American Gladiators vs. Intelligent Women

As you may have heard, NBC is reviving the 1990s TV hit American Gladiators. One of my sons attended the filming of one of the events and came back with this story...

During the taping of a preview interview, one of the contestants, an African-American woman named Tanji Johnson, was asked her strategy for racing to the top of a rock-climbing wall while being chased by another gladiator. She replied, "I plan to get to the top as expeditiously as possible."

"CUT!!!"

The production staff had a talk with Johnson. Retake. This time, Johnson, a college graduate, answered, "I plan to get to the top as fast as possible." Perfect.

Thus the core target audience for American Gladiators, young white males, was saved from the discomfort of having a black woman use a word they did not understand. If the writers' strike continues, brace yourself for a lot more of the same.

Comments

[SevereTireDamage]

Clearly, it wasn't the potential audience that wouldn't know what "expeditious" means, it was the producers. Football and Baseball players use big words all the time (OK, not always correctly), I do expect that most of the AG audience would have understood Johnson.

This isn't really an issue of producers "dumbing something down" for their audience; it's an issue of the producers' lack of respect for their audience, in thinking that they need to dumb it down.

BTW, I watched the original in the 90s, and it wasn't bad at all; some of the stunts were truly challenging and many of the contestants were real (amateur) atheletes.

I called it "Jeopardy for Jocks".

[sigrid13]

"saved from the discomfort of having a black woman use a word they did not understand."

Hah! Now that would have been funny. Unfortunately, unless she was clearly joking, "expeditiously" is kind of a...pretentious word choice (was she a business-major?)

"...as swiftly as possible, as rapidly as possible, as quickly as possible..." all better IMO. They overcompensated (again, imo) with "fast". Sadly, it is clear that no writers were involved in the making of either statement. ;)

[jvarga]

What is the cutoff for young? As I am a white male and know what expeditiously means, I can only assume I'm past the young cutoff. Which would put in the "crabby old white man category." Right?

[AnotherTry]

American Gladiators and America in a nutshell. Dumb everything down, way down.

Has America ever been this stupid?