After Chuck Lorre's The Bachelor diss ignited a Twitter war, the prolific showrunner apologized -- sort of -- for the remark in his vanity card following Thursday's The Big Bang Theory.
Last week, Lorre used his post-Big Bang vanity card to show his support for President Obama while at the same time criticizing Republicans on topics including gay marriage, the war on terror and voter fraud.
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While the card shown on CBS was censored, Lorre posted the full version on his website.
Among the provocative questions he posed: "What does it say about us when we think the institution of marriage is threatened by gay people who love each other, but not by idiotic game shows like The Bachelor?"
On Thursday night, in Card No. 398, Lorre offered a tongue-in-cheek apology for his comment. He wrote that he was mistaken in viewing the show through "the tired old eyes of '60s feminism" when in fact the nation is in a "post-feminist era."
"The patriarchal sexism that treated women as chattel and dictated how much they could earn or how much control they could have over their own bodies is a thing of the past, a curious relic of a dark, unenlightened time," he wrote. "Likewise, the idea that a woman without a man was somehow incomplete has long ago been consigned to the overflowing dustbin of humankind's misbegotten thinking. Women are now free to do anything they want, and that includes going on a reality show and using all their female wiles to snag Mr. Right."
He concluded: "I really don't know what else to say except, 'I'm sorry and, um... you go, girl!'"
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His original remark sparked a Twitter war earlier this week, with host Chris Harrison and two producers chiming in.
"Someone has been freebasing crushed up copies of Dharma & Greg DVDs," producer Elan Gale wrote, referring to the Jenna Elfman sitcom that Lorre executive produced from 1997-02. Gale added: "Two and a Half Men. Zero salient points."
Robert Mills, another Bachelor producer, pointed out that one of the stars of Big Bang Theory is a fan of the shows: "Ironic that Chuck Lorre decides to bash #Bachelor and one of his stars Kaley Cuoco is a card carrying member of #Bachelornation."
He added: "Chuck Lorre's getting #TwoAndAHalfMenNation to retaliate against #BachelorNation Step 1: teach their geriatric audience to turn on a computer."
Harrison, meanwhile, retweeted Gale's and Mills' message and followed up with one of his own. "Love it when people expose their own ignorance!" the host tweeted with a link to the vanity card story.
Lorre recently published a hardcover book, What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us Bitter, collecting his vanity cards. Proceeds of the $100 title benefit the Dharma-Grace Foundation, which Lorre established in 1999 to support the Venice Family Clinic.
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The full text of Lorre's latest vanity card is below:
I need to apologize. In an earlier vanity card I made a derisive comment about a popular reality show because I thought its premise - a group of single women compete with one another to win the affections of, and ultimately marry, an eligible man - was more threatening to the sanctity of marriage than gay people tying the knot. After careful consideration, I now realize that I couldn't have been more wrong. My mistake was that I was looking at the show through the tired old eyes of 60's feminism. But we are clearly in a post-feminist era. The patriarchal sexism that treated women as chattel and dictated how much they could earn or how much control they could have over their own bodies is a thing of the past, a curious relic of a dark, unenlightened time. Likewise, the idea that a woman without a man was somehow incomplete has long ago been consigned to the overflowing dustbin of humankind's misbegotten thinking. Women are now free to do anything they want, and that includes going on a reality show and using all their female wiles to snag Mr. Right.
I really don't know what else to say except, "I'm sorry and, um... you go, girl!"
