Mike's take

Sitting on the toilette recently, I was thinking about how maybe we all play a part in a communal human experience. Call it what you will: a universal soul, maybe? Perhaps, we should look at the history of mankind taking into account figures like Christ, and Hitler, along with your run-of-the-mill guy next door, and realize that collectively their individual characters have something to say about who we are as individuals. I was fine with the idea that the Brown Shirts, Edi Amin, and the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge speak to something about who I am as a human. I was. Yet somehow I was not ok with what I saw on The Bachelor.

Talk about the banality of evil. Or maybe it's the evil of banality? Or maybe the stupidity of stupidity? Allsiknowis, I was only marginally bothered by the idea that I am a member of the same species as madmen, despots, and murderers. However, when I realized that I am also from the same tribe as the finalists for this year's Bachelor, I thought, 'It really is a shame that I share almost identical double helixes with a guy who shows what a good mate he would be, by allowing FOX TV to film him working out without a shirt on, and then later by striking a rugged pose as he pilots an enormous powerboat around a lake.' Someone once said of humans something to the effect of, "Vanity: it's all we know, and all we need know." When I saw a big-gelled-up-pompadour-having cheesedick give a smarmy smirk to the camera and say, "I had relations with thirty women last year," I knew it was true. Forget Kurtz and the jungles of Saigon. Just turn on The Bachelor for a true journey into the shallow heart of darkness. The horror, the horror.

RJ's take

No, Chaucer wasn't referring to the newly-minted man prize of The Bachelor, but ABC certainly hopes that its choice will, like the Squire to whom Chaucer was referring, be a "lover and lusty bachelor". Chaucer wouldn't have wanted it any other way. A prude Chaucer was not, as evidenced by some of his notoriously raunchy fabliaux. His masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, holds the unofficial record for most high school classroom giggles generated by a canonical piece of literature. What all of this means is obvious--Chaucer would be a big fan of The Bachelor. He'd be that office lecher who buttonholes you on your way to the copier to handicap the chances of the remaining bachelorettes (but in Middle English, of course). But it's not just The Bachelor's libidinous overtones that he would appreciate, it's the shows valuable contribution to the genre of "comic sociology" that Chaucer practically invented with the Tales. Thanks to The Bachelor, and its Title IX spin-off The Bachelorette, we are provided with a cross-sectional, cringetastic look behind the green door of American singledom--a place where grown women still say things like, "He's got the perfect car." Yeah, isn't he just a dreamboat? Even on a TV schedule larded with reality shows, it's hard to find a more unvarnished look at sexual mores in mainstream America. So watch The Bachelor, and learn. If he hadn't died more than 500 years ago, Chaucer would and gladly.