Shame on ABC for casting Taylor Frankie Paul on ‘The Bachelorette’ — they’re getting what they deserve

Imagine that you are the producer of a network reality TV show about finding love.

A spinoff, your program has been chugging along for 23 long years over 21 seasons. But ratings have been slipping and you need to spice things up.

Then it hits you: That TikToker from that other reality TV show about mormons! She has 6.1 million followers, and she’s a mess. Let’s hire her!

Who cares that she pleaded guilty in August to felony aggravated assault against her former boyfriend in 2023 and is on probation? That’s interesting! 

So what that the police report plainly says one of the two pieces of metal furniture she hurled at him hit her five-year-old child? Cops said the little girl had a “goose egg” on her head. Meh. That was three years ago. Nobody died.  

Another show already put this obviously troubled woman on TV. And so will you. You are desperate, soulless and disgusting. That’s what makes you so good at your job.

Then, just three days before the big premiere, the shocking video footage drops on TMZ.

And the backlash is ferocious. 

Everything that happens on the grisly three-and-a-half-minute clip, you and the world already knew about. The altercation was even a plotline on the other reality TV show. 

But now its true repulsiveness is clearly visible and out there for everyone to see. The horrible optics are impossible to overcome. You’re forced to scrap the entire season, perhaps indefinitely, losing your struggling network a reported $30 million.

Most of you would probably not be so stupid and reckless.

But that’s exactly what happened this week to the Imbeciles of the Year over at ABC who brought on ticking time bomb Taylor Frankie Paul for Season 22 of “The Bachelorette.” They knew exactly what they were getting into, and the morons did it anyway. 

Season 22  was supposed to premiere on Sunday night. Instead, adding to the bleakness, ABC will air a rerun of “American Idol.”     

Now, the network and “Bachelorette” team are caught in an ongoing disaster that’s entirely of their own making.

I love it so much.

I’ve never watched the show. Roses are handed out, I gather. Contestantants are served too much booze, apparently. 

And this was the first I’d heard of the 31-year-old violent star of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” and fixture of something called #MomTok, which sounds like a town in the Hamptons but is actually Utah mothers performing dances.  

But nothing gets these fingers typing like a good ‘ol public display of idiocy. 

And ABC has simply outdone themselves here. Those three letters should stand for Astonishingly Bad Choices.

The network and the bozos in charge of “The Bachelorette” deserve every keystroke of criticism, mass fan fallout and huge financial loss coming their way. I dearly hope their giant lapse of judgement takes down the whole stupid franchise.

What’s most despicable is that had the video of Paul hurling chairs at ex Dakota Mortensen not been unearthed — a clip that, once again, is a recorded version of events the network was fully aware of — ABC would’ve gleefully aired the show.

They’ve said so!

“In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of ‘The Bachelorette’ at this time,” they said in a statement.

“Our focus is on supporting the family.”

Oh is it?! A quick Google search would indicate “The Bachelorette,” “The Bachelor” and its other marry-me mutations do not have a strong track record of “supporting” anybody. 

They’re top notch, however, at filming repeated instances of racism and drunken belligerence. And some of its participants have quite a knack for getting arrested after production wraps.  

The Taylor Frankie Paul debacle is par for the course — only viscerally disturbing and with enormous consequences for the company.

ABC’s parent Disney cares about money. And this wreckage should wake them up as to what the best course of action regarding the “Bachelor” franchise is: a divorce.

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