"Lindsey is a jackass!"

For once, we agree with Brandon. Plus: The urge to merge.

Nov. 26, 2001 | When the Taliban took control in Afghanistan, they created a slew of arbitrary laws and went around beating up anyone they could find, preferably women, who violated them. Like a lot of religious fanatics, they were basically just bullies.

The Taliban of "Survivor: Africa," who have recently begun to enjoy a fate similar to their Central Asian counterparts, were a band of loathsome twentysomethings-- clueless Silas; icky Brandon; keening Lindsey; and Kim, the faceless myrmidon -- in the Samburu camp.

Their big campaign issue, you will recall, was sleeping late and not working. The only fun part of their rule was when, after being negligent in maintaining their water supply, Lindsey got dehydrated and rolled on the ground in pain for a few hours.

But they've now been routed. At the end of the show last week, when Lindsey was summarily voted off the nature preserve, Brandon looked stricken. It might have been a face sort of like the one a Taliban leader might have made as he abandoned Kandahar for the hills of southern Afghanistan.

We thought, as the show opens this week, we'd see Brandon mourning the loss of his fellow hyena.

We'd overestimated him again.

"Lindsey was a jackass!" he says dismissively as the show opens. "I'm so glad Lindsey is gone. I could not have taken this merge with her whining and crying and bawling and being a baby."

This from Brandon, the champion complainer. There are rhinoceroses in the area who've been more active, and hyenas who have exhibited more moral and ethical fiber.

It's fun to see the chastened remaining Samburu Taliban -- Brandon and the younger Kim -- doing their best to blend in with the rest of the tribe and backpedaling furiously trying to explain away their unpleasant Taliban-like behavior.

"I felt protected," Brandon is saying by way of explanation, like a modern German skinhead rationalizing why he helped a gang of thugs set fire to a synagogue.

"The ethics of this was killing me. It's so hard!" Kim says.

The others in their camp -- Big Tom, Lex and Kelly -- watch them talk with some interest. "They were nervous as a whore in church," Big Tom tells the camera later, with some satisfaction. "You make your bed, you gotta lay in it."

And now Brandon and Kim are spatting as well. Brandon says he's going to keep his distance from her from here on in.

"It's different now," Brandon says.

Some of the guys in Afghanistan who were beating women with sticks on the streets a few months ago are saying the same thing.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Over at Boran, Clarence is telling us more than we wanted to know about certain of his internal digestive processes. The group has been feasting on chicken.

"The chicken was great," he says. "But I had a little trouble digesting it."

Each season of "Survivor" sees starving contestants given sudden bursts of food. And every season we watch, amused and revolted, as their clotted digestive systems remove it as quickly as possible.

Clarence calls it "doing his business."

"I was out doing my business," he says, as we see an idyllic pastoral bush portrait of him lowering his pants, "when I saw there was a little herd of elephants north of me."

Next page: "A really embarrassing way to die"