Meghan McCain Blasts Her Own Network’s Show: ‘The Bachelor’ Is ‘Extremely Problematic’
Confessing she doesn’t “love” the show, McCain slammed her employer’s franchise for its lack of diversity: “There’s never any Asian people. There are never any Black people.”
The View’s Meghan McCain took aim at her own network’s popular franchise The Bachelor on Wednesday, calling the long-running reality TV series an “extremely problematic show” that lacks diversity.
The ABC franchise has been the center of controversy for months following longtime host Chris Harrison’s defense of contestant Rachael Kirkconnell’s past racist behavior earlier this year, claiming she was the victim of the “woke police.” ABC would eventually cut ties with Harrison this week, giving him an eight-figure settlement to walk and remain silent on the show’s past “dirty laundry.”
During a Wednesday discussion on the latest Bachelor drama, the conservative McCain, who has routinely railed against so-called “cancel culture,” didn’t seem to have an issue with the criticism aimed at Harrison and his subsequent departure over it.
“I think part of the interview that he did that people reacted to so strongly is he’s incredibly dismissive to Rachel,” she noted. (Harrison defended Kirkconnell attending an Old South antebellum party to Rachel Lindsay, an Extra TV host who was the first Black Bachelorette star.)
“If there’s one thing we all have learned over the past year and a half and our entire lifetime living in this county, but especially since the murder of George Floyd, it’s important to listen,” McCain added. “She’s a Black woman talking about her experience.”
She went on to note that Kirkconnell, winner of the last season of The Bachelor, is still in a relationship with Matt James, a Black man who was that season’s star.
“I’m actually interested in how he came to the point where he could forgive her and what work she did,” McCain observed before blasting the show as a whole.
“I don’t love The Bachelor,” she said. “I apologize to our parent company ABC, and I mean no disrespect to the wonderful work that’s done on this network. It’s an extremely problematic show.”
McCain continued: “There’s never any Asian people. There are never any Black people. There’s not a lot of Hispanic people. If you want to talk about body positivity I think there was like one contestant over a size zero who I now follow on Instagram. There’s no different bodies, different people.”
(McCain’s critique of The Bachelor’s lack of Asian contestants, however, may come as a surprise to those who remember her recent defense of The View only having one Asian-American host in its 25-year history.)
She would go on and say that The Bachelor has a “lot of makeovers to do in a lot of different ways that go way beyond the host.”
As for Harrison and whether he can have a second act on television, McCain cited the scandal surrounding Nick Cannon and his antisemitic remarks that resulted in ViacomCBS firing him from MTV’s Wild N’Out. Since then, after apologizing for his comments and working to “educate himself,” Cannon has returned to the show. Furthermore, he has a daytime talk show in the works and Fox has retained him as host of The Masked Singer.
“There are stories like this where if you do enough work, you can be accepted back into polite society and daytime television,” she concluded. “We’ll see what happens with Chris Harrison and the kind of work he does and maybe he can have a daytime talk show like Nick Cannon.”
