Trump by selectively presenting his observations — editing! As if Trump was a special sort of bungler, and the editors were covering for him. Trump did the show brilliantly. By the way, what about Jeff Probst? Does he watch the rough footage before he conducts the "tribal council" on "Survivor," or are the editors making him look more savvy than he is? And how would you badmouth Probst if he were running for President?

How, indeed?

A headline pair on the front page of the NYT catches my eye.

"How a Naked Man on a Tropical Island Created Our Current Political Insanity" — The naked man catches my eye, but a quick glance identifies the naked man as Richard Hatch, winner of season 1 of "Survivor," and we know that "Survivor" led to "The Apprentice," Donald Trump's big lateral move into the nation's psyche:

"Survivor 44 recap: Why all old puzzles need to go/With players memorizing puzzles before they even step foot on the island, it's time for producers to start anew."

That's the headline for Dalton Ross's new column.

The problem, as — spoiler alert — you saw in this episode, is that the show re-uses old puzzles, and some players, before beginning their stint on the show, have made 3D printed copies of these puzzles and practiced. This week, we saw Carson do a complicated puzzle speedily and then heard in the voiceover that he'd done the puzzle a thousand times at home. He also openly celebrates nerd power — uses the word "nerd" to rally the other nerds. 

Ross asks: 

[I]s that really what we want to watch as viewers — someone just putting together a puzzle they already learned how to solve before they even stepped on the beach? 

Okay, let me nerd out in my particular lane of nerdery — language usage. I have no problem with Ross writing "before they even stepped on the beach." But I don't like the wording in the headline "before they even step foot on the island." 

What a cool art project: A realistic-looking action-figure set of The DiGrasso Men from "The White Lotus."

At Reddit, someone asks "What's your method here? Kit bashing other toys or are you like molding yourself? Either way this is such cool art!" 

The artist answers "They're 3d sculpts that I do in Blender and then 3d print and paint. The heads are entirely my own designs and then the bodies are usually scans of existing toys that I alter(I like to call that digital kitbashing haha)." 

The execution is great, and I love the idea that there would be action figures of the characters from "The White Lotus," though the comedy of unusual choices for action figures has been around for decades.

By the way, I am such a "White Lotus" fan that I not only rewatched both seasons and watched both seasons of Mike White's earlier show "Enlightened," I rewatched the season of "Survivor" where he was a contestant, and I've started reading books I see recommended in "Mike White's Top 10 Books." I chose the book that someone I know in real life has leaned on me to read. Him, I resisted. But somehow Mike White wants me to read it, and I believe. 

"Jesus Christ is Alive"... trending on Twitter.

Screen grab, just now:

 

Here's the link to the tweet about the "Jeopardy!" spoilsport, Yogesh Raut.

And here's the link to the "Jesus Christ is Alive" trend. As it looks over there right now, it seems that "Jesus Christ is Alive" is a trend because there are a lot of posts saying "Jesus Christ is Alive" is trend.

As for the "#Survivor" trend, there's this:

# 3

The Lamentation by Marco Basaiti, 16th Century#ArtButMakeItSurvivor #survivor pic.twitter.com/ujVFfMFt9C

— josh kettles (@joshkettles) January 23, 2023

Here's a line from the newest episode of "Survivor" that I'm not seeing quoted anywhere.

I took the trouble to transcribe it:

"We're all trying to gauge not only what is best for our individual game but what is every other individual thinking is best for their game, and that's just I don't even know what factorial that is, but 13 to the 12th? — like that's just so many different permutations of people working together and thinking different things."

That was said by the cast-member Jeanine Zheng at tribal council, so, in front of all the other contestants, whose faces read to me as though they were thinking things like "Factorial?! I was told there would be no math" and "Too smart, she's got to go."

Anyway... Zheng is 24-year-old UX designer. I had to look up "UX."

Ketanji Brown Jackson loves "Survivor" — calls it "the best show ever."

Why? — asks the Washington Post interviewer. 

Answer:

Because it’s like a social experiment. It’s human nature, what do people do when they’re starving and how do they react to one another? It’s like this Hobbesian state of nature: How are we going to deal with this situation? I love it.

