A few short weeks ago, Chris Harrison, a man who has spent almost 20 years as the host of The Bachelor, was forced to step down from his throne in the franchise.
Harrison's face has been a part of our Monday night memories for as long as we can remember. He was likable enough, good-looking enough, and quite honestly, one of the most famous-for-no-good-reason celebrities I can think of. The only thing Harrison seemed to bring to the table was the appearance that he had developed a true, deep friendship with the contestants on the show. The show then took off when ABC realized that the secret to success was to exploit Harrison's affable nature by recycling past contestants as the next Bachelor or Bachelorette, which deepened the viewer's investment in the adorable and unlucky past-season cast-off finally finding true love.
This. Source: James Eades/Unsplash This season it was announced that former contestant Matt James would be The Bachelor, and more importantly, he would be the first male lead of color.
One of this season's most promising contestants has been Rachel KirkConnell, a 24-year-old graphic designer who appears to have documented on Instagram every time she left her hometown of Atlanta.
Truthfully, her name will most likely be irrelevant in six months, even with this controversy. But when she was stalked by Bachelor Nation, they found her to be, well, kind of racist. Maybe.
At best, we can all agree that she is young, naive, and completely tone-deaf to the current climate and what is and is not appropriate.
The pictures that surfaced were from 2018, which Harrison — speaking of tone-deaf — in an extremely poorly executed interview with Rachel Lindsay, repeatedly insisted was a time very different from our current understanding of racism.
This interview was very painful, and so very cringy, for so many reasons.
- Let's all get in our long-range time machines and travel back to 2018, or as it's commonly referred to, the year of the #MeToo Movement. That was the year we watched with fear, horror, and disbelief as Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, and Brett Kavanaugh were accused of being repeated, compulsive sexual offenders. It was also the year of Colin Kaepernick, the year an investigation by The New York Times unearthed the inequities between giving birth as a white woman and giving birth as a woman of color (the latter being significantly more likely to result in maternal death and/or severe medical complications). And then there was the political debate about the birthright/citizenship issue, which was easily deconstructed as racism poorly disguised. So, yes, every time Chris Harrison pointed out the vast difference between now and three years ago, I yelled at the television screen and looked for something heavy to throw.
- Harrison had clearly been thrown into the lion's den as a sacrificial lamb. He was unprepared to answer any questions about when young KirkConnell would come forward to discuss her ignorance, and after several repeated, and quite valid, inquiries from Lindsay, Harrison sorta kinda "refused to denounce" KirkConnell's behavior. But do you blame him? Harrison's main asset as the face of the franchise is truly his connection to the contestants. Harrison opted to defer to KirkConnell and allow her to speak for herself, which was translated into Harrison condoning racism. But is this really what he intended to do?
- The 13-minute interview went on nine minutes too long. Rachel Lindsay was angry, and rightfully so. And she continued to get angrier as Harrison kinda White-Man-I'm-A-Good-Guy-Shrugged-It-Off. As the face of the franchise, Lindsay wanted Harrison to take responsibility. He thought he could talk his way out of taking the blame for the entire multi-million-dollar franchise. But, the reality is, if you hitch yourself to a wagon, you stay for the entire ride. In part, it was Harrison's refusal to take the bullet that has cast him in the role of racist villain.
But, who is the real villain here? Research has proven that we are biologically disposed to gossip, the same way we are biologically disposed to eavesdropping. Why? The more information we have about our surroundings, the better able we are to keep ourselves safe. How do we know if it is fight or flight time if all of our senses aren't fully attuned at all times?
And celebrity gossip? That's the safest form of vigilant voyeurism. We learn more about our environment and the potential dangers that may exist, but the individuals involved, the celebrities, face dangers we will almost never encounter in our real lives. But we will encounter racism. We will encounter sexism. And Harrison has given us a target to point our finger at.
And what about those super-fans, the Bachelor Nation that supposedly tracked down these photos? It appears that there is an inverse relationship between those who are particularly celebrity-obsessed, and positive psychological well-being. Given this information, perhaps it should come as no surprise that these devoted fans managed to track down KirkConnell's inappropriate actions and the offending photographs that captured them from a few years ago.
But the question remains, shouldn't The Bachelor franchise have done its due diligence and found these same photographs, especially given the fact that Matt James was The Bachelor?
It makes you wonder if Chris Harrison was the only one who was surprised when news of KirkConnell's past surfaced.