In a meeting of pop culture powerhouses that surely foreshadows the coming Apocalypse, Mark Burnett, the guy behind “Survivor” and “The Apprentice,” has teamed up with MySpace to create a competition to find “the nation’s next great politician.” Viewers of the broadcast component of the contest, to be called “Independent” and currently looking for a network home, will help eliminate one competitor per week, as on most reality shows, until a winner is left standing — and holding $1 million to give away to a “worthy” cause.
For once, the tv show will only be a part of the action, since the budding politicos will compete throughout each week to build friends on MySpace using promotional videos and similar tools. The show’s planners have high hopes for its influence on the political system:
MySpace chief executive Chris DeWolfe depicted “Independent” as “a giant leap in the re-democratization of American politics.”
“MySpace puts political power back in the hands of everyday people and ‘Independent’ takes it to a whole new level,” said MySpace president Tom Anderson.
US presidential candidates that have profile pages on MySpace’s politically-themed Impact Channel are likely to tune into “Independent” for insights to topics and videos that resonate with voters, according to Berman.
Plenty of people have compared the political primary system to “Survivor,” but now art is imitating life imitating art in a self-referential spiral that will surely collapse in on itself and swallow the entire Earth in an orgy of reproach and guilt. For more, see this article from Agence France-Presse. Currently, the show is planned to run from January through May of next year; as a precaution, I’m making plans to blind myself with drink starting in December.
– cpd