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 Survivor: Burton Roberts on The Early Show: total asshole in deep denial

And if you thought Burton was an asshole last night, prepare yourself for the scum of all time on The Early Show:

First words out of his mouth, "For the record . . ." he wants us to know that throwing the immunity was not just his idea, everybody wanted to do it.

Here we go. Assume defensive posture!

The reason he was targeted: he was a threat. Oh brother.

And Julie Chen, least subtle interviewer ever, doesn't allow him to slit his own throat, responds with, "Too good of a player, you were?"

Fucking idiot. No person on earth is going to respond yes to that. They may be right in the process of making the point themselves--he was already starting to--but when you hear it that bluntly coming out of somebody else's mouth, it sounds way too conceited. How did she get this job?

So he makes an uncomfortable face and says, "I mean--" And that's as far as he gets. She cuts him off with another question. You idiot! Fucking newsmodel from hell!

Her question: "Do you feel betrayed . . . ?" Because Shawn turned on him, too.

Burton's response: "After watching the show last night, and after seeing Jon saying that Shawn and he were in an alliance, my guess is that at the end, Jon said to Shawn, 'Hey, we're voting Burton off, jump over to our alliance now to keep going in the game.' And anyone would have done that, no questions asked."

Huh. Interesting theory. If you accept Jon as the puppetmaster, Shawn the lemming. Those two have an alliance, but Jon gets to make the important decisions. And in this world, there are three different alliances, and Jon made the last-minute decision to join his and Shawn's (two-man alliance? they set up an alliance of just two?) with the others. Hmmmm. Sounds a pretty farfetched, but anything to avoid believing that everyone really wanted him out of there.

Julie doesn't question it, goes right on to how dislikable Jon was.

Burton thought Jon was hysterical, though "he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way."

Finally, Julie has something harsh for him. She plays the clip of him being a total asshole, pointing at Rupert's ass, laughing his ass off, making fun of him to everyone (and by the way, he's making fun of Rupert for showing ass crack, and he's not even close to showing any). Then the cut to Rupert saying, ". . . You know, it's like high school. The prettyboy jockass idiots all gotta pick on my."

The clip ends there, Julie says, "Ouch!"

Burton responds, "It sounds like he's back in high school, if you ask me. I don't know--some insecurities coming out?" He shrugs his shoulders, twists his palms up, makes a funny face.

What an asshole! Granted, Rupert dissed him, but didn't he think he deserved something? They start with the clip of him being the total prettyboy jockass idiot picking on the fat guy, ridiculing him to the group just to make himself look better. He doesn't think he was revealing some insecurities there? Man, if I saw that caught on tape, and the whole country watched it, I would be backpedaling so fast, apologizing and saying how much I was working to change and deserved everything Rupert said about me and more.

He's oblivious. All he can think to do is ridicule Rupert further, discredit him more. What a piece of shit!

Burton is a piece of shit! Burton is a piece of shit! Burton is a piece of shit!

ScumScumScumScumScumScumScumScumScumScum!

Just the lowest form of life. I usually don't diss realityshow players quite this bad, but when they come back months later, and still insist on being the same asshole--no apologies, no insight, no acceptance that he is the loser that got thrown off the team first, nearly unanimously. Poor guy. Guess he never dealt with being the loser before. So he's spinning, spinning, spinning to make everybody else the loser, he was just too good for his own good.

Then he goes on to explain more, says you gotta enjoy yourself out there, you gotta have laughs, ". . . We were all joking around as friends. I was not intentionally trying to pick on him, hurt his feelings. I don't know, he took it the wrong way, so--"

OK. Just "as friends." As far as you knew. But you were completely oblivious, weren't you. That's the funny thing about Burton: Despite all the bitter faces Rupert made, all the body language, all the appalled reactions from others, the self-proclaimed smartest person out there never caught whiff a that it was not just "as friends" to the other person involved.

He was not intentionally trying to hurt Rupert, so that makes it OK. "He took it the wrong way." So Burton can be as cruel as he likes, and he is also in charge of deciding how Rupert should take it. Interesting world view. God, that's sort of the definition of arrogance, isn't it? And spoiled rotten. The whole world revolves around him: it's all there for his amusement, no matter what the damage he does--and when he does hurt them, they're supposed to see it all from his point of view. Astonishing. And months later, he still has no idea.

It's hard to say which is more appalling: the fact that he thinks his intentions are all that matter, or that he believes he had pure intentions. He can look at that tape and not see the popular kid being cruel to the fat kid, ridiculing him for the express purpose of public humiliation. He can't see that he was doing it intentionally? Man. Lot of growing up to do for that kid. And he is talking about other people still being in high school?

So Julie lightens the mood by cutting him off with a cute little joke. "You were just jealous because he had a nicer skirt than you did."

"Exactly." Then Einstein gets this hey-wait-a-minute look on his face and says, emphatically, "I didn't have a skirt!"

Perish the thought of anybody thinking he was wearing a skirt out there!

Then we go to callers. The first one asks how Rupert got along with the others. Einstein says Rupert kept to himself mostly "so no one really knew what was going on" with him, so that's why Burton finally approached him on day 11 for an alliance.

Huh. Seemed to interact like old friends with the others in the clips I saw. Somehow managed to build enough trust to form an alliance with them.

