Author: Dan Zorg

Zorg Report: Patricia Arquette of CSI: Cyber—Fat Because of Soda?

Patricia Arquette of CSI: Cyber—Fat Because of Soda?

(Nothing important to read here, folks, so just move along, move along.  Only rambling, but felt like jotting down something that was on my mind. . .people do such things on blogs. . . .)

Standing in line at the grocery store staring at celeb gossip magazines earlier today.  Prince William may be losing his hair, or something else, maybe.  Already did write a post about Martin Short’s craven advertising for life-shortening products.  Watched a ‘sode of this new CSI show on the computer, the second one I’ve seen.

I saw Patricia Arquette on The Daily Show a while back, promoting her new show.  She was wearing some kind of 70s-puce-coloured pyjama knit tight-fitting dress/pullover ($14 at Wal-Mart?) that emphasized her every roll.  Odd choice.  Don’t get me wrong—I basically think people should weigh virtually whatever they’re comfortable with. . .but of course obviously there are points at which health factors must come into play.  On CSI: Cyber, Arquette seems always to be dressed in “slimming,” or de-outlining black.  (Strange, now that I think of it, that the producers aren’t going with cleavage, for this is something all true female CSIs always brandish on TV.) 

 

CSI—that franchise just propagates like head lice, or bedbugs, or mosquitoes at dusk on a northern lake. . . .  When I’m on my deathbed, I’ll rue the hours I sacrificed to CSI.  Once I had free cable for a few years—first time I’d had TV in more than a few years.  What with my schedule and the times I was becalmed, I think I saw every episode of the old Michael Moriarty Law & Order about 15 times—I guess that’s another franchise that, given Americans’ unquenchable appetite for fear and conspiracy, just kept growing.  Maybe it’s over now, though, that franchise.  I liked the episodes with Jerry Orbach.  Orbach seemed like a decent and philosophical guy while he lived, and I liked his weary seen-it-all character.  I really liked the moral seriousness of Moriarty’s character—when was the last time you saw that on American TV (and no, I don’t mean “ideological purity” or “ideological certainty”)?  But of course in real life Moriarty is apparently some wacko far-right conspiracy theorist.  Wonder if he’s still in Canada hanging out with tapstresses.  I remember when he came to Canada, fleeing the freedom-denying U.S.  …one of the first things he tried to do was light up a cigar in his hotel room.  Tough introduction to liberty, that one.

 

Anyway, remember how fanatical they always were about always showing characters eating, or just doing something, to keep us occupied while we watched?  Actually this is something that goes back to the earliest American radio detective serials, in which they built in patter outside the main plot to keep the audience thinking it was eavesdropping on a real situation, etc. (check out Frank and Joe swapping cigarettes in Dragnet, for example.)

Anyway anyway, I see in the two episodes of CSI: Cyber that I’ve seen that a feature of Patricia Arquette’s character is that she’s always holding a tub of soda when she’s walking around the quasi-lit monitor-festooned windowless enclaves where real CSI people always work.  Heaven knows what she does on an airplane or just how giant are the custom-made cupholders they had to put in the obnoxious more or less unmanoevreable monster SUVs they always make CSIs drive.  (Question: is it only sponsorship and vehicle placement, or is there any possible reason that CSIs need 15 ft. of vehicle space behind them when driving to a scene where they only use flashlights and rubber gloves?  Maybe there’s lots of bodies to stack up in the back, I guess, but I thought others took care of that while CSIs caught bad guys or looked at those astonishingly instantaneously informative computers rather than ferrying corpses.)

Now if Patricia Arquette is big or getting bigger, yes, yes, I know it’s probably not because of her soda tubs on TV.  Judging by their appearance and the way she airily waves them around like tissues, the way the straws always stick way straight up like toothpicks in an ice-cube tray, I guess they’re empty.  Hm.  Maybe the show producers are trying to suggest that her size is because of her soda addiction.  At any rate, it seems like the soda tub is meant to be linked with her character throughout the serial—or maybe the producers are already planning/have planned an episode in which she has a heart attack or something and has to give up soda and it becomes a crisis in her life.  I’m doubting that a bit, though, for we rarely see the personal sides of detective characters.  Remember how “Horatio Cain (sp?)” always found a way to show up at the funerals of victims whose crimes he’d solved (maybe he’s still doing it); that man was working 24/7, and since he probably slept in so many graveyards, he probably needed those sunglasses at dawn.

