Hi Everyone.
I wanted to let my readers know why I haven’t been recapping The Bachelor and The Bachelorette this year and to speak out about the controversy surrounding Garrett’s Instagram likes. The primary reason I haven’t been recapping is because my illness has gotten worse since last November and it was hard enough to recap the shows before this new health issue I’m facing.
However, I also had no interest in covering Arie’s season. I did not believe that Arie chose to be The Bachelor because he wanted to get married. Prior to being named the Bachelor, he used his Bachelorette fame to sleep with sorority girls, some of whom were possibly underage at the time. I generally have no issue with people sleeping with whomever they want but I can’t take someone who uses their fame to have sex with young women seriously when they suddenly decide what they really want is to get married because they’re presented with the opportunity to find a wife on TV.
His intentions going in were clearly not to find love but to increase his fame. The fact that he is now engaged to Lauren and they seem happy does not change my opinion of him. There is nothing about Lauren that is different from any of Arie’s former girlfriends who were easily discarded when someone better came along. She’s useful to him right now and I’m sure he’s attracted to her and maybe he has even convinced himself he’s in love because being with Lauren is a win for him every day for now but as soon as it’s not, I doubt he’ll stick around for very long.
If you want to learn more about Arie, Arie’s ex-girlfriend who he dumped shortly before being announced as the Bachelor did a podcast with Reality Steve. Arie is also very close with Courtney Robinson, the villain and winner of Ben Flajnik’s season, and there’s a podcast Steve did with her that you can also listen to if you’re interested in what makes Arie tick.
The only reason I didn’t cover Becca’s season was because of my illness. I liked Becca but she has terrible taste in men and the fact that she chose to remain engaged to Garrett after his Instagram scandal makes me think my admiration of her is misplaced. Garrett’s response to his Instagram likes in late 2017 was completely inadequate. You can read about some of the likes on Huffington Post’s website: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bachelorette-premiere-garrett-yrigoyen_us_5b0837d9e4b0fdb2aa5342b6
This was Garrett’s statement at the ATFR:
“I’ll just take the time now… some stuff came out about my social media and I didn’t realize the effect behind a double tap or a like on Instagram so I put out an apology. I didn’t mean to offend anybody. I apologize for that still. I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody’s feelings or do anything like that so I stand by everything that I posted in my apology and I’m just trying to grow as a person, be a better person on a daily basis. [Becca has] helped me through everything. We’ve been honest and open and transparent with each other since the beginning and when that all came out we attacked it because I feel like when I was liking things it was going against what she stands for and that made it really hard on us as a couple. So when we started talking about that we got through that together and we’re growing, we’re progressing, and we’re moving forward.”
I didn’t find out about the Instagram likes until the season was almost over. I didn’t like Garrett from the beginning and I liked him even less after reading the Huffington Post article. He struck me as unintelligent and just plain odd before reading the article and contemptible after reading it.
You can read his initial apology here: https://www.instyle.com/news/bachelorette-garrett-apology-racist-sexist-instagram-likes-becca-kufrin
As you can see, it is almost identical in content to what he said on ATFR. However, what he said on AFTR was worse.
First, there is no justification for Garrett liking those posts. You cannot like homophobic and transphobic posts without actually thinking those people are worthy of your hate. So this is not about whose feelings he hurt; it’s about the fact that he is a hateful person. What he needed to do was to say something that indicated he was wrong about hating those people and he realizes now that it was cruel to view them in such an awful light. He not only didn’t do that but indicated that the main reason he issued an apology was because it went against what Becca stands for (i.e. Human decency).
So what if weren’t what she stood for? What if what Garrett did were right up Becca’s alley? What if she hated gays and trans people too? My guess is he wouldn’t have felt the least bit bad about liking those posts. He still would have had to issue an apology because he’s a public figure but as soon as the cameras were off, he’d go right back to hating people.
His moral compass is off and there’s just no getting around that fact. What he did wasn’t wrong because it violates Becca’s values. He didn’t even know he was going to meet Becca. It was wrong because a human being’s worth shouldn’t be determined by their race, gender, or sexual orientation and Garrett has not indicated in any way shape or form that he understands that now. Hopefully, he will come to understand that but until he does, all he is is Becca’s yes-man and Becca should want better.
Becca knows who she is (or it seemed she knew before she fell in love with a bigot) and Garrett is just following her lead because he’s too unintelligent to have a functioning moral compass and know the difference between a plausible conspiracy theory and an implausible one (believing that high school shootings are staged in order to take away our second amendment rights and that the government hires crisis actors to go and pretend to be students and family members impacted by mass shootings is completely implausible. If the same people were sent to shooting after shooting, we all would have noticed it by now. If the government wanted to take away our second amendment rights, I think it could come up with something a little less obvious).
If Garrett hadn’t been on this show and hadn’t been the final man standing, I wouldn’t be writing this now. People are entitled to have shitty opinions and if Garrett weren’t engaged to Becca, he would have just been another ignorant fool with a shitty opinion whom I couldn’t care less about.
But he’s engaged to the Bachelorette. He’s now Bachelor royalty. He’s a public figure. He hasn’t displayed a true understanding of the cruelty of his actions. He does not deserve to be in the position he is in and is definitely not worthy of our praise.
I cannot fathom how Becca could have forgiven this and not known that it is only because he’s engaged to her that Garrett is displaying any remorse over this situation. She should have dropped him like a hot potato.
ABC cancelled Roseanne over her racist tweets. Why is Garrett being protected? Because he’s engaged to Becca? Who cares?
I know this is probably going to be a really unpopular opinion but frankly if Becca is too caught up in her infatuation with Garrett to recognize that he hasn’t seen the light and might be too stupid to see light when it’s right in front of his face, maybe the network should distance itself from both of them. I get that Becca is very likeable but she is clearly making pathetic excuses for her fiancé and maybe she needs a wakeup call. Should Becca be exalted as much as she has been after failing to defend the people Garrett expressed hate towards? Should she be admired for not having the strength of character to walk away from a man who clearly can’t distinguish human decency from cruelty unless an attractive woman who’s willing to sleep with him makes that distinction for him?
And if you think, “But they’re in love and love overcomes hate,” have you seen this show? Garrett and Becca still barely know each other. Do you really think this is true love?
It was at the very beginning of their relationship when the Instagram bomb dropped. Becca could have walked away or at the very least expressed a little more outrage over her fiancé’s cruelty.
When Ben F. found out about Courtney’s cruelty toward her cast-mates on his season when it aired, he almost left her and their relationship didn’t last long after the finale. That is what I would expect from anyone who found out they chose poorly on this show. Why does Becca get a pass? Because she seems like the kind of person we could all be friends with?
I don’t want to be friends with someone who makes excuses for her partner’s reprehensible behavior because she’s too afraid to admit that her journey to find love on a trashy reality show was a failure. I don’t want to be friends with someone who softens her own moral stance to accommodate a cruel one because it happens to belong to someone she “loves”.
Becca has displayed moral and mental weakness and her charisma cannot overcome her failings in my mind. She should not be admired. Accepted as human and flawed, maybe, but not admired. I hope they both drift out of the public eye because neither is worthy of our notice.
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