It really isn't a Hobbesian state of nature, though. If it were a Hobbesian state of nature, the tribes wouldn't be taking votes and eliminating competitors one by one in a strategic way with notion that one person would win a pile of money to take back when the game ends after a known, set number of days. If it were a Hobbesian state of nature, one tribe could raid another and kill them all, and you'd want to keep the best competitors around to help you as the game of survival would go on until you reached the only exit possible: death. There would be no bags of rice to tide you over, no sudden infusion of Applebee's calories. There would be bloody violence and no medical personnel to swoop in. There would be rape. And babies.

But it's my favorite TV show too. It's a wonderful game that shows something about how people attempt to find order within a group as they pursue an utterly selfish goal. But I would think a judge would see how much law there is.

(I'm not really knocking the judge. I'm sure that she realizes all the things I've said here and that if I were talking to her in person about "Survivor," we'd have a great conversation. And then she'd plot to vote me off the island.)

"Sometimes the game isn't necessarily fair, because me and her are playing a whole nother mental game that they don't even know — that when you are a person of color..."

"... and you're the only one — that you have to play. And that's something they don't even have to worry about. Everybody can just be themselves. We have to be ourselves, but then hold back a little bit."

From "Survivor 42 recap: Drea and Maryanne take a stand/The complicated history of race on reality TV leads two players to take an emotional stand" (Entertainment Weekly).

ADDED: Here's how the racial discourse looked on last night's episode:

"A few years ago, after Mr. Probst noticed some contestants blaming producers for their 'bad edit,' he wrote a 'Survivor' mission statement that he and his team still consult."

"'Our job is to tell the most authentic version of each person’s story in an electric, visceral, dramatic, and entertaining way,' it reads. 'But it must be authentic.'... Authenticity, 'Survivor' fans have come to know, means warts and all. It means the show can’t, per Mr. Probst’s directive, change the intent of someone’s words during editing. It’s meant watching one contestant demand another remove her fake teeth during a tribal council as payback for a blindside. It’s even meant watching a gay contestant out a trans tribemate, equating his choice not to disclose his transness with deception."

From "Jeff Probst Is the Ultimate ‘Survivor’/Despite many changes to the reality show over the last 21 years, he has been a constant" (NYT).

ADDED: The top-rated comment over there:

No mention of Probst’s mentor Mark Burnett foisting Trump on us, and getting rich , via his other show the Apprentice. Don’t know about you but that proximity to evil would bother me. Like having your tv parents also make napalm in their other job. Maybe being far away in Fiji helps.

The era of reality shows is over? Now, everybody gets a prize.

I'm reading "Controversial new TV show 'The Activist' drastically revamped after backlash/The format will now be more of a documentary feature rather than a competition" (The Hill).

The reality and competition style of the show drew criticism that it would promote performance activism and distract from actual social issues....

“... [I]t has become apparent the format of the show as announced distracts from the vital work these incredible activists do in their communities every day,” the statement [from the producers] began. “As a result, we are changing the format to remove the competitive element and reimagining the concept into a primetime documentary special (air date to be announced).” 

Six activists will be featured on the revamped show, and will automatically be given a cash grant to the organization of their choice rather than compete for a prize money.

I don't know if many people would have watched this show in the multi-episode competition format. How could it have worked? It's like "The Apprentice," but without the forthright motivation of greed. The contestants were still after money, but for their cause. I guess that's like "Celebrity Apprentice." But without celebrities. It was a dog of an idea. 

By making it one episode — a "special" — they're cutting their losses. And they're still trying to look altruistic. They're going to give all the erstwhile contestants a prize, as if that's magnanimous of them. To me, it seems as though they've slipped into the world of everybody gets a trophy. 

I'm looking forward to the new season of "Survivor," which begins in a few days, on the same network that nixed "The Activist." Imagine watching "Survivor" if all the participants were simply given the same amount of money!

"There used to be a show on Fox called Man vs. Beast and you should know about it because it was probably the best show of all-time."

