Watching Survivor

The Survivor Finale was marked with controversy yesterday when the Superintendent of Denise Martin’s school - and Denise’s boss - sent out a press release saying that Denise’s tale of woe on the finale was an outright lie. Information is still trickling in, of course, and I doubt we’ll ever actually get the whole truth on the intentions behind it. Our favorite Chen-bot moderated a brief interview and confrontation between Denise and Nancy Lane this morning on CBS. You can find the video here.

What it boils down to is that Lane points out again that Denise was promoted - per Denise’s request - before leaving for the show and had worked as custodian since March 30. She was granted the requested for leave of absence for Survivor (which was filmed during the summer - July/August), and returned to her position of Custodian (a job with a $10/hr increase in pay) that she had gained before leaving for China, and has in fact been working in that position since her return in August. Denise said that was indeed accurate, apologized to Lane, and her community, saying that she didn’t intend it to come out that way at all, that she simply meant she had tried to go back to the old job but was turned down, without reasoning (though she stated on the Reunion show that the reasoning was her popularity. This also doesn’t compute, since the show had not aired yet!). Lane countered that the reasoning was simple - the position had since been filled and that if it should come open once more, Denise knows how to transfer within the district - she’d done it once before.

Up until this point, I found myself wavering a bit. Denise is not the most well spoken person, and as we’d seen throughout the season and especially during the Final Tribal Council, she often gets flustered and unable to get her point completely across the way she likely intended it. Maybe she just didn’t think through what she was saying, what it would mean or how it would come across. I was willing to believe that until she completely sidestepped Julie Chen’s last question: would she still accept the $50k if Mark Burnett still insisted on giving it to her? She said she’d done all of this for her family and rambled until Julie had to cut her off and end the segment, and Denise never actually said yes or no.

That, in my opinion, was a simple and easily answered question. In her position (a place I’d never be for MANY reasons) my answer would have been a straight up “No, of course not!” It wouldn’t matter how much I needed the $50k, I would have jumped at the chance to save face and say no - insisted it was donated to a charity or something of the sort if it was going to be pushed on me.

Denise had me at least willing to give the benefit of the doubt until then. Now? I’m not so sure. Maybe she just missed her chance, maybe it goes back to her not being very well spoken and easily flustered, or maybe… maybe she really does intend to keep the now tainted cash.

What are your thoughts on the whole ’scandal’? Did she? Didn’t she? Will she? Won’t she? And what on earth will/should happen now?