So Arquette’s overweight—no, there is no gender double standard here.  Overweight people of all kinds have been all over TV forever; with the early radio and TV Dragnet, Frank was portly and interested in food.  More power to ‘em, just less power to them to dictate their own mortality, is all.  I said all this stuff in my Martin Short post, anyway.  ((Speaking only personally, I think it is more attractive (and possibly more healthy, though I wouldn’t know), to be a bit more overweight than underweight.))

Of course, back in the day, EVERYONE was always smoking.  Pretty well every radio serial was sponsored by—not alcohol or cars or trucks or even oil companies so much—but cigarettes.  NOTHING was more ubiquitous.  But nowadays, cigarettes are so frowned upon that you might see fake ones or unlit ones, or whatever.  Now think about what kills Americans—heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc.—why would Hollywooddraw up a character such as Arquette who is always waving around a garish soda tub?  On a show where the writers sit around all day trying to dream up the most sick and convoluted and improbable murders, why would they write a lead character who chooses the most obvious self murder? I mean, cigarettes were supposed to be cool, or something, or evince adulthood, or satisfy sponsors or show brand affiliation, or offer a prop way to emphasize dialogue or gestures, say.  What can a giant soda tub do?  How is it cool or a pivotal addition to Arquette’s “range” of character traits?  It looks idiotic, like Yosemite Sam carrying around a BlackBerry. I thought Hollywood millionaires ate well and health consciously, to the extent of pretty much starving to death rural Peruby driving up demand and prices for quinoa, for example.  I don’t get it.  I don’t get how Hollywood, which is prepared to create and display endless violence, but will hair-split and mince around or even come out guns blazing against the most minor social offenses, will develop a leading character for a top franchise that shows her always attached to what tends to kill thousands upon thousands of Americans every year.  Do you buy that “role model” thing?  I sure don’t.  I liked hockey as a kid, but it certainly never occurred to me when I was playing that a guy on a pro team was some sort of “role model.”  But we’re addicted to this idea of “role models,” so let’s try it on: “Mommy mommy, I want to be a cool boss CSI someday, like Patricia Arquette—she’s so cool. . .and she gets to drink Coke all day!!!”  Yes Virginia, you keep doing that and balloon to 200 and see how many job offers you get, no matter how brilliant you are at delegating.  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s meant to “humanize” Arquette—make us see that this steely boss nevertheless has food or drink obsessions most of us can relate to. 

Why couldn’t they always have shown Arquette drinking coffee or tea?  These are chemically very complex beverages that, on the whole, science has suggested are largely beneficial.  Further, shows like CSI invest a great deal in creating an illusion of reality and seriousness—so then why the h*** would a supposedly cerebral top CSI do something that was so patently life-shortening and foolish?  How is she going to catch bad guys when she’s dead at 55?  That’s a lot of bad guys she might otherwise have caught as she approached retirement.

Yes ok, minds more brilliant and attentive than mine have no doubt already worked out this soda addiction topcop thing on the internet.  I’m just rambling, as I told you at the start I was.  Weird that ultra-sensitive Hollywood would write a star for a major series who so evidently had a (relatively non-addictive—I mean, soda isn’t heroin) life-shortening habit.

Well, that’s my piffle post for now.  It just struck me so I wrote a few (ok hundred) words, is all.

–zr

 

 

 

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Zorg Report: Just How Much Did Americans Pay for Super Bowl XLIX?

Just How Much Did Americans Pay for Super Bowl XLIX?
(NFL Set to Not Consider .01 Cent Rule)

The truth is, Americans will never know, because Americalacks an independent media.  Americans themselves will just go on wearing this millstone of debt around their necks until they die and the next generations take over, paying the debt for Super Bowls until kingdom come.

Watching the super bowl over the phone with my folks when the halftime came on, I couldn’t help but think of the American taxpayers who had to support this orgy of private wealth—the fly-bys, the endlessly circulating public employees and no-fly zones and massive military presence, the CIA and endless governmental and public, publicly-paid for money that went in to making the NFL, no pauper itself, richer than ever before.  What truly was the final account of the massive public expenditure that the American people had to pay for having a super bowl?  We will never know, for America, like most undeveloped countries and some developed, lacks an impartial media with access to information.