"In one of the competitions, a sprinter lost a 100-meter dash against a zebra (yet beat a giraffe!). In another, professional eater Takeru Kobayashi lost a hot dog eating contest against a Kodiak bear that did not even know he was taking part in an eating competition. And then there is my personal favorite: the world-class gymnast who defeated Bam Bam the orangutan in a 'dead hang,' even after Bam Bam clearly tried to play mind games with the gymnast by dropping his pants and urinating during the contest. Feel free to watch if you don’t believe me. Anyway, I wish that show still existed, because Tony vs. the Shark would totally make the cut.... I remember standing in the water just off of Mana Island at Survivor base camp and a shark swam by me for a good 20 minutes. I had no issues with standing in the water as it went back and forth by my feet but I’ll tell you what I didn’t do — reach down and pick it up. I guess Tony thought it was dead...."

From the Entertainment Weekly recap of Episode 3 of the new season — Season 40 — of "Survivor."

Here's Tony and the shark:



And here's "Man vs. Beast/Gymnast vs Orangutan":



And here's Kobayashi vs. the Kodiak bear and the man vs. giraffe/zebra.

As the recapper notes, only the human being understands that this is a competition, so it's only a test of whether the nonhuman beast is in the mood to perform the activity. This is the same problem that must be addressed at rodeos and bullfights: how to stimulate the animal to look as though it's participating in a man-versus-beast sport. In the case of catching a shark, the creature is stimulated by the threat of death. For him, it's literally an episode of survivor.

"No one has ever played a game like me. I did it my way.... It’s up, it’s down. It’s in your face. It’s not replicable. That’s how you win the million. Be a disrupter. Say things that people don’t see coming."

A perfect quote for the Trump era. But it wasn't Trump. It was Noura.

If you don't know who I'm talking about, you don't need me to warn you that this link is a spoiler for the 39th season of "Survivor."

For some people, chaos is a method. It's so disturbing to the other players.

ADDED: Noura also said, "If you follow the herd, you’ll never be heard. Be a peacock." But she mispoke/"mispoke" when she said "Be a peacock" and said, "Be a cock" before correcting it.

ALSO: One player got ejected from the game after he was accused once and then again of sexual harassment, and the show announced a new policy:

"But I guess being on an island with minimal food resources might cause someone... to get excited by a blue-hued adult beverage called the 'Shark Bowl' that features a floating gummy fish."

"... Or cause [someone else] to declare that Applebee’s is her favorite 'sit-down restaurant.' I mean, come on. Shrimp ‘n’ Parmesan Sirloin? Yuck. Spinach and artichoke dip with chips? No thanks. Chef Bulgarelli’s Stuffed Rigatoni and Tomato Meat Sauce? Not exactly the right food for a tropical paradise. I don’t know how host Jeff Probst managed to even spit out the words 'loaded, sizzling fajitas, smothered with hot queso' with a straight face. Oh, and don’t forget the blue-ribbon brownie, whatever that is. Is it worth slithering on the beach tied to another player and getting your face and body exfoliated by what amounts hot sandpaper? I would say no."

Writes Susan Wloszczyna (at Gold Derby), which I'm reading because I hated the embedded Applebee's ad in this week's episode of "Survivor."

And maybe this is a good time to remind you that I don't blog about things in the order that I think they're important or criticize things in order of their badness in the grand scheme of things. I went to great lengths to analyze Trump's use of the phrase "human scum" — here and here — but that doesn't mean I think "human scum" is the worst thing anybody is saying right now.

I blog things according to my personal standard of bloggability, which is something of a mystery, and I don't expect you to understand it completely, especially since it's one of those I-know-it-when-I-see-it standards, but I would like you to remember that when I'm talking about one thing, I'm not implying something about all the other things that I am not talking about.

I don't like making an example of a particular commenter, especially somebody who is one of the all-time greatest commenters on this blog, but Laslo Spatula wrote, in the comments to my second "human scum" post:

I can see people are unhappy with the ending of "The Game of Thrones."

But I can't understand why. It's too complicated. I just want to know why people are dissatisfied. After all these years of feeling vaguely prodded into experiencing the satisfaction of watching this purportedly great TV show, now, I find that I am spared a dissatisfaction.

Generally, I believe I should be compassionate when I see that there is something causing pain to my fellow human beings, and, of course, there's an exception for pain that is unserious and essentially meaningless, and there are cases when you can gawk at and even enjoy the suffering of others.

