Winning the Game With Vile Behavior: Big Brother 8’s Dick Donato

And sometimes, his attacks had nothing to do with the game whatsoever. He and Daniele spent much of their last few days in the house talking about and making fun of previous houseguests. Special attention was given to Jen, of course, but nobody could claim that any of that was related to strategy.

I do want to address the point that some viewers have brought up, indicating their thoughts that Dick should have been thrown out of the house. At one point, Jen read aloud from the Big Brother rulebook, saying “serious physical threats” and “intimidation” are not allowed. There has been debate among some viewers about whether Dick’s behavior rose to this level. Other houseguests didn’t seem to think so – at least when it was happening to Jen.

The terms are so vague as to be virtually impossible for us to interpret, giving producers quite a bit of leeway in their decisions. For example, was his statement about crushing Jen’s throat a “serious” threat? The producers would probably say no, he didn’t have the intent to do it.

Was his behavior “intimidation”? Dictionary.com has three definitions for the word: “1. to make timid; fill with fear. 2. to overawe or cow, as through the force of personality or by superior displays of wealth, talent, etc. 3. to force into or deter by some action by inducing fear.” Even with everything Dick did, I do not believe any of the houseguests were ever in “fear” of him. For example, while Jen certainly didn’t like being told he hoped she would die a slow and horrible death or that in the real world he would have planted his foot up her @$$, she never seemed to really think he would do anything like that in the house.

And the houseguests certainly were not “overawed”! So at least according to the rules Jen read to us, the producers had grounds on which to not penalize Dick or boot him from the house. However, merely being (barely) within the rather vague rules does not excuse his behavior.

Another rules issue came up in an untelevised portion of the show when his son, Vincent, sent him a coded letter in violation of the rules. The letter was given to Dick for his “fast forward” HOH stint, and Vincent coded information to tell Dick whom he could trust in the house. As it turned out, Vincent focused on Jessica and Eric, the two houseguests Dick and Daniele had just voted out, so the information was worthless. The producers used this as a reason to not penalize Dick. Some viewers who knew about this have targeted the producers for criticism because of this issue, and it is probably deserved.

But the focus here is on Dick himself. The fact remains that he tried to cheat and apparently violated the rules of Big Brother. This therefore has to be added to his Hall of Shame induction – not to mention his own stupidity for talking about it in a house filled with cameras and microphones!

Dick played the game by being almost completely out in the open about what he was doing. When he had a problem with somebody, he bluntly went directly to them about it. But that behavior lost whatever luster it might have had when he moved from strategy to the area of vicious and unnecessary personal attacks.

Often, the entire staff of the Reality TV Hall of Shame does not agree on an induction. However, Dick’s behavior was so vile that not a single objection was raised when his nomination was brought forward. Dick’s behavior has already been rewarded with half a million dollars. But the Hall of Shame cannot ignore the way he acted en route to that prize. Therefore, we must give him his unfortunately well-earned induction.

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David Bloomberg is the Editor of the Reality TV Hall of Shame, and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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