What A Dick

Earlier tonight, "Evel" Dick Donato was crowned champion of Big Brother 8. While his tactics, which largely consisted of verbally abusing everyone in the house to the point where they were petrified to put him up for nomination, were despicable, they worked. Big Brother is a game where, year after year, the worst slimeballs are the ones who tend to make the final two. The heavily tattooed and pierced celebrity rump swab and rock star wannabe is no exception.

While some of the things that Dick did while inside the house were deplorable, others were downright criminal. In fact, if I were the Los Angeles district attorney, I would have been waiting outside the house tonight with an arrest warrant. Dick made what I believe amount to criminal threats against one of the contestants, telling her that he was going to kill her and rape her corpse. He also committed assault and battery against her by dumping iced tea on her head and burning her with his cigarette. When you consider that a prior contestant was banished by the producers merely for throwing a temper tantrum and kicking furniture, the fact that Dick was allowed to remain in the house (rather than in the big house) is even more egregious.

Plus, Dick cheated. When he became head of household, he received a letter from his son. According to the competition rules, this letter can't talk about what's going on in the game. However, Dick freely admitted at one point that the letter in fact contained a coded message giving him hints about what was going on. Dick was nonetheless allowed to remain in the house, which gives every other contestant still in the game at that point grounds for a lawsuit (and there's precedent for contestants to get the runner-up prize when the producers make an error -- it happened in Survivor: Africa). Oh, and rumor has it that Danielle, his supposedly-estranged daughter who made the final two along with him, wasn't quite as estranged as we were led to believe and was well aware that her father would be in the house along with her, to the point where they strategized together before the game began.

Well, I wasted my summer watching that crap, though I'm sure that next year, I'll be just as hooked by it. Now onto more wholesome fare. Thank goodness Heroes starts up again next week.