My Overly Thought Out Opinions on the Current News Affairs

I've been finding that reading the news every morning is the best thing I've ever done with my life because I feel super informed upon the world and what people are doing and what people aren't doing and whose mad at who and what scandal is resonating within our culture and tons of other things that make me feel fantastically lucky that I am to be living in such a time.

Anyways, to start us off I hope you will read these two articles here and here so you too can become culturalized.

First I'm going to tackle good ole Juan Pablo. To start off I guess it isn't good that I dislike the Bachelor as it'll make it super hard to be objective in this situation, but I'll try. For those who are unfamiliar with the reality TV phenomenon that is known as the Bachelor, let me help you out. It's essentially a feminist's worst nightmare: 27 or so girls vie for one man's hand in marriage as they duke it out on "group dates" and "one on one dates" and so on and so forth, while the Bachelor holds the ultimate decision of each woman's fate via the Rose Ceremony where he gives the women he likes a rose while the rest are left to weep and go home "rose-less" until he narrows it down to one special woman. There's also its counterpart, The Bachelorette, which is the exact same thing but with reversed roles; one women watches as 25ish men fight for her hand in marriage. Everything is so Hollywood and not my thing, and although I've enjoyed an episode or two in my time, it's just not my show.

This season's lucky man is a guy by the name of Juan Pablo who from what I can tell is an ex-soccer player who is from another country with English as his second language (yes, that is actually an integral part of this story). I'd rather not summarize the whole news article for you (as I'm assuming  finger crossing you read the article), but in short, Juan Pablo was asked for his thoughts on the idea of having a gay/bisexual bachelor on the show and his comments were quite candid and disappointing.

Although as I previously stated, I'm not emotionally invested into this series of roses and group dates and luckily I was able to look past the attractiveness of Mr. Juan Pablo that many of the bachelor watchers posses for this man, and see the comment(s) for what it was: outrageous disappointing. He claimed that gay parents/gay persons are too confusing for the kids (because numerous six year olds can't wait to watch a reality dating show every week) not to mention he has a very young daughter who might find it confusing to see that her daddy is making out with different women each week on reality TV. Need I even mention that he claims gay relationships are too "perverted" which would essentially be too much for the American person to watch on television. Bless.

picture compliments of his Twitter account

His comments spread quickly through the internet like any anti-gay words that slip from a star's mouth would, while the fire was unsuccessfully extinguished via Juan Pablo's public apology where he consistently brought up that he had numerous homosexual friends, therefore he couldn't possibly be homophobic, and his "English as a second language" status was also used to cover the blame for his words. "The word pervert was not what I meant to say and I am very sorry about it. Everyone knows English is my second language and my vocabulary is not as broad as it is in Spanish and, because of this, sometimes I use the wrong words to express myself," was his excuse, which to me seems just a tad far fetched. To an extent I can understand, but not long after this comment he explains that he meant to say that a gay relationship would be too "racy", and yet from the things I hear that take place upon the show, there's no way a show with "hot tub dates" and extensive making out could by any means be classified as racy. (Take the numerous italicized words as sarcasm in case any of you aren't catching my drift.)

What he freely said hurts my feelings in a way. I thought we could maybe get somewhere in this crazy ass world by achieving more rights for homosexuals, but comments like this that are so immensely ignorant and degrading make me a little less confident in the world we live in. I think it's time we get off our high horses and quit attacking the minority that loves people just a bit differently than we do. These are changing times.

Also, one more bone to pick, a lot of the people in my area who indulge themselves by watching this show, also love their republican and "preserve the sanctity of marriage" bumper stickers. They're very conservative to say the least. (Important note: I'm not speaking for every watcher of the show. I live in the south where a majority of people can be described as the above, so it doesn't come as a surprise that 90% of people I know who watch the Bachelor are also very conservative.) Therefore, I find it odd that they consider homosexuality to be destroying the biblical sense of marriage and yet, 25 or so women basically duking it out for one guy so she can lock him in with a wedding of their dreams is somehow NOT destroying the sanctity of marriage.

So after ranting typing for almost half an hour, I'm going to come back to the second news story in a separate blog post as I feel this one is already overflowing with words. I'm hoping to get it up Thursday, as I already have a different post in mind for tomorrow.

The most exciting part about these posts are that I like hearing from you. Do you watch the bachelor (I won't judge, promise)? Do you find this all completely weird and strange and disappointing or do you back up Juan Pablo and his good looks?

Have a fabulous day.

(Side note: I'm not feeling the whole re-reading/proof reading thing as I want to keep this all as real as possible. Just a helpful note for any mistakes that could have slipped in somewhere.)