I feel like we’ve really had so much go down since we last spoke it’d be impossible to go over everything in this column and on tonight’s live. With my power going in and out, I’m typing this whole column on my notes app in my phone, then have to use whatever time I have when power is back up to get it to you and upload it on the site. The second thing is tonight’s live with Ashley Spivey at 8ET/5PT. I’m not sure that can happen as of now because the power outages keep happening. If it happened during the live, I’d be sitting there in the dark ha ha. So unless we did it at like 6 ET, that’d be the only way to power through it since I’d be able to use natural light. But I doubt that’s gonna happen. So I will keep you updated on Twitter and IG, but not looking good for the live to happen tonight. But I don’t think we’ll wait til next Tuesday either. Hopefully these power outages will stop by Thursday or so. I’ll keep you updated.
So since we last spoke, so much has happened that we’ll need to rewind a bit. Chris Harrison’s interview with Rachel Lindsay happened last Tuesday on “Extra.” I included it in last Wednesday’s column, but in case you still haven’t watched or don’t know why he’s stepping down for a period of time, I really suggest you take 13 out of your life and watch how not to conduct yourself in an interview, especially one with a black woman asking you the questions:
This interview came out pretty much right before Ashley and I went live last Tuesday night. So it was never discussed because we hadn’t watched it yet. We only had a couple quotes from it where Chris spoke about Rachael Kirkconnell. We had no idea it was a 13 minute interview since the whole thing came out while we were doing the live. So that happens Tuesday night and the backlash started rolling in immmediately to where Chris issued an apology for what he said on his IG the next day:
At that point, Racahel Kirkconnell still had yet to address anything and I was being told it was because ABC needed to approve whatever she wrote. Which is utterly ridiculous. The fact they didn’t let her speak for six weeks and were telling her behind the scenes not to worry about it and just let it blow over, then once the Old South formal pictures came out last Thursday, they told her to make a statement, keep it 100 words, and they had to approve it. Then the Chris interview happens, he apologizes on Wed, they reject her apology statement, then do another 180 and just let her post on Thursday afternoon:
As you can see, Rachael’s apology was 10x better than Chris’ and validates what I told you from a couple weeks ago when I was talking with the family insider. When I asked and polled you all if you’d want to hear from a family insider (since Rachael was being told not to say anything by production), it was because they were essentially going to say what Racahel said in her apology. She was going to own it, she was embarrassed by her actions, she knows it was racist, and even was aware her apology wouldn’t be enough and that it would take time for her to earn people’s trust. At this point, that’s really all she can do. Apologies on IG are just words. Going forward, her actions will tell whether or not that apology was sincere. And oh yeah, in case you still haven’t been able to grasp it yet, if you’re white, that apology is not for you. She even added that in her caption. And trust me, PLENTY of white people have made it known in my Twitter mentions and DMs how insignificant they think this is. SMH.
The other thing about that I wanna bring up is Rachel Lindsay saying that there’s nothing in the contract that says Rachael Kirkconnell couldn’t have taken to social media to defend herself. And she’s right. All I can do is relay to you what the family insider was telling me for the last two weeks. Rachael has wanted to speak out for weeks now. But production was telling her not to. She’s 24 years old, everyone in America is calling her a white supremacist/racist, she has a giant NDA contract that she signed, and the company that made her sign it is holding it over her head saying basically “do not say anything until we let you.” So while it’s easy for us on the outside to say “why did she listen to them,” I get it. Put yourself in her shoes. Should she have? Yes. But she didn’t know any better and she’s got a network telling her she can’t. This is her first time through this and she was scared bc her “bosses” essentially were telling her no. Once Chris Harrison apologized Wednesday, less than 24 hrs after his interview, that’s why I tweeted what I did and told Rachael on social media essentially “Screw your contract, call their bluff, and address this before it keeps getting worse.” And then she did on Thursday finally when they allowed her to.