It’s true that most Americans probably watched the super bowl on their TVs.  For those who didn’t, well, they had to pay their taxes, too, just like people who don’t like letting seniors live in homes, but have to pay for it, do too.

I had a look at an American financial site and read an article by a person named Kelly Phillips Erb:

In her article, she gushes over how much money was made by players and coaches and halftime entertainers, and she meekly wonders if the host city and state themselves made any money, faintly referring to carefully selected data and not actually referring to what economists have shown for eons, that big sporting events don’t make money but usually lose it for taxpayers.  I’m sorry, but if a big team comes to my city, it doesn’t mean that I will buy more hamburgers or gas.  If the Rolling Stones experienced engine troubles and had to land on my roof, it wouldn’t mean I had more money to pay for them.  I have a certain amount of money.  Right-wing economists don’t seem to understand this; they think imaginary money miraculously materializes when an event is announced—somewhere, anywhere. Hoteliers and restaurateurs might be able to gouge for a short period and make money, but that does not translate to long-term economic activity.  Curious that any corporate extension but Forbes, getting paid to think so, would think otherwise.  I, taxpayer, though, will have to pay for more cops and setup and maintenance and teardown and cleanup and civic services.  I suppose there may be those millions upon millions of tourists who magically descend once they’ve seen my city on TV, but Kelly doesn’t reflect on that—show some imagination, Kelly!! 

The main thing Kelly leaves out, though, is the one she has to face in the mirror each morning as she puts on her game face—gets the makeup on and the eyeblack so as to avoid the blaring lights of day and reality and so on—just how much federal money went into this and just how much average taxpayers—losers and poor people and coloured people unlike her, had to pay in order to fund her article and fund the bowl, and just how much everyday Americans would have to pay and pay and pay, until kingdom come, to pay for the enjoyment her household relished.

Look, here’s the crux: most people of most countries who have national celebrations of some sort would say, ok, even if I don’t like it, I still pay taxes for it and it’s ok.  OK.  But the NFL is a different breed.  This is a league that will pay former head-injured players $765 million (.5% of annual revenue) to shut up and go away (http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2013/08/29/nfl-pays-765-million-to-settle-concussion-case-still-wins/).

This is a league that will pay its commissioner $44 million to pretend he never saw video the rest of America did (and, of course, as “Kelly Phillips Erb” knows but would lose her job if she said, pay far less in tax than a McDonald’s employee).  This is the league that will. . .domestic abuse. . .homicide. . .concussions. . .child abuse. . .drug abuse. . .steroids. . .you get my point.

When does the socializing of debt and the privatizing of wealth stop?  Does Americahave any media at all?  What if the NFL introduced a one cent rule, stipulating that one cent from every dollar made by networks and sponsors and owners and players and coaches, and one matching cent from every dollar American taxpayers had to pay for military and security support, had to go to educating Americans and creating a playing field for the majority of Americans who don’t vote and are disenfranchised by race or economic status or gender or gerrymandering.  What if?  What if the super bowl could become not only a sporting contest, but a force for national growth and improvement?  What if?

–zr

 

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Zorg Report: Martin Short releases new biography: How I Ended Up so Desperate I Had to Shill for Companies that Will Help You Die Early or Bankrupt, Whichever Comes First

Martin Short releases new biography: How I Ended Up so Desperate I Had to Shill for Companies that Will Help You Die Early or Bankrupt, Whichever Comes First

I’m wondering now—was all that shilling just meant to get him out there as advance-promo for his new book?  How hard up is this guy?  How little work does he have, or how little money does he have left?  How desperate do you have to be to shill for credit cards and potato chips?  Or, how many millions more does he feel he really, really needs?

