‘The Bachelor’ Equivalent To ‘Romance Porn,’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Claims

Hit TV show The Bachelor is entertaining and fun, according to a recent Op-Ed authored by basketball superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but it is creating through pop culture unrealistic and fantasy expectations for finding love in the real world and thereby killing romance in the process,

“You’re not even in the running for love unless you fit a very narrow ideal of Ken and Barbie doll physical beauty,” Abdul-Jabbar declared

This season’s installment (Season 21 on ABC television which premiered on January 2) features Milwaukee software sales exec and Bachelorette runner-up Nick Viall, who started off with 30 female love-seekers from which to choose to enter into a relationship.

“He’s not accepting a rose anytime soon. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has slammed The Bachelor as setting the bar for love too low and for placing too much emphasis on physical appearance,” Us Weekly summarized.

Some might say that The Bachelor is just another reality show with behind-the-scenes scripting and manipulation through editing and other techniques, and this way, is thus a further example of mainstream media fake news.

As alluded to above, in The Hollywood Reporter, Abdul-Jabbar authored a lengthy essay critical of the show for emphasizing the superficial, accusing the popular program of what he described as romance porn and for being a romance killer.

The NBA Hall of Famer who often writes about social issues for various outlets scored the most points in NBA history over a 20-year NBA career with the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers after a distinguished college basketball record at UCLA where he won three national championships. The master of the sky hook is a six-time NBA champion, six-time MVP, 19-time All Star, and two-time scoring champion among many honors he earned in the sport.

A foe of President-elect Donald Trump, the NBA legend, 69, received a presidential medal of freedom late last year from President Obama.

Based on the guest column in THR, Abdul-Jabbar seems to be a regular viewer of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette franchise, but he doesn’t always like what he sees.

“…Those outside the ideal body fat percentage index need not apply. With all eyes firmly fixed on firm buttocks, the criteria for finding love becomes how high a quarter will bounce off rock-hard abs. Will we ever witness a conversation that isn’t so bland and vacuous that words seem to evaporate as soon as they are spoken? The rest — intimate outings, group dates, visiting hometowns — is window dressing to disguise the establishment of a laundry list for love so paltry and insubstantial that nearly anyone with a hipster beard or pert breasts can make the cut. Just as some experts blame the porn industry for establishing sexual shenanigans that make millennials feel too inadequate to pursue sex, so this network romance porn may set the bar for falling in love so low that only divorce attorneys and Ashley Madison subscribers can endorse it. Oh, the humanity if this becomes the template for true love. But equally harmful as the cartoonish physical and mental restrictions has been the romanticizing of love as a mystical process that creates unrealistic expectations. Worse, they encourage an urgency to falling in love or else being kicked off the show and labeled a loser in society, unworthy of love…”

Abdul-Jabbar further bashed The Bachelor/Bachelorette for “pimping out of unrealistic romantic love in American popular culture” and for its lack of diversity.

Read the entire essay and draw your own conclusions about the alleged impact of the popular dating show on the wider society and the feelings of inadequacy that it could allegedly engender.

Separately, if you recall the scandal that engulfed former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling in 2014 that resulted in a forced sale by Sterling of the team and a lifetime ban, Abdul-Jabbar took a somewhat contrarian position that then prevailing consensus. In a Time op-ed, Abdul-Jabbar condemned Sterling for his racist comments but also similarly called out the news media for figuratively putting Sterling’s head on a spike as a result of private comments made to a manipulative alleged girlfriend.

Given that, for one thing, most of the population at large lacks movie star looks, do you think that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s analysis of The Bachelor has merit or not?

[Featured Image by Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx via AP Images]