Being Latin isn’t working to his advantage anymore
It’s his sexy Latin accent that has women going gaga over this season’s Bachelor. But the good looks and foreign tongue aren’t enough to keep Juan Pablo Galavis in everybody’s good books — especially when the media (and millions of people) have dubbed him a hateful homophobe.
In an interview with The TV Page, Galavis was asked about there being a gay bachelor for the popular reality TV franchise. Galavis, now blaming language barrier and being taken out of context said, “I have a lot of friends like that, but they’re more pervert in a sense. To me, the show would be too strong, too hard to watch on TV.” (That’s right, there’s nothing “pervert” about one guy making out with 20-something females though.)
Not even the show’s producers or broadcaster ABC would defend him, quickly releasing a statement saying, “Juan Pablo’s comments were careless, thoughtless and insensitive, and in no way reflect the views of the network, the show’s producers or studio.”
Then, presumably with some help from a publicist, Galavis took to Facebook to try clarify what he allegedly meant, but by that time he’d already Paula Deen’ed himself.
Facebook was all a flutter and Twitter was all, well, a twitter, as outraged and Galavis bashing began. Even women voted off the show early in the season said they now consider themselves fortunate they didn’t fall in love with the single dad.
I got an interesting email from a B.C. woman — a grandmother, she said — who asked, “If my son is a pervert because he’s gay, does that make his daughter a slut because she’s a female? Of course not. People make generalizations and just because it might have been OK to look at a group (that way) in the past doesn’t mean it’s right to go on the record and say that. He should have been trained to bite his tongue and not incriminate himself. Say, “everybody deserves a chance at finding love” or something and leave it at that.”
The network bragged about its highest-rated season premiere in years so it will be interesting how the rest of the episodes attract viewers.
Oh, I should also point out a factoid going around the Internet: the state of Florida apparently garnished Galavis’s wages for not paying child support before he decided to sign up and get paid to date 27 women on a reality show.
Father of the Year. Or Failure of the Year. You decide.