Saw Short on The Daily Show (Feb. 2, 2015). I remember Martin Short from SCTV days, and I, ah, must say that I really enjoyed his comedy.  I surely thought he was very funny and maybe talented, too.  He was a bit more one-note than most of his colleagues on the show, but there’s no doubting that he was one funny guy.  I guess he was in movies, too, but I don’t think those are going down in comedy history, save one or two whose memory might be kept alive by ardent devotees of certain works (heck, I knew a guy who actually knew pretty much every line from Mother, Jugs & Speed, for crying out loud.  That’s Mother, Jugs & Speed—if I hadn’t looked it up, I wouldn’t have realized it required an ampersand).  I guess he’s been in plays and live shows, too, but I haven’t seen one.  Oh, I’d go, if someone gave me a ticket.  Or if I were in New York, I’d go and see him, after I’d seen about 12-15 other things and felt I had the spacious time and indeflatable wallet so to do. 

But of course what I remember him for now is his recent shilling for credit-card companies and potato-chip vendors.  So I’m just wondering if, anywhere in his new book, he explains why he felt he was so hard-up and desperate that he had to do ads for immoral and unhealthy products. . . ?  Is such a topic addressed?  I must say, I probably won’t be seeing his book anytime soon—but again, it’s not like I’d avoid it.  He has done great comedic work.  If the choice in a dentist’s office were People, Us, or his book, I’d pick it up.  If I were staring absently at a library trolley while I waited for someone and the choice were Clive Cussler, Harold Robbins, or his book, I’d pick it up.  Knowing that he wants to get me hooked on debt or fat, and that he’s raking in money from doing it, certainly discourages me from actually actively looking for his book. 
 
Ok, so that was it, the point of my post—does anyone know why Martin Short was so desperate for cash or attention that he agreed to shill for companies that contribute to the misery and death of millions of North Americans?  I mean, it kind of is a real question, one that could be thought about from various angles, or, yes, just dismissed as frivolous, which it may, but not exclusively, be.

And now, as this post peters out, I will offer a few more words–but obviously they could never be enough—in pre-emptive defense against those who might muster ire enough to tell me I’m a jerk for telling Martin Short what to do.

I guess if I’m Martin Short, which I’m not, getting out there is what keeps me alive.  Doing some shtick, being in front of the cameras, that’s oxygen; no cameras=death.  I get it.  All celebrities pitch products.  Hey, if I were Martin Short, which I’m not, and Ford or Toyota came to me and gave me a spanking new vehicle with all the bangles (that I could keep or give away to someone, and whose options I could not find at a dealership), and drove me around and showed me all the neat new things it had, yeah, sure, I’d probably find myself thinking up some grateful shtick for it and raking in the royalties.  Money, even when you don’t need it, must be nice to acquire, and since the vehicle is free, it’s not like you’d end up with ruinous financing terms that sink so many working people and families.  Critics, and studio backers, don’t critique ads nearly like they critique turkey-flop movies—bad ads actually can be good for your career; bad movies, maybe not so much.  Maybe Marty wants to become the next Shatner, who has become a kind of advertising meme unto himself—with Shatner, both the product and the pitchman kind of become irrelevant, but that Shatner, the meme, is situated alongside the logo, in itself gives a kind of credence to the effability of the logo, or, product.

Many might say, hey, nobody put a gun to your head telling you to get a credit card or buy a bag of potato chips.  But that’s just being simplistic and idiotic.  Ever tried to rent a car or make a major purchase or do just about anything without a credit card?  Come on.  Credit cards used to be pitched as “convenient”—i.e., when you had no cash, you could use credit.  But in the debit era, credit card companies had to insinuate new ways into your lives, including not protecting you against hacking, etc.  Of course I’ve had and have credit cards.  They don’t improve my life; they’re a necessary evil and sometime nuisance I had no choice but to get in order to do other basic human life things I had no trouble doing before I had to get a credit card in order to be allowed to do them.

Have a look at the one that Marty pitches:

http://www.capitalone.ca/credit-cards/aspire-travel-world/

Only $120/year to own, and a tiny prime + 16.8% to carry around.  No worries if you’re Marty Short—but, if you’re not Marty Short, a lifetime of misery if you make one slip-up, one bad decision, your card gets hijacked, you experience an injury or a job loss or a. . .thing that might happen in life to which CapitalOne is immune (too big to fail) but you are not.  And thisis what Marty is desperate to pitch.

