Quick refresher: Last week some clips from the Big Brother live feed popped up online. They showed multiple cast members making racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments about both large groups of people and specific castmates. As a result of the online uproar, one contestant, Aaryn Gries, lost her gig with her modeling agency, and another, GinaMarie Zimmerman (who described welfare programs as “ni**er insurance”), was fired by the pageant company she worked for. The big question was whether CBS, which in the past has not aired offensive comments that appeared in the live feed, would broadcast the comments on television, thus outing the cast members as bigots and creeps to a much wider audience.
Which brings us to last night. And the answer is yes. For the most part.
In the video below, you can see what is essentially two-plus minutes of Aaryn’s Greatest Ignorant-Ass Hits, along with comments in a confessional from black cast member Howard, and a brief group discussion. I don’t want to give CBS too much credit for all this because I doubt they would have shown it without the, oh, let’s say “encouragement” from people who saw the live feed and justifiably flipped their sh*t a little bit, but still, I’m glad they did it. If you’re (a) a terrible enough person to think and say all these things, and (b) stupid enough to do it on a television show that is about people having their every move watched while they live in a camera-filled house, you deserve all the public scorn that can possibly be thrown your way.
And here’s my favorite part: If I understand the rules of Big Brother correctly, Aaryn and GinaMarie have no idea they’ve been fired yet, or that their Google search results are being forever stained with words like “racist” and “horrible, awful person.” So they’re both going to leave the house someday soon, fire up their smartphones, and just be deluged with all this information at once. I hope we get a live feed of that, too.