For example, a TV show I do watch is "Survivor," and I must say that every time someone on that show cries, I laugh. They're crying about their fate on a reality show. Am I too cruel, I wonder, laughing at the pain of others?

So I thought I might enjoy knowing why "Game of Throne" fans are so unhappy, but it's just way too complicated. I tried reading "'Game of Thrones' series finale recap: A disaster ending that fans didn't deserve" in USA Today. But I was only there to siphon off a little amusement for myself, and it just wasn't fun. What I think I could see is that the show entertained its fans by having a lot of characters and then killing them off — perhaps in sudden and unjustified ways — and in the finale, there wasn't enough random, bloody murder, and some characters were left to live out their life in a way that was a too-normal tying up of loose ends. Too much order, not enough chaos. Something like that.

Anyway, I decided that wasn't the path to pleasure for me and tossed USA Today aside.

"If you need to watch a movie more than once to understand it, then you've lost me. That's the definition of a bad movie, in fact."

Writes MadisonMan in the comments to the post about the 20th anniversary of the movie "The Big Lebowski" and the critics who panned it. He agrees with the original reviews, but has only "watched it once, and I'm not rewatching. It's unwatchable to me...."

The subject of rewatching (and rereading) is a big one, I realized as I started to respond to MadisonMan in the thread. I got this far:

I always had to rewatch an episode of "The Sopranos" to understand it. There was too much going on to get it the first time and too much artful ellipsis.

But I'd also have to watch last night's episode of "Survivor" again to understand it, and I know that isn't worth doing.

And then I decided this needed to be on the front page. When do you say, I am not rewatching/rereading that — they had one chance to reach me and I'm not putting my time into unraveling what they failed to make clear? And when do you say, I'm going back in to open up the mysteries that passed me by the first time?

One reason I'm glad not to be a law professor anymore (and glad to be able to follow the precepts of a fine religion) is that I was forced and had to force others to read Supreme Court opinions, and we were required to understand them, and that meant a lot of rereading of aesthetically displeasing and intellectually unrewarding verbiage.

I was bound by the power of the Court to spend twice as much time (at least) trying to read something that they could have spent more time making readably clear. I suspected that the Court deliberately inflated its own power by imposing burdensome reading. Heh, that will keep them busy, and they'll never get to the point where they can criticize us in writing that anyone else will have the endurance to read to the point of understanding.

But I was the Court's taskmaster, insisting to students — over and over — that no matter how incomprehensible you think this is, you can understand if you reread. Read it a second time, and if you still don't understand, read it a third time and a fourth. Empower yourself by discovering the meaning that only rereading will reveal.

I don't do that anymore.

I want to read and watch things that are rereadable/rewatchable. I truly believe that the best movies and writing are better the second time (or third or fourth time). But you can't get to the second time without going through the first, and when do you say, after the first, there will be no second time? Maybe the secret is to walk out of movies and throw aside books when you realize you're just trying to get through this and would never want to see/read it again?

Maybe, with all your first times, if you're not thinking this is going to be better the second time around, you should bail out of the first time. Is this a one-night-stand? If yes, then don't "Cat Person" it, get out.

What's wrong with being problematic? — a second look at the proposed "Lord of the Flies" with an all-female cast.

I started the day with a post about the proposal, and my take was cynical: The filmmakers are enjoying the publicity generated by the predictable criticism in social media.

Now, I'm reading a NYT piece about the proposal, and I see this:

What remains to be seen is whether the new “Lord of the Flies” will offer largely a mirror image of the novel, subbing in girls without changing the central plot points and behavior of the characters, or if it will wrestle with how girls would approach their fate differently.

“It could be problematic if all they’re doing is switching out girls for boys and saying, ‘Well, girls would do this too,’” said Pamela Davis-Kean, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan who studies children and families.

Though many differences between boys and girls tend to be overstated, boys do tend to be more physically aggressive, she said. Some of the novel’s scenes of physical violence probably wouldn’t align with how girls would settle their issues.... The depth of collaboration could be another departure, she said....

