In a previous life I wrote about television for a local newspaper. A recurring source of conflict with my supervisors was so-called “reality TV” which had recently, um, blossomed, across all the networks. Being a cranky, disputatious bastard I thought the stuff was junk, plainly stage-managed and therefore worthy of derisive coverage, if any at all. The bosses thought differently. They loved it. And they were convinced “our readers” as they called them, loved it too. Especially the dating shows, and they resented my resistance to succumbing to abject fandom.

I mention this because of last night’s the much-touted finale of “The Golden Bachelor”, a variation on the usual hunky/sexy twenty-somethings, in which viewers are presented hunky/sexy seventy-somethings cooing and trilling in hot tubs in search of, you know, real true love. Ratings for the variant have been through the roof, so we can expect a lot more of what this is all about.

This morning’s Star Tribune features what looks like the eighth update on “The Golden Bachelor” and its Minnesota bachelorette, the [correction: ex-wife] of a well-known local restaurateur. The story gives all-in, misty-eyed fans everything they want. The fashion choices, the heart break, a touch of recrimination. So much, you know, reality.

Everythihg real except the reality part, as reported in excruciating detail by the show biz trade paper, The Hollywood Reporter, the day before. That piece essentially vivisected the hunky golden widower bachelor, revealing him to be, while still hunky and dreamy, quite a bit the fraud, at least compared to how he was being packaged and sold on TV, and a bit of cad, as well.

Some key bits from that (actual) reporting:

“The idea that this guileless man was reawakening before our eyes to contemporary life — ‘I mean, I haven’t dated in 45 years’, he told Entertainment Tonight — made him a hugely compelling character. He seemed so wholesome and almost preacherly that, on The Daily Show, comedian Lewis Black joked, ‘This guy is like if the word ‘Gee Willikers’ became a person’. But even in this Golden variation, this is, at bottom, a reality show, a genre mostly known for its frequent disconnection with reality.”

And … “The Hollywood Reporter has discovered several inconsistencies regarding both his work history and recent romantic entanglements that contradict the received narrative.  Whether [the producers] never learned about these discrepancies or ignored them to sell a buffed-up, shinier storyline for greater impact, producers presented an incomplete and misleading image of [bachelor Gerry] Turner, which the bachelor helped perpetuate in personal remarks.

“He’s identified in chyrons throughout the show as a ‘retired restaurateur’, which is a fancy way to say he owns or owned a restaurant, with all of its attendant fun and glamour. But according to his profile on LinkedIn, Gerry last owned a restaurant in 1985, when he sold his Mr. Quick hamburger drive-in franchise in Iowa, where he’d worked his way up from high school.”

And … ” … he would come to know a woman (we’ll call her Carolyn) with whom he would go on to have a nearly three-year relationship, beginning innocently enough a month after his wife’s death.”

And … ” … his amorous activity certainly didn’t align with how he regularly yanked viewers’ heartstrings with on-air announcements about his lack of a love life since his wife died.”

And … ” … [a friend of the girlfriend] recalled watching the show and hearing Gerry say that line about not having been kissed in six years. ‘And I’m like, what? He’s got to know that people are paying attention to this show. I’m just flabbergasted’. (ABC and Turner declined to comment for this article.) At first, Carolyn [the girlfriend] tried to laugh it off. But then The Golden Bachelor became a ratings bonanza. The show was suddenly the talk of pop culture, considered a breakthrough for its positive portrayal of sexually active seniors. It bothered Carolyn that her ex was foisting lines and moves on the bachelorettes that he had used to seduce her.”

The story goes on to talk about the hunk finally talked Carolyn into quitting her job and moving five hous away from her home to his lake house, only to then present her with half the tab for his place’s monthly expenses, telling her he wasn’t going to take her to his high school reunion because she’d gained weight and then soon after that telling she had to be out by the first of the year, and making her stay at hotel the last two weeks before she moved.

My god, what a smoothy! What a heart throb! What woman’s heart wouldn’t go pitter patter for a real loving hunk like that?

Anyway, you can read the whole story, none … none … of which was mentioned in the Strib’s coverage. And maybe … perhaps … you and I and mainstream editors who should know better can reflect on how easy and irresponsible it is to give gullible audiences the story they want to believe as opposed to a story that is believable.

This though, being a blog for political ranting and raving, allow me to point out the stark parallels to the low information, gullible audiences who were sold Donald Trump as the infallible titan of finance on “The Apprentice.”

The heavily stage-managed “reality TV” Trump was for many viewers the first and certainly the most potent introduction to Trump, and no credible political analyst discounts the impact that that perception — of an astute, tough-minded, fabulously rich, more-cunning-than-the-other-rascals rascal — had on propelling him ahead of the hapless stiffs in the 2016 Republican primary and on into the White House, (thanks to the electoral college.) Never mind Trump’s “Apprentice” board room was a TV set and no producer ever mentioned his decades as a cartoonish fraud shunned by real titans of finance, swindling business partners, contractors and laborers.

Given “The Golden Bachelor’s” boffo box office, ABC will without a doubt spin this shtick ad nauseum. And that’s show biz.

But the so-called professional press has an obligation different than playing fan boy/girl to satisfy the most infantile and credulous yearnings of their readers.