Why Lee Garrett may be on Rachel Lindsay’s The Bachelorette

One of the big headlines from The Bachelorette this week is actually taking place away from the show, courtesy of one Lee Garrett and his Twitter account. Over the past two days, comments from the Nashville singer have started to go viral, even though he made his account private after some of his offensive comments were first exposed. These are certainly not the comments of someone who seems like husband material, especially since many of them were racist in nature and he is on a season of the show with an African-American lead in Rachel Lindsay.

First things first, let’s address the obvious elephant in the room: Why in the world a guy like Lee wants to go on a show knowing full well that he’s not going to work with the lead? Even if he went far, eventually that Twitter was going to come out and it’d be curtains. The reason he was there is clear as day: Fame, and thinking it could help his music career in the way that it’s supposedly helped several other guys. For the record, this doesn’t seem like all that effective a strategy, given that Luke Pell really seems to be the only one who’s actually making some headway in that department.

As for why the show cast him, the first thing to note — beyond of course the fact that producers may have not done their due diligence, is that this could’ve been a guy in their casting pool long before Rachel was announced. While it seems like they knew for a while that they wanted her as the lead for their next season, they were still looking at all sorts of guys to either A) present a rather geographically diverse lineup (Lee is the only self-proclaimed “Southerner” on the season) or B) have some guys who would be unexpected choices for her or could work if they cast someone else. Without knowing his Twitter history, it seems like you’d match up Lee with Raven Gates. (Now that you do know it, it’s clear that he’s not worthy of anyone from the franchise — or really any woman unless he changes his ways.)

Despite what reasoning either he or production had in him getting on the show, the buck does still stop with them for violating a very simple rule: CHECK SOCIAL MEDIA HISTORY. There are going to be people out there who are looking for stories, and will go back and see what you had to say for many years. This is the sort of stuff that can easily come back to bite you if you don’t.

How do you think that The Bachelorette and, by extension, ABC got themselves in this position? Share now in the comments! (Photo: ABC.)