Surviving Survivor:
Bill Vaughn's Loose Lips
Notes on Episode Eleven: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

By Bill Vaughn

Pathfinder Video

With Klub Rudy's cruel bootation on Day 33 of Colleen "The Waif" Haskell, who described herself presciently as the "last of my kind," the ethnic cleansing of Pulau Tiga has come to an end. Tribe Tagi has annihilated Tribe Pagong with the single-minded dedication of George W. Bush to lethal injection. And good riddance: They were cute, they were peppy, and they were adorable, but in the end the happy-go-lucky, warmer-and-fuzzier-than-thou, dance-around-the-campfire, We Are Fam-i-lee left-brainers made my skin crawl. Let's face it, they just weren't island people. At least not when it comes to this island, where all the warm-blooded things have rabies, and all the cold-blooded things are poisonous. Speaking of Richard and Susan, the dark side of human nature has triumphed, at least for now. In the final episode before Judgment Day and the bright triumph of Rudy—our Navy Seal and shining example of the Best Generation—push can finally come to shove.

As the darling 23-year-old Miami Beach copywriting student allowed, "Rudy just sits there and watches it all happen." Yeah, babe, like the fool on the hill, the Rudester is keeping perfectly still. But it's the kind of hush before the guillotine falls. "If I got fucked over along the way by someone who gave me his word," he quietly informed Richard during a Klub Rudy heart-to-heart, "I'd hafta do something to 'em."

While Colleen walked the Walk of Shame down Snake Alley, her jungle squeeze, Greg Buis, knowing that The Waif would be his arms as soon as the CBS shrink got done debriefing her on her career possibilities, watched her the way a man with a bowl of sticky rice watches a rat broasting over an open flame. But you knew he was really thinking about his sister again.

And Dr. Sean has finally struck a shameless deal with the Dark Side, resorting to naked bribery to save his worthless skin. After winning the Luxury Challenge by correctly answering that a drink of kerosene will kill gut worms, he got to spend a night on the yacht. And—surprise, surprise—his ditzy dad from back home in Dorkville, Long Island, was already on board posing as the Captain. Not only did Sean ingratiate himself to Richard by inviting the Rotund One out to the boat for brunch, the next day he publicly humiliated Kelly by promising that this treat would be hers, knowing even as he said it that without sucking up to Richard and paying off Klub Rudy with care packages from their families, he'd soon be walking the Walk of Shame himself.

"All them ladies are pissed off at him," Rudy observed. Anyway, physician, heal thyself. Because you're next.

The yacht, of course, the Sipadan, is the same boat that was anchored off the leeward side of the Pulau Tiga when I stormed the island in April. The moment I saw this luxurious vessel moored off this allegedly "deserted" tropical isle I began to suspect that Survivor would be as overcooked as a slab of pork in a prison cafeteria.

And while we're on the subject of correctional facilities, why are the Malaysians, the most even-tempered of people, so tough on trivial crimes? Is it because the state religion is based on the insanely punitive retributions of the Koran? While I was in Borneo a 31-year-old father of four was facing ten years in the slammer for shoplifting four ballpoint pens. After his arrest the cops refused to inform his family that he was being detained. Another man was jailed for three months for kipping a T-shirt and two cigarette lighters. A teenager was sentenced to life for the possession of a single marijuana plant. Court authorities admitted holding a man for eight years in prison because of a backlog of cases. And a serviceman was sentenced to two years and three lashes of the cane for an attack at a movie theatre on a lawyer (a lawyer!) who was blabbing on his cell phone during the film.

So what would the Malaysians do with a petty criminal like Kelly "The Traitor" Wigglesworth, the 23-year-old river guide from Nevada who's wanted by authorities in North Carolina for using a stolen credit card? How many lashes of the cane would they mete out for her vicious attack on her ex-husband, which included scratching and nose-biting? What about Richard Hatch's public nekkedness, in a conservative nation that wraps up its women as snugly as a coconut pudding in a pandan leaf? Would they lash Gervase for siring so many little bastards out of wedlock? Would I have to choose between offering myself as a prison mama or a prison papa after trespassing on Pulau Tiga, mooning the crew, bribing the locals, and littering the beaches with baggies full of booze? And what about Survivor producer Mark Burnett? In a just society, his relentless over-editing and his shameless product placement of banalities like Dr. Scholl's Food Pads would earn him enough pokey time to make sure he wouldn't be getting out of stir until Survivor XXXVIII finished principle photography on Mars.