We in the Northern Hemisphere hit the Winter Solstice sometime instantaneously at 10:58 pm ET, thus ending this eventful Autumn 2021. Here's wishing a wonderful winter to us ALL!

And something ELSE is ending tonight: the current season of The Bachelorette, an especially in-your-face edition of the popular Bachelor/ette twin-franchise, which put race-mixing front-and-center...particularly those contestants who could boast (as they often did) of having had a black father (who may or may not have hung around to raise the future Bachelor suitor) but white mother.

Early on, I thought what was most interesting about this season was how many guys (white, mixed or black) at least PRETENDED to be excited to chase after a female basketball player who emulated a league [the WNBA] which (according to continuing Sports Illustrated reporting) has been consistently about 80% lesbian and almost entirely ethnic, with darned near every squad's players maintaining a serious lesbian culture in their lockerroom.

But hey, different strokes for different folks, and different women for different men, so that's cool if that's what you think is cool! And I sincerely hope the hoops-obsessed protagonist finds love in the finale tonight on ABC, though a generally-angry and self-centered (not to mention seriously ignorant, non-reader) jock-lady like her I would think would have a difficult time in romantic relationships, at least those of the hetero sort.

But NO, it turned out that the MOST interesting thing about this sordid Bachelorette season ISN'T the star's narcissism or even the repeated in-your-face race-mixing--I guess the preferred term is "diversity"--but rather the choices ABC is making regarding PROMOS for the two franchise series!

This requires explanation. You see, about Episode 3 or 4, on one of those so-called "group dates" designed by the producers to generate jealous conflict, the guys vied for this jilting-jockette's favor by playing a pickup game of (what else?) basketball, and down-in-the-'hood--style "street ball" to boot. Which is fine, should you be a hoops-fan viewer.

But this was NOT okay with the conceited star after one team was defeated and sent back to the hotel while the winning five guys got to "enjoy" additional time with the rather-masculine star. She actually stopped things right there and STERNLY told the victorious quintet that she DIDN'T appreciate how those guys (briefly) hung with each other to briefly celebrate their win.

No, by doing so (rather than immediately surrounding her on the bleachers to further dote on Ms. Me-Me-Me), they made the overly-sensitive, allegedly lovely Bachelorette feel "not seen" (in what indeed might be her own original clumsily-inarticulate phrase, or perhaps is rather some parroted "he-got-my-back"-style ghetto phraseology I've not previously heard).

And our (allegedly-)lovely Bachelorette didn't just MENTION this; no, the hellion harpie HARPED on it, trying (and no doubt succeeding) to make the five guys fear she was losing interest in each of them as a result.

But none of this meant much as this pathetic shark-jumping season rolled on....UNTIL this past week, when it came time for ABC to promote the bejeezus out of the Bachelorette finale (to be hosted presumably by those also-empty-headed former contestants Kaitlin Bristoe and her even-slower-thinking sidekick Tayisha (or whatever her silly name is).

And since this is the super-duper FINALE (and so MANY times she told the assembled remaining men, "I feel like my future husband is in this room!"), you would figure that ABC would be running promos for our brainless Bachelorette's climax wall-to-wall! Yet I've see only ONE make air on ABC over the last week so far.

MEANWHILE, I have seen ABC promo after promo after promo after promo for the upcoming BacheLOR season, which DOESN'T START UNTIL JANUARY! (And THIS time around, the lucky-guy Bachelor star is a Missouri-bred WHITE GUY* who appears more Caucasian than Tom Brady, Larry Bird or Mickey Mantle).

So while our often-scowling Bachelorette of Color is presumably hoping for robust ratings for her finale, ABC has been giving HER show airing TONIGHT virtually ZERO promotion, ALL THE WHILE promoting the heck out of this still-long-from-premiering Bachelor of Whiteness's run...which is still a FORTNIGHT distant from its premier!

Ergo: I predict our sorry, so-put-upon dowdy dimwitted dribbling Bachelorette will sometime hire some race-hustling attorney (like Ben Crump, Esq.) to race-card-playingly sue both the producers and ABC for failing to promote HER show THE VERY FINALE WEEK of her big ring-ceremony schtick, thus rendering little Miss Hoops-Dunk's CURRENT-season climax QUITE-SERIOUSLY "not seen" ALL THE WHILE pumping up the STILL-undebuted white-dude Missouri Bachelor's UPCOMING season with TONS of gushing promos.

I, for one, would grant that is indeed some world-class racial discrimination.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
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* Sounds like that could be me, but it's not; he's not from St. Louis, but rather a small city in the center of The Show-Me State.

Slight factual correction:

This particular solstice hits instantaneously sometime DURING the minute of 10:58 pm ET tonight (i.e., not necessarily precisely AT the cited 10:58p....though it MIGHT indeed be at that instant).

The reason It just NOW is not-yet-specified to the precise second (much less a fraction thereof) is the Naval Observatory--which has Federal jurisdiction over this--cannot ascertain when that instant IS until AFTER it has occurred, and even then it takes them a day or so to nail it down within the limits of their astronomical measurement (or so they explained to me in detail in 2007, when I had broadcast rationale to establish all this for "Radioactive Seattle with Bryan Styble" on KIRO/Seattle).

STYBLE/Florida

Sorry, Folks--the Winter Solstice occurs during the minute of 10:58 am ET, not 10:58 pm ET. (My aging eyes again to blame, as I couldn't read my own tiny "a" hand-written inscription in my calendrical archives.

I regret my error. (Though not as much as I rue having lousy eyesight in my old age.)

STYBLE/Florida

There is nothing more hilarious or erotic than a racist piece of shit
botching its suicide and ending up helpless in searing agony.