The amazing race baiting

Maybe they should call it ``Survivor: The Race Riots." Or ``Survivor: Sharks vs. Jets." The 13th season of the reality show, which premieres Sept. 14 on CBS, will divide its contestants into four teams (above): white, black, Hispanic, and Asian.

It all sounds suspiciously like a ``Chappelle's Show" sketch. But the race-baiting theme is starting to look like a sign of the times for reality TV, a genre that's always searching for creative ways to make people fight. (Bravo's ``Project Runway" brought in the contestants' mothers this week, guaranteeing an ample flow of tears.) Here's a recent sampling of race-based reality shows, some aired and some thwarted.

``BLACK.WHITE"

Remember ``White Like Me," the Saturday Night Live short from 1984? Eddie Murphy, slathered in white makeup, discovers that life is different for white people: Banks give them free money, and buses serve cocktails once the black people get off. On FX last spring, producer R.J. Cutler turned a joke into reality, enlisting a makeup squad to transform a black family into a white one, and vice versa. Oh, and they lived in a house together, too.

``WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD"

Last summer, ABC announced that it had enlisted seven families to compete, in front of cameras, for a house on a Texas cul-de-sac. The contestants included a black family, a Latino family, an Asian family, and a gay white couple with a black adopted baby. The judges were white Christian Republicans. The idea, ABC said, was to upend assumptions; one of the white families had a stripper mom! Every advocacy group in America hit the roof, and ABC pulled the plug about a week before the series was to air.

``THE APPRENTICE"

Trump has tried men versus women on his NBC reality show. He's tried ``school-learning" versus ``book-learning." Last summer he floated the idea of dividing his teams along black-white lines. ``Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world," Trump told MSNBC, a few days before he recanted and said it was someone else's idea.

``TRADING SPOUSES"

No, not the wife-swap show on Fox. And not technically reality TV. In April 2003, the first season of ``Chappelle's Show" did a take-off of ``Trading Spaces": a sketch about a husband-swapping show whose host cheerily announced that ``for the first time . . . we're going into racial!" Dave Chappelle played the white man and the black man, and proved himself, again, to be ahead of his time.

JOANNA WEISS

Former ``American Idol" contestant Mikalah Gordon was ``in a panic" but unharmed after being robbed at gunpoint, her mother said yesterday. Victoria Cavaricci said robbers accosted her 18-year-old daughter and a male friend early Wednesday on a sidewalk in a neighborhood about seven miles northwest of the Las Vegas Strip. Las Vegas police confirmed the robbery had occurred and said they were investigating. Cavaricci said the robbers took a cellphone and $5. Gordon reached the finals of the 2005 ``American Idol" singing competition. She graduated from a Las Vegas high school and now lives in Los Angeles.

Tokyo's subway authority will allow a station advertisement featuring a nude and pregnant Britney Spears, officials said, dropping an earlier plan to censor the photo. HB Japan Inc., publisher of the Japanese edition of Harper's Bazaar, plans to rent ad space at the posh Omotesando station next week to promote its October issue with Spears posing naked on the cover. The ad, in which Spears bares her belly but covers her breasts with her hands, is the same one used on the cover of the August issue of the magazine's US edition. The 24-year-old pop star is pregnant with her second child.

Once again, Jerry Rice sees his route. And the NFL receiving great hopes this one will play a part in his life after football. Rice, a native of Crawford, Miss., is shopping a reality show concept to several networks. ``The Underdog" would focus on Rice helping to motivate people and communities. Rice, 43, says being a contestant on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars," which pairs competitors of sometimes dubious celebrity and varying skill with professional dancer-partners, helped raise his profile outside football.
FROM WIRE REPORTS

Idle words

'We're not breaking up. We're still here. We've got a relationship that goes beyond music and film.' Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, trying to end rumors that he and Andre "3000" Benjamin are breaking up the hip-hop duo OutKast.