As I mentioned yesterday, I did not catch last night’s “Bachelorette” episode as I took my niece to KIIS FM’s Jingle Ball. I tell you what, Doja Cat can really lip sync the hell out of her songs. Props to her. The teenage screeching level reached a fever pitch last night when Doja Cat was up there on stage dancing, her voice track was playing behind her, and she wasn’t even trying to sing. It’s in my IG stories from last night if you wanna check it for yourself. I mean, even though she’s singing over a track, don’t you have to at least pretend to sing along with it? Whatever the case, my niece sure enjoyed the concert. Tate McRae made her cry, The Kid LaRoi had her giddy, and I got to see Dixie D’Amelio’s first performance in front of an arena crowd. She was definitely nervous as the opener and you could tell her stage presence wasn’t what it will be years from now, but, all in all I thought she did well for her first time. Of course, bringing out her sister and most famous TikTok’er in the world certainly helped. I thought my ears were going to bleed from the amount of high pitched squeals that came from Charli’s appearance. Fun times in Fort Worth last night.
Without having seen it but following along on social media, I can throw a few things your way. Seems like Nayte was the only one last night that they made not seem “ready” to be engaged. Which is to be expected because that’s what this show does. People dissect anything they can on the show and post-show, but just wanted to let you know, nothing has changed. Michelle and Nayte are engaged.
Also, something we’ve seen basically every season and has become standard definitely happened during last night’s episode, and that was that the order of hometown dates shown in the episode differed from the order they were filmed. It was shown Brandon, Rodney, Joe, then Nayte. But the order of filming went Nayte, Joe, Rodney, and Brandon.
Looks like ABC finally decided to announce their “new” Bachelor last night as Clayton’s first promo ran after the show and online:
It’s official! ? Clayton is ready to find the one when #TheBachelor premieres Monday, Jan 3! ? pic.twitter.com/7rmPxA2jH6
— The Bachelorette (@BacheloretteABC) December 1, 2021
So your first clips are now out, you can see Shanae being pinned as the villain which I told you about a month ago, along with some of the 1-on-1 dates. I guess Clayton was on GMA this morning too, but I missed that. They’ll also be announcing him as the Bachelor at the MTA in next week’s episode, even though I don’t believe he ended up being there.
So last week I spent two pages giving you my thoughts on Katie’s relationship announcement with John. Could’ve been one sentence of “don’t agree with how she did this,” but c’mon, anyone can say that. You want to hear the reasoning why people think the way they do. Well, it’s happened again. John decided to post a long story on Reddit last week “explaining” his side of things. It was reposted by Vulture and many outlets afterwards and, well, I have some thoughts on this as well. I break it down paragraph by paragraph for you. If you’re gonna put something out here like this, he’s gotta know people are gonna react to it. Well, he’s probably not gonna like it, but here’s mine. This isn’t some head-to-head battle. I don’t dislike John. I don’t even know the guy. I can only go off of what he gives us. And this is what he gave us last week. I’m just having a real hard time with both Katie and John seemingly missing the boat on a lot of things, so maybe this will help a bit. Or not. Either way, here are my thoughts on what he wrote:
Hey everyone!
John Hersey here. This is the first and likely only time I will ever address you all, the bachelor sub, directly. So let me take this opportunity to first thank all of you for the support, the laughs, the love, and the undeniably outspoken personalities that I have had the wonderful pleasure of being exposed to while here. You guys are fun (most of the time, haha).
It boggles my mind why John decided to write all this toward a subsection of fans rather than just post this on his own Instagram. Not to mention, a subsection of fans that his new girlfriend Katie has openly spoken out against numerous times and expressed her disdain for. So Katie dislikes Reddit with a passion, yet John is choosing to post this message directly to them? Huh? These weren’t the only people questioning the way they handled their newly announced public relationship. Posting this on his IG feed and/or story would’ve made way more sense. It only proves that as much as Katie and John say they don’t care what the public and the trolls think, they absolutely do. I’m assuming John did not send out this post to Reddit without Katie’s knowledge or approval. So by only directing this post at them means that you care what they think. Katie has said she doesn’t, so just the idea to do this doesn’t seem to make much sense at all.
