I must confess, I’ve watched all of 35 minutes of the ABC show The Bachelorette, and that’s it.
I turned the channel.
I understand the show does well in places like Orlando, Florida, but, well, that’s Florida. Big Brother beat The Bachelorette and Ashley Hebert’s white guy fest in Sunday’s ratings race.
To me, that’s no surprise. The Bachelorette is nothing more than a silly celebration of another time, when television was all white. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear The Bachelorette was nothing more than an Aryan Nation White Supremacists’ wet dream. It’s shameful to have such an awful, in-your-face expression of wanton racism thrown in the collective face of the United States in 2011, using the medium of television.
And in case you’re wondering, if The Bachelorette was all black, I’d say the same thing. I don’t like racial segregation, or television programs that quietly promote it via the images shown, although I do support the need for America to see a slice of black life in the USA, given the history of discrimination that’s worked to keep such images off TV, that is, until the last 30 years. (But even then, you can’t tell the African American story is a racist vacuum. It just doesn’t hold water.)
I contend The Bachelorette quietly promotes racial segregation.
Now, save me the emails about how the Bachelorette men helped some young black kids. That just plays into the whole racist message by saying “We white guys must help these young black kids!” Give me a break.
By contrast – stark contrast – Big Brother has a far more integrated cast of people who at least seem mildly interesting, and certainly contemporary.
That’s not to say I don’t wish Ashley Hebert well. But the truth is, a lot of the guys on The Bachelorette episode segment I saw looked almost just alike. So if Ashley’s so shallow she has to pick from such a narrow range of guys, she’s going to have to deal with what she gets.
Will The Bachelorette ever walk into the 21st Century and have a full, racially diverse range of men for, say, an Indian woman?
I doubt it.
Stay tuned.
Bill Carroll