Give me History Channel documentaries, baseball, football and Hell’s Kitchen, (and this thermos – name that movie) and that’s all I need.  At least as far as TV goes.  My wife has been DVR-ing the Biggest Loser this season, and by-and-by, I am getting sucked into the show like back-fat into a lypo wand.  Not completely, I usually am asleep by the time they measure the contestants’ progress.

Sleepiness aside, there is something important that happens on this show.  I cannot speak for every season as this is the only one to which I have paid any sort of attention.  So far, most of the votes have been cast to keep the contestant “who needs to be here the most.”  Call it: survival of the fattest, the anti-Darwin.

A few years back I read (listened to on my iPod) a book that suggested the first step towards greatness was getting the right people on the bus.  This absolutely makes sense from a motivational and leadership perspective.  This leaves us with an increasing amount of the “wrong people” (go Darwinian Theory!), while we search out the “right people.”  No one wants to sit on a proverbial bus next to the real Biggest Loser, the lazy guy with cheese sauce smeared across his belly and a notebook filled with gripes.  I get it.  I think we all do.

The idea goes: in order to get the right people on the bus, you have to create a seat for them by getting the wrong people off the bus.  This begs the question, “Is the bus moving when its riders are forcibly expelled?”  I guess, “Who cares,” is the correct answer, at least according to the book about buses.  The dead-weight is gone.  “I’m sorry; you’re not the Biggest Loser.”  Now, for you TV execs who will read this blog, and there are many of you, I’m not suggesting you create a reality TV called Slowest Metabolism, an attempt to bulk up the morbidly thin, starring Torii Spelling and Lionel Richie’s daughter – what’s-her-name.

Life is about survival of the fittest.  Cultures have always stuck the right people on the bus and gotten rid of the wrong people, though they’ve not always written books about the process.  Nature’s food-chain has never ceased to demonstrate this reality, not even for one day.  Not even at your local, ultra-humane zoo.  Lions are still fed lesser animals.

On the Biggest Loser you see a group of society’s outcasts voting in favor of the worst of their kind.  Fattism is very acceptable in our culture.  I’ll confess.  When I think of how great I am because I am not a racist, and that some of my friends are gay, poor, type ‘b’, some of them are even from Wisconsin, I am confronted with the reality that on this particular issue, I, too frequently, would cast my vote to eliminate the fat guy.  Confession is good for the soul!  I feel better already.

Imagine a society that kept the wrong people on the bus, provided they wanted to stay on the bus.  This bus is large enough for all who would choose to ride it.  The bus conductor boots only those who don’t want to be on the bus, and of course, those who enter the bus with the knowledge that they are the “right people” to turn this bus around.  The riders of this bus acknowledge their own need and are enveloped in a community who acknowledge it too.  It’s not a co-dependent bus; “You’re not fat, you’re just big boned!  Lots of fat people live long, healthy lives!” No, this bus is filled with riders who KNOW they all have a similar set of problems.  They know they are not the fittest and therefore they probably won’t survive.

Instead of discharging the biggest loser, they provide safety and community.  His or her growth (pun unintentional) becomes the reason the bus exists.  The Fat Bus.  The Addicted Bus.  The Rejected Bus.  The Bus filled with victims of sex crimes.  The Bus filled with Perpetrators.  The Klepto Bus (without seats and a radio, of course).  The Disabled Bus.  The Bus with a Collection of People who should be on other Buses.  The Bus filled with people who formerly wanted to control every bus on the city streets.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a bus whose conductor begs one question: “Who needs to be here the most?”  Thanks Biggest Loser!  Now someone tell me who got voted off last night.  I was sleeping.