I’m sure there’s no question why I’ve chosen this moment to speak up- this has been a wild couple days to say the least. I am absolutely in favor of everybody having their own opinion, voicing that opinion, and hell, arguing and yelling about that opinion. What hurts me, however, is watching SO many of you build assumptions and throw around accusations based on very limited knowledge of a situation. I cannot (and do not) blame anyone for this, because it is the nature of a private situation to be clear only to those closest to it. However, I do intend to share some insights that will hopefully allow you to better understand me, Katie, and our relationship.
This is missing the bigger picture. The relationship itself, meaning the idea of Katie Thurston and John Hersey now being a couple in a relationship, isn’t something that a lot of people were really questioning. Logistically, if not I’m sure for more reasons, they are probably a better fit for each other long term that Katie and Blake were. It was about HOW they chose to announce it to America and the timing of it that most people have the biggest issue with.
Katie and I developed an incredible and deep friendship over the last half year or so. The circumstances by which this friendship formed was a series of crazy, random, and coincidental events, that I’m sure you will all hear about at a later time. My point for now, is that we were ALWAYS platonic. Even during my short stint on the season, we never had a chance to foster anything romantic (read as: John blew his chance and left the next day hahaha). The boundaries of our friendship with respect to her ongoing relationship never even required addressing, because it was never a thought in our minds that we would ever be anything more. You guys- she was engaged. It is apparent that many of you misjudge how both her and I view that commitment. Neither Katie nor I would ever cheat, push someone to cheat, or be involved in cheating. It is not in our nature. It is not acceptable. It is not okay. On second thought, maybe this message deserves its own paragraph:
There was no wrongdoing prior to the end of their engagement.
There’s a lot here, but the first thing to me is we just have to take his word on this. He can say all he wants it was platonic. And maybe it was. But how would anyone outside of those two know if he was telling the truth? Do I honestly expect him to admit, “Oh yeah, while they were engaged, Katie and I hooked up.” So I’m not completely discrediting him saying they were nothing but platonic until the engagement was over, but lets be honest, 1) what else did you expect him to say? and 2) there’s no way he can prove that. We just have to assume he’s telling the truth. But for argument’s sake, lets say he is…
There’s still things missing here. After Blake’s interview, we know now the timeline of when they’re breakup happened:
Fri. Oct. 22nd – Katie does stand up in Irvine opening for Whitney Cummings.
Sat. Oct. 23rd – Katie was supposed to fly to Canada that weekend to see Blake. Instead they talk on the phone and this is where Blake says she broke up with him.
Mon. Oct. 25th – Katie and Blake release corresponding IG posts saying they are broken up.
So going off that timeline, John really doesn’t clear anything up regarding their own timeline. “Boundaries were never crossed…”, “our relationship never required addressing they never thought it’d be anything more…” etc. Which is fine, but that means you’re telling us and wanting us to believe that at no time before Oct. 23rd (or 25th whenever people want to call it “official”) was anything ever spoken between the two of them about feelings for one another? Not until after the announcement happened was this ever broached? For the sake of argument, lets hold John at his word here again and say we believe him. And he’s saying lines were never crossed because she was engaged. All the stuff about neither of them would never cheat, be involved in cheating, it’s not in their nature, etc. It’s just words. We have NO IDEA if either of them have ever cheated in past relationships, so again, we have to just take his word for it here. And actually John, we kinda do have proof of Katie cheating in past relationships. At least emotionally. She admitted as much a month previous in her podcast with Whitney Cummings:
So now that we know Katie has been an emotional cheater in the past, what does that do to John’s proclamation last paragraph about how much both of them are against cheating? I digress.
But if John was just talking about physical cheating in that last paragraph, again, we just have to take both of their words for it. We have no idea whether that’s true or not. We don’t have proof they did and they can’t prove it didn’t by anything outside of their words. So I guess we’re at standstill on that one. Yet, I’m fine with most people believing there was no physical cheating involved. Lets hope there wasn’t.
But those last few lines about them never cheating, don’t approve of it, not in their nature, they’d never push someone to do that, it’s not ok, etc, I mean, thanks for the TED talk but isn’t that kinda of the way most people should view relationships and cheating? That it’s not acceptable? It sounded like he wanted credit for something that most people pretty much already accept as wrong. But since he’s telling us with such conviction they don’t cheat, I guess it means they really don’t. Just an odd thing to harp on when it’s just words.
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