There are no good guys in this distasteful 'Bachelor' debacle

ABC ought to be ashamed of itself.

So should the producers of "The Bachelor." So should Jake Pavelka. So should Vienna Girardi.

So, for that matter, should anyone who watched Monday's episode of the show in which the former couple aired their dirty laundry.

The tabloid-fueled battle between Pavelka and Girardi has turned a stupid-but-relatively harmless TV show into something slimy. Something that, arguably, is downright harmful to everyone involved.

Including viewers who jumped into this cesspool.

It's not worth going into the details, but, briefly, here's what happened: Pavelka, after being eliminated as a contestant on "The Bachelorette," was brought back as the centerpiece of the 14th season of "The Bachelor."

In the season finale, he chose Girardi as his one-and-only. Which, of course, was ridiculous on its face.

As I've written too many times before, if you're looking for true love you don't go on a network reality show to find it. The whole process is foolish and, when you think about it, pretty creepy.

To date, not one of the 14 men on "The Bachelor" has married a woman he chose at the end of the season. (One married the woman he didn't choose at the end of the season.) And only one of the five women on "The Bachelorette" married the man she chose.

You could probably get better results than one-for-19 by hanging out in singles bars.

What tends to happen even when there is a short-lived engagement is that, shortly after the show ends, the couple breaks up. And they release some sort of innocuous statement about how they've decided to go their separate ways.

Not so this time around.

As this couple was breaking up, Girardi sold her story to a supermarket rag and trashed Pavelka. He struck back, giving interviews to celebrity magazines and TV shows.

Both sides ramped up the accusations and eventually agreed to appear on "The Bachelor" to fight some more.

For a paycheck, of course,

It was a thoroughly unpleasant bit of television in which everyone involved — Pavelka, Girardi, host Chris Harrison and ABC itself — managed to make themselves look bad.

We haven't seen this kind of tabloid sleaze involving reality-show personalities since Jon and Kate Gosselin broke up.