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"Ah, Big Brother, that beloved summer staple that, for three nights a week over roughly two-and-a-half months, entertains us when all of the shows we&amp;#039;d rather be watching are on hiatus. Fifteen cycles in, the show&amp;#039;s popularity hasn&amp;#039;t waned, despite the fact that it has got progressively less exciting and, if this season is anything to go by, progressively more racist, homophobic and misogynistic. Uh oh!    While we&amp;#039;re only just getting to know the new group of houseguests, casual viewers are given an impression of a group of people who are each annoying in their own ways but generally innocuous. However, those die-hard fans - those who subscribe to CBS&amp;#039;s live feed service - have got quite a different picture and have outed some of this year&amp;#039;s contestants as the bigoted individuals they are.  It all started late last week over on the ubiquitous Big Brother fan site Joker&amp;#039;s Updates, when posts began popping up accusing several houseguests of saying inappropriate things - and we do mean wildly inappropriate here. These discussions culminated in a posting of the specific statements made by each houseguest by a regular user who was so thorough, he was even able to post dates and times that each offensive thing was said.  While it&amp;#039;s not important to give the entire mind-blowing list of hate speech (it can be read in full here), these are a few lowlights:   Aaryn warned that others should be careful what they say about houseguest Candice - who is one of two black players - in the dark, as they &amp;quot;might not be able to see the bitch&amp;quot;. Aaryn also said that Asian houseguest Helen should &amp;quot;go make some rice&amp;quot; and claimed that gay contestant Andy&amp;#039;s nominations would be null and void as &amp;quot;no one&amp;#039;s going to vote for whoever that queer puts up&amp;quot;. Spencer regularly refers to women as &amp;quot;c**ts&amp;quot;, praised medical atrocities performed by Nazi doctors, referred to Helen as Kim Jong-un and called Andy &amp;quot;Kermit the f*g&amp;quot;. GinaMarie referred to welfare as &amp;quot;n***er insurance&amp;quot; and claims that &amp;quot;blacks stick together&amp;quot; because they are the &amp;quot;tokens&amp;quot; in the house. David claimed his sheets were dirty because &amp;quot;black Candice&amp;quot; had been lying on them.  I&amp;#039;m sure I don&amp;#039;t need to continue here. This sort of talk - said quite openly and without any apprehension or regret on the houseguests&amp;#039; behalf - is appalling, certainly, but perhaps even more reprehensible is CBS&amp;#039;s decision not to air any of the above offensive language, instead opting to edit the footage and keep viewers in the dark about who exactly we&amp;#039;re dealing with here.  Big Brother is, in theory, a game that welcomes and indeed thrives on people from all walks of life, and it is this mixture of diverse backgrounds which creates the clashes and connections which make the show so compelling to watch. However, this year&amp;#039;s group of contestants has managed to further ostracise already-marginalised peers both behind their backs and to their faces, and all without viewers&amp;#039; knowledge. In other words, if you don&amp;#039;t subscribe to the live feeds, you can watch on in blissful ignorance of the atrocious events taking place in the house, not just on one occasion but seemingly multiple times daily.   While this decision is not exactly an unfathomable one - after all, CBS has a lot at stake in maintaining its viewership, and presenting the contestants as a group of hateful bigots wouldn&amp;#039;t really be good for numbers - it is certainly a disheartening one. With hate speech being such a prominent discussion in America at the moment, attitudes like the ones displayed by several houseguests - and the network&amp;#039;s willingness to cover them up for the sake of the bottom line - sets the movement of, you know, basic human decency back about a thousand steps. How can we move forward when our approach to those who include such bigoted and narrow-minded speech as part of their everyday conversations is to simply edit it out and let them get on with it?  Of course, we could also look at this from a game perspective. With America having the opportunity to shape so much of the game this year with the new MVP twist, in which viewers nominate their favourite houseguest with the best gameplay on a weekly basis, how can we be expected to make a fully informed choice when all we&amp;#039;re getting is a watered-down, primetime, palatable version of the players? Sure, you could make the argument that roughly 120 minutes of programming every week would make it impossible to be privy to all the happenings of the house, but I&amp;#039;d be far less bothered about missing out on someone eating a bowl of cereal or stealing a cuddle than I am about not knowing they think it&amp;#039;s appropriate to refer to a woman&amp;#039;s private parts as her &amp;quot;meat wallet&amp;quot; or claim that someone&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;blackness is showing&amp;quot;.  There&amp;#039;s also the matter of CBS&amp;#039;s failure to treat these events as a form of aggression in the same way they would a physical altercation. While it&amp;#039;s been suggested that Big Brother warned houseguests against using defamatory language, any such warnings were blatantly disregarded and even mocked immediately after and the competitors returned to their regular insults on the usual targets. And while the truth of what&amp;#039;s going on in the house has gained widespread attention, the network has not offered viewers any assurance that plans to curb and adequately deal with it are even being considered - though they said in a statement that the comments are &amp;quot;offensive&amp;quot; and CBS does not &amp;quot;condone&amp;quot; them, they refused to comment on whether the offending houseguests would be removed. Basically, what you don&amp;#039;t know won&amp;#039;t hurt you and if you did happen to find out, you&amp;#039;ll probably forget about it if they just refuse to acknowledge it for long enough.  How do you feel about the revelations regarding this year&amp;#039;s houseguests? Should CBS be forced to air this footage and what punishment would be appropriate for the houseguests in question?  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/big-brother-usa/news/a495171/big-brother-usa-when-did-bb-become-such-a-big-bully/>