COLUMN: Who Would Watch That Kind of Stuff?

By Tobin Barnes
I know I’m a bit behind the discussion curve, but how about all that buzz concerning the TV show “The Bachelor” last week?

What a tempest in a teapot.

All the problems this country is going through and the bachelor’s botched choice ends up being the center of attention.

Ridiculous.

As you’ve probably guessed, I’m not the type of guy to watch a silly show like that. Sophisticated as I am, my taste goes more toward high-brow entertainment of an edifying nature, not low-brow claptrap like “The Bachelor,” or even “The Bachelorette,” for that matter.

If I ever knew anything at all about that gasbag phenomenon, it would be perhaps because I had passed over the channel in search of educational matter.

Or if I’d ever picked up any knowledge of who was who on the show, it would be because my wife was watching it while I was perusing some lines of Shakespeare from the nearby bookcase.

Or if I currently think Jason Mesnick is a big, honking jerk for proposing to Melissa Rycroft and then dumping her on national TV, it’s because my wife was so obsessed with the show that she physically forced me to watch it whether I liked it or not.

That would be the only reason.

Why would I watch a show where one enormously lucky guy gets to hug and kiss and choose his way through twenty-five pretty-darned-good-looking women who think he’s the best catch since Rudolph Valentino.

And do those women really think that in the first place?

Or is it this? They just don’t want to be unceremoniously booted off the show (not get a rose, is it?) in front of national TV. To avoid this humiliation, the contestants—for that’s what they are—gush and fawn over and flatter this poor guy until he thinks he’s the last best hope for masculinity.

Who among us males would want to be put in this situation, let alone watch it on TV? And who among us would want to end up with a final choice of three impossibly Chicklety-white-toothed babes who, one-by-one, are more than willing to give up their separate rooms for the night to share a romantic suite with you?

And what’s going on there with that other than what I think’s going on there?

But here’s what I’d really like to know: Where were all these intensely desperate women when I was in the game? All I ever ran into were the “I-think-I-could-do-better than-you” types. There were virtual legions of them.

Heck, my prospects never came twenty-five at a time. At best, it was only one girl at a time, and there might be months, if not years, in between those.

I had to find my wife the old fashioned way: I begged her sister’s husband to set me up with her. The direct approach would have gotten me shot down at the get-go.

And then did I take her for a first date on some exotic helicopter ride through the mountains of New Zealand?

Nope. I took her to a third-rate flick at the Roxy and then for a beer or two at a peanut bar. Had her home by eleven.

So as you can see, I don’t know much about “The Bachelor.”

I’m not the kind of guy who watches piffle like that.

Just thought I had to put in my two-cents worth is all.