God. This rocket scientist who assured us he would have won every mental immunity challenge "hands-down. No doubt in my mind" watched everything we have over the past month and still has no idea that he was clueless about what Rupert was up to the whole time. Still has not figured out that Rupert avoided him the whole time--God, I wonder why?--and Rupert was tightlipped about his thoughts, feelings and strategies with him, but maybe was spilling his guts out with the people inside his alliance. Like we all saw on TV.

The rocket scientist saw none of that. He still thinks he's the gutsy guy who finally approached the mystery man about an alliance, even though he had apparently been in one since the start. Moron.

Then some starstruck chick caller says he was one of the nicest guys Survivor ever had. Good lord. I guess this would be the appropriate spot to pause my rant, and seek absolution for also being sucked in for weeks on end by his beauty. I believe the blog record will show that I dissed him from the first time he was a dick, but I kept insisting on second and third chances, didn't I--so enraptured was I by his beauty. I have a problem with that. But I will say, that I was also going by his audition video. He came across really sincere there, and I was relieved to Mark casting a combination prettyboy/niceguy. Then with the editing, you never know. I was just holding out hope that those moments were the exceptions, but clearly now they were not.

By now Burton has praised Jon at least three times as "a great strategic player." Good God. As commented here and in the comments, Jon appears to be one of the worst players ever, but because he may or may not have done Burton in, in Burton's mind, he Machiavelli.

Not just the world revolving around him, the whole fucking galaxy.

(By the way, in his description of Rupert staying to himself, Burton said Rupert went off to fish for four hours a day--he quickly interrupts himself there to interject that he went out fishing too, but only an hour a day. Heeheehee. Couldn't bear to inadvertently admit that Rupert was the Provider to the tribe. I fished too! Couldn't quite figure out how to not make himself the weanie in the picture, though. Only an hour a day. Yeah, if that, Buddy. We saw your first token fish and your stunned expression that someone would be less than satisfied with that. I have a hard time believing you changed down the road.)

Julie, of course, is clueless in her own way. She ends by asking if he would do it again, and play it the same way, and that the kiss of death was his late-night talk with Rupert, asking him to join the alliance.

She is such an idiot. Seven seasons of interviewing, and she still sees it as simplistically as she did in the beginning. How fucking obvious is it that they had alliance going for days, probably since the first days, when anybody who has ever succeeded on Survivor sets up their alliances? His last stupid gambit had nothing to do with it. He was a total dick, he pissed everybody off and the majority allied against him--perhaps nearly everyone, if Shawn was actually only pretending to be in his alliance. The idea of trying to wrap up your alliance on Day 11 is too ludicrous for words.

But naturally, Burton agrees wholeheartedly that that did him in, though he explains that it was an hour-long discussion, much more strategic than we saw. He still appears clueless that the conversation was hopeless because he had inspired hatred in Rupert for days and was the only one on the island who wouldn't laugh out loud at the prospect of him pulling Rupert in as a confidant.

He is so dumb! Or just in such utter deep denial.

It kills me the Denialists who come on the Early Show months after the experience still clinging to their preposterous ideas of what must have been going on on that island. They were duped, they were hated, everybody else secretly plotted their downfall because they were despicable, and they were played for complete fools, swallowing every last lie because the lies all fed their ego, and they couldn't imagine a universe where the peons didn't worship them. (Makes you wonder about the rest of their lives. They see only the adoration, none of the silent majority retching in disgust?)

Then they're shocked at tribal council, when they discover it was all a ruse. They were the one people wanted to get rid of, they were the patsy falling for it hook line and sinker. Some people accept it, others just can't. They immediately construct another scenario--I Was Too Good being the favorite of all the True Assholes.

I can understand that attitude--sort of--thirty seconds after their downfall, but surely they talk to the other castoffs while they sit around in the hotel for the next month waiting for it to play out. And if they never get the answers there--which is really hard to imagine--finally, they watch the show! And they still can't accept the most basic facts about what happened.

Burton Roberts is still in complete denial about what went on on that island. He thinks if he could have just done a little better convincing Rupert, he could have taken it to the end. He even pats himself on the bat for "swinging for the fences."

The question in my mind is: How do the Burtons fail to learn the truth in that month of waiting at the resort? Do they refuse to believe the explanation, or do the other castoffs choose not to tell them, or do they never bother to ask?

I find the prospect of the castaways refusing to tell them hard to believe. I bet most of them relish telling the Burtons off. Surely every last one of them didn't refuse to answer. Or volunteer it!

Burton was probably a total asshole there--and an angry, bitter one--using every last moment to brag about how great he was at the game, lording it over all the others that he was kicked out first because he was so damn strong and bright. Maybe they just rolled their eyes, muttered, "What an asshole" and chuckled about how much less money he made than the rest of them.

OK. That's the one I'll go with.

I just wonder--seriously, I lie awake wondering these things--if he will ever get it. Twenty years from now, will he be watching the tapes again (I bet he'll watch them a hundred thousand times, unless he takes too much shit about being the loser and comes to doubt his own story about it really indicating his superiority), and a synapse will finally fire and he'll go, "Oh! I was a dick! That's why the threw me out. I was a total dick!"

Thirty years? Forty? I like to think so.

Thirty, I'll bet. After his looks are gone, after they have been fading for a good ten years and he has taken a long, bitter drink from the fountain of ordinariness, where the subjects have mysteriously stopped fawning over him, and he recognizes for the very first time that fawning was all it was, and the rest of the population doesn't have people dropping at their feet to serve them.

Something is going to happen then. We can only pray he lives that long.

(And I can only imagine the psychoanalysis you're doing on me right now if you've read this far.)

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