All right, let's talk about something important. Not the media's complicity in covering up lies to get us into Gulf War I. Not their gross double standards in covering a single murdered priest in Poland because it fueled anti-communist fervor while virtually ignoring 100 dead priests in Latin America killed by the U.S. and it's proxies. Not their silence about genocide in East Timor. Not their flip flopping in support of Pol Pot as it suited corporate interests. No, I'm talking about The Bachelor.
As I said before, we saw during ABC's the Bachelorette that this media conglomerate has no qualms about destroying good people for ratings by misrepresenting the facts. Well now they're up to the same old crap with the Bachelor according to Reality Steve.
Here's how they do this. They have this bachelor that has already fully committed himself to misleading everyone according to the dictates of the producers. He fulfilled key roles in order to falsely portray Wes as a villain last season. On the down side he seems to be a geek and not especially likable. But he does what he's told. They can resolve the geek problem. ABC can create whatever impressions they want in the eyes of the audience despite what is clearly visible on the screen.
Prior to taping the show of course they have to select the girls. They bring out these girls and tell them to profess their love for Jake before meeting him. If they refuse they're gone. So you watch the first episode of the season and as you watch all these girls talk about how great he is and consider if they're lying. The fact is most of them don't look like they really believe it to me. "He's so cute" is typical of what they say. That's not good. He's OK looking, but he's very short and he's a geek. Awkward. In fact one girl has brought a football. She says you can tell a lot about a guy by the way he throws a football. She hands the ball to Jake and he totally throws like a girl. I mean, it's really pathetic. He's not even accurate. She's chasing after his throws. And these are probably the good throws. The rest are edited out. She concludes "Oh yeah, he's really great with a football." Uhm, we just saw him throw like a girl. Do you think we are blind?
Next they'll have these girls telling us they love his black hair. We know his hair is blonde. We can see it. Doesn't matter.
Apparently not much exciting happens during the season, probably partly because the girls don't really like Jake. So they need to manufacture controversy. There's a girl named Rozalyn. Absolutely stunningly beautiful. Well, she has a 7 year old kid. The producers tell her not to tell Jake about the kid. She complies, but talks about her child frequently with the other girls. So as the producers interview the other girls they try to manufacture a controversy by saying "What do you think about Rozalyn failing to tell Jack about her child?" Word gets back to Rozalyn and she's ticked naturally. She also starts loudly complaining about the fact that the producers won't allow her to speak with her child during taping despite the fact that they had promised her regular contact.
So the producers have a problem. Rozalyn needs to go. She's not compliant enough. Well it turns out Rozalyn is so stunning that another producer apparently fell for her. Ultimately he admitted that he had developed feelings for her. They never kissed or anything as far as we can tell, but understandably ABC doesn't like this so they fired the producer and simultaneously sent Rozalyn packing for "inappropriate behavior." As if she had done something wrong, like had sex with him. They air the audio of another girl speculating that Rozalyn slept with this person to create this impression and act like Jake has been stabbed in the back by her.
So once again it's a bunch of manufactured controversy used to destroy the reputation of someone, in this case a single mom.
In all seriousness, if they go to these lengths for a show like this imagine what they'd do with real news stories with vested corporate interest in the portrayal.
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