Owing to the popularity of ”Survivor,” a TV show that puts people in the wilderness to survive on their own wits, there has been a plethora of so-called reality TV series: the Bachelor, The Mole, The Last Resort, and Boot Camp to name a few. There’s even a program called Joe Millionaire, where women pursue an eligible young man, thinking that he is super rich. After he chooses the girl of his dreams, she finds out the truth: he’s really just a poor construction worker
with an income of less than $20,000.
The National Association of Television Program Executives (NAPTE) held its convention last month. It’s where station executives get to see the programming that producers have cooked up for the upcoming television season. As you might expect, there were plenty of new reality shows previewed.
Although I’m not a television executive, I was privileged to get a glimpse of the first episode of one of the new shows. It’s called “Who Wants To Be An Anti-Semite?”
The show has an interesting premise. People have to hide their hatred of Jews by disguising their actions as something else. Each week the contestant whose anti-Jewish feelings are most obvious gets voted off the show. At the end, the winner gets an all-expenses-paid vacation to Paris, where he or she will receive the key to the city.
Some of the contestants were so obvious that you just knew they were going to be eliminated right away. The people who run Egyptian state television, which ran a series based on the old blood libel lies, offered no disguise whatsoever. They were thrown out the first day.
But some of the contestants were incredibly creative.
Take the Dutch Agriculture Ministry, which had banned a form of shechita, the kosher way to slaughter animals as defined by the Talmud. Members of the ministry really had audience going there for a while, saying that shechita was cruel to animals. But then the judges were shown scientific studies proving that it is indeed humane, and were reminded of the fact that most anti-Jewish governments start their persecution by banning practices such as keeping kosher. The Dutch were dismissed from the show.
Other early dismissals included the International Red Cross (for having banned the Magen Dovid Adom, the Red Star of David, but allowing the Red Crescent) and the United Nations, whose claim that it is not against Jews was disproved by the its hate-filled, anti-Jewish Conference on Racism in Durban.
Some contestants were really good. There was, for example, Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, who refused to sell Israel the high-tech gas masks needed to protect Israelis from a possible chemical weapon attack from Iraq. And let?s not overlook the British Musicians Union, which used the old “We’re not anti-Semitic, just anti-Zionist” excuse when debating a motion to ban the cultural exchange of Israeli and British artists.
I hope I’m not ruining it for anyone by revealing that the winner on the first episode was Democratic presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton, who under the guise of fighting racism has called the Jewish people “diamond merchants” and helped incite anti-Jewish violence in Crown Heights. He has done such a great job of masking his anti-Jewish sentiments that Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe has come right out and said that “Any Democrat
who attacks Al Sharpton is no longer welcome in our party.”
A deciding factor was Rev. Sharpton’s ability to convince the same political party that justifiably challenged Trent Lott for his history of racial insensitivity to ban debate on his, Sharpton’s, track record of anti-Semitism. Great performance, Rev. Al!
If the show gets picked up for a full season, Rev. Sharpton will have his work cut out for him. Expect him to compete against the likes of Pat Buchanan, who continues to enjoy a successful career as a TV pundit despite having delivered himself of dozens of hostile statements and observations on Jews and Israel (including his charge that Holocaust survivors suffer from “group fantasies of martyrdom” and his skepticism about Jews having been gassed by diesel exhaust at Treblinka since “Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody.”
It’s still unknown whether enough TV stations will purchase the show for it to get the green light for full production. According to unnamed sources, the producers are planning to ask Jewish-controlled bankers to underwrite the production costs should the Jewish-controlled media refuse to pick up the show.