But why shouldn't the filmmakers do exactly what is problematic? Why take a classic story and feminize it by making the girls less physically aggressive and more collaborative in their problem solving? That would only be interesting if you searched for ways to make the girls more evil than the boys. If girls just do better... what's the story? It's not like a season of "Survivor" where they have an all-male and an all-female tribe struggling to survive on an island and we're invited to enjoy seeing who does better and who screws up.

I think the new film should pretty much track the book. The fact that it's "problematic" to make the boys into girls is what's different and not the same. It's like that recent theatrical experiment that took a real Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump debate and gave the Hillary role to a man and the Trump role to a woman, with the 2 actors copying every intonation and gesture from the original. It was emphatically not the same, nor was it simply implausible (because how could a man speak and act like Hillary and a woman speak and act like Trump?). It was a revelation. The "female Trump" wasn't the most typical woman, but we could experience her as a particular woman, and — even more important — we could witness our own reaction to a woman like that.

So I think the proposed "Lord of the Rings" could be highly enlightening. Lean into the problem. Do not try to feminize the parts. Do not infuse the story with handed-down notions about what women are like stereotypically (which would probably be infected with the usual pro-woman propaganda*). Just make the boys girls and let's see how we feel about it.
__________________

* William Golding, the author of "Lord of the Flies," dished up the conventional propaganda himself:

“If you land with a group of little boys, they are more like scaled-down society than a group of little girls would be. Don’t ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say, because I’m going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality. This has nothing to do with equality at all. I mean, I think women are foolish to pretend they’re equal to men — they’re far superior and always have been. But one thing you cannot do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilization, of society.”

That quote appears in the linked NYT article and other discussions of this film project. Golding is saying quite a few things about women there, both explicitly and implicitly. (Implicitly, he's saying he doesn't want to be bothered dealing with women!) But I scoff at that old idea that women are "far superior" to men. Notice how Golding used that as an anti-equality argument. It's interesting to read that his mother was a suffragist. It was once conventional to tell women that they should not have the right to vote because it would lower them from their superior position.

"Is it just me, or has testosterone been in the news more lately? I blame Donald Trump!"

"Or maybe Rush Limbaugh. Althouse links to this recently rebroadcast episode of This American Life about testosterone, where there’s an interview with a woman who 'transitioned' into being a man with the help of colossal doses of testosterone."

Says Instapundit, pointing at something I wrote yesterday. After quoting the interviewee's saying that she "became interested in science," he continues:

It’s funny, I was talking to a friend a while back who was very interested in math and science pre-puberty, but lost nearly all interest afterward, and she said, “when the estrogen came in, the science went out.”

Some other stuff in this interview reminds me of my friend (and former editor) Norah Vincent, who lived as a man for a year and wrote a great book, Self-Made Man. She, too, said that as a “bulldyke” woman, she was very masculine, but as a man — in her case, without hormones — she wasn’t all that masculine for a man. And that it was a lot harder to be a man than women think.

Meanwhile, also from This American Life, the most NPR line ever: “I have rage. Unfortunately, it’s impotent rage.” Also, the highest testosterone level among the NPR males is 274, which I believe is treatably low. . . . .

Plus: “If I can’t be the most manly in public radio, where the hell can I be the most manly?”

You might want to connect this to the recent episode of "Survivor," in which a gay man outed a female-to-male transgender. Writing about that a couple days ago, I mentioned that we'd been watching the show believing that "we were looking at a not-terribly-masculine gay man." Varner, the gay man who outed the the other contestant wasn't someone I would assume was gay. He'd have to tell me. Now, Varner caught hell not just for outing his tribe-mate (Zeke). He was also condemned for characterizing closetedness as deception. Here's an interview with Varner:

"I will say that I have spent 10 months stewing in this awful, horrible mistake I made. I have been through I don’t now how much therapy with the show’s therapist, with a local therapist, I have met with and spoken to several LGBT organizations, I have joined the board of a couple of them, I joined a national study on outness. This has changed me drastically. But I don’t want to spend two minutes talking about my experience because this isn’t about me. This is about Zeke. And I can only profusely apologize."

There's a lot there about etiquette and human decency that's complicated by the competition (which everyone knows entails deception and manipulating other people's fears about being deceived and played for a fool (with $1 million at stake)). Varner blundered and is paying a big price. But I wonder how he, as a gay man, felt about Zeke's presenting himself as a gay man. Those of us in the majority — the nongay — should perhaps not be so judgmental about how a gay man feels when a transgender male chooses to present as gay when that person seems relatively unmasculine.

