Debbie Schlussel: The Real "Gentleman"?: "The Bachelor's" Slacker Soldier vs. Our Fighting Troops
Tonight marks the inauspicious debut of the 10th installment of ABC's vapid and pointless "The Bachelor." Not that we should care.
But what makes this bachelor different is that while our troops are fighting, getting seriously maimed, and dying on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Andy Baldwin, M.D. will be jumping into hot tubs and making out with multiple bimbos vying for the chance to be chosen to be dumped a week after the show concludes. It seems a bit unseemly.
Since active duty military personnel must get permission to participate in television shows and other publicity-garnering activities like this, one wonders who his commanding officer is and why the military PR handlers allowed this. It's just plain inappropriate.
One wonders how Baldwin got several months off of active duty to both star in "The Bachelor" but also participate in auditions leading up to it and the publicity tour he is now on to promote it. Reportedly, Baldwin is on leave from the Navy to do the show. But how does a man on active duty get leave for months to participate in a televised, low-class concubine pageant, while soldiers can't get a few days to see their families and get blown up in greater Islamia?
If military powers that be approved this leave because they thought it would bring positive attention to the U.S. Navy, they're mistaken. Everyone on this show is there for one reason: the ridicule of the lumpen proletariat viewing public--the few that still watch this time-wasting show. If this is supposed to be some sort of in-your-face nose-thumb at Bin Laden, it ain't working (and it hasn't even aired yet).
This edition of the show produced by hooker Heidi Fleiss' relative (executive producer Mike Fleiss) calls itself, "The Bachelor: Officer and a Gentleman." Sorry, but a man who is lucky enough to serve stateside (Baldwin is stationed at Pearl Harbor), but flaunts it on TV--while other soldier/doctors are in the desert sewing up the nearly-dead and ripped-to-shreds soldiers fighting over there--is no gentleman at all.
The real gentlemen are the ones risking--and all too frequently, giving--their lives for us and for Andy Baldwin to cavort in a hot tub. I can't help thinking of all of those soldiers' mothers and wives who are wondering why our military allows this guy time off to live in a mansion and participate in a bimbo-fest, while their sons and husbands are "over there."
The guy on tonight's "The Bachelor" is no gentleman, just an embarrassment. . . and--dare I say it--a himbo.
"The most dramatic rose ceremony ever"? No. Just a waste of national broadcast airtime.
Posted by Debbie on April 2, 2007 11:06 AM to Debbie Schlussel