The transgender person Instapundit quoted also said that her — and later, his — role models were James Dean and Jason Priestley, and that "I was better at that as a dyke than I am as a man, I have to say." And:

"It's a bit of a disappointment. It's a bit of a disappointment. I often ask people, what kind of a guy am I? What do you see? And unfortunately, people often respond that they see a nerd, which I never was before. I was always really cool and popular and hip and whatever.

So this person was perceived edgily masculine by people who were seeing what they thought of as a woman, but a boring nerd by those who were perceiving a man. And that was with the testosterone.

ADDED: Nothing against nerds. Nerd can be the identity you embrace. If that's what you want, go for it. 

"It was as if he had been preparing for this absolutely unpredictable, completely public, and incredibly vulnerable moment for his entire life. His composure was astounding."

"And when he connected the entire event to the word metamorphosis, I distinctly remember thinking — how in the world did you just do that?"

Says Jeff Probst in an interview about last night's episode of "Survivor," which we're already discussing in a post I put up right after the episode. In the comments on my post, there's an accusation that the show is scripted and some blaming of the show for setting Zeke up. I think Probst's interview deals with that. Here's his response to the interviewer's question about how Zeke — the outed transgender — had thought about what might happen in the course of the competition:

I met Zeke in casting and loved him. I still have my original notes from that meeting. He was very engaging, gifted in his ability to manipulate with his words, and he wore this crazy Hawaiian shirt and had poofy hair. We knew we were doing Millennials vs. Gen X as a theme and we wanted him on the Millennials tribe immediately. It wasn’t until after he left that I was told he was transgender. From that point forward we agreed that if his story was to be told, he would be the one to decide when, where, and how.

As for someone else bringing it up, Zeke was fully aware someone might suspect it or bring it up and he said, “I will deal with it as it arises.” And I have to add it was never a question of Zeke being worried his story would come out. Zeke is a massive Survivor fan and his point with us was very clear — he wanted to be seen as a Survivor player. Not the first transgender Survivor player. I really respected that distinction and I understood it.

Back at my post from yesterday, Scott said:

"There they were, gathered around the fire at Tribal Council on Wednesday night’s episode of 'Survivor.'"

"One of the contestants, Jeff Varner, in a last-ditch attempt to keep himself from being voted off the show, turned to a man by his side. 'Why haven’t you told anyone you are transgender?' he said.""

That was a very intense episode of "Survivor," with everyone turning on the man who outed the transgender contestant and that man, Varner, suffering so much opprobrium that I would think almost anyone watching at home would be thinking: Never let that happen to you.

ADDED: The linked article, at the NYT, is extremely unfair to the other contestants on that tribe. The next 2 paragraphs are:

Zeke Smith, familiar to viewers of the previous season, went blank. His eyes lost focus, and it seemed, for a moment, as if he were disassociating. The thing that he had wanted to avoid was now about to unfold, on national television.

Mayhem ensued. Words like “deception” were thrown around. Repeatedly, Mr. Smith was accused of having misled his fellow tribe members because, yes, he was — or had been — trans.

Look at all the passive voice in the last 3 sentences! It gives the impression that a lot of tribemates turned on Zeke, but everyone was strongly supportive of Zeke. Varner, fighting for survival, called Zeke deceptive. Everyone else criticized Varner so severely that I said out loud "He's going to have to commit suicide." Varner was so deeply shamed that he apologized over and over and he too was extremely supportive of Zeke after he realized, under the pressure of all of his tribemates, that he had made an abysmal social blunder.

Mayhem ensued. Yeah: against Varner.

Words like “deception” were thrown around.  Only by Varner, and only trying to save his own skin. No one — absolutely no one — took the serious position that Zeke had done something wrong by following a personal policy of what I call gender privacy.

The antagonism against Varner — who is openly gay — was so intense and obvious that they didn't even need a vote to oust him. Jeff Probst (the host of "Survivor") simply observed that everyone already knew the outcome and all Varner's tribemates agreed.

You can watch the episode on line, here.