Or potato chips, and Marty’s proud new Pepsi partnership:

http://pepsico.ca/en/PressRelease/Martin-Short-partners-with-the-Lays-brand-and-invites-Canadians-to-create-the-br02042013.html

Now, do I like pop?  I guess I do.  Do I like potato chips?  Of course I do.  That’s why I don’t buy them.  I have a colleague who may be dead before 50 because she can’t stay away from them.  Do I have no bad habits?  Of course not.  Do I have good habits?  You bet I do.  Everyone has good and bad habits and everyone is more or less passionate about different ones.  Given the choice, I’d probably rather be locked in a room with someone who had only bad habits as opposed to only good ones. 

But that still does not explain why a mammothly wealthy person such as Martin Short (just to get a little shtick and face time and enrich himself superfluously) has to advertise for companies who have documented, long-term, and virtually undeniable deleterious effects on a sizeable minority, if not a majority, of the people who fall under their sway.

 It’s a wonder to me.

-zr

 

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Zorg Report: Stephen Harper Declares War

Stephen Harper Declares that War Has Been Declared on Canada

(Scroll to the end if you like; the point of this message is that our Prime Minister should not be stirring up hate, but rather acting prime ministerial and urging all Canadians, as always, to respect and help one another; he clearly hasn’t had a Bible handy lately.) 

You can just tell how upset he was by his hands in his pockets, his open-button, gut-over verbal stumbling, his casual waves, his downbeat reference to France, his dropped-down voice when it refers to specifics of Canada’s response to events in the Middle East and/or countries he can’t quite bring to mind.

He says that the attack in France represented an attack on something Canadians “cherish”—but meanwhile he won’t answer questions himself.  Many media outlets in Canadaagreed to pull his comments—

 

when it appeared he wasn’t getting his message across—to his liking.

The Government of Canada even agreed to shut its own self down, after Harper dictates:

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2015/01/08/livestream-watch-pm-harper-deliver-remarks-live-delta-british-columbia-thursday

Media–and government–sources shut down at Harper’s request–Putin only dreams of such subservience.  And CSIS on the job 24/7 to make sure it’s maintained.

Here is a cut up and edited version of what electors elected (for as long as it lasts):

Make no mistake—Harper unbuttoned was still Harper calculating.  His words to the base were transparent—we’re at war, here, so you’ve got to support me.  No-one disses a war PM (the longer I’m Prime Minister). 

But even the Delta kids behind him looked quizzical as he assured them of the threat—that it wasn’t going to go away, that it was here to stay. As for that–

–Freedom of the press: Harper’s cutting of the CBC, a national broadcaster that most developed Commonwealth countries cherish for relative impartiality—and trust; Harper’s attempts to enfranchise far-right media and refusal to speak with anything but media that support his agenda.

–“We will not be intimidated by jihadist terrorists.”  Harper used to accuse others of cutting and running, but eventually, as this blog observed, when he realized he’d sent dozens of Canadians to their deaths, he backed up and realized the war wasn’t winnable.  I’m sure that his “thoughts and prayers” are with the families of his comfy sweater-vest actions.  Do a Prime Minister’s wife and kids have access to a Prime Minister’s tweeted “thoughts and prayers”?  (I guess not; only Prime Ministers have deepest condolences and thoughts and prayers; silly me.)

When you observe his speech, you see that Harper is actually most comfortable amongst schoolchildren, whom he thinks he can sway or preach to.  Most kids aren’t that dumb.  Justin Trudeau probably learned that long ago, when he had a real job, unlike Harper.  You see the kids standing behind Harper, as props, stone-faced, while Harper thinks he’s regaling them.  In fact, they are probably thinking, “look, I don’t have to hate my friend, this is a fairly tolerant country, and I don’t buy your “incessant war” theory. What’s your problem?”  It’s clearly old-man s**t to them. 

But Harper’s louche enthusiasm for endless war isn’t that hard to explain, even if one discounts his fundamentalist Christian beliefs.  He points out emphatically that the war will never end (and as long as he’s Prime Minister, and can lyingly stop and start elections with his septuagenarian pal Davey Johnston’s addled approval and he’ll keep pretending he’s at war—not actually sending any troops or doing anything definitive, but boldly supporting Israel, and so on).  More guns, too, if possible; if the ones that slaughtered people in Calgary (http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/01/02/killarney-shooting-victim-abdullahi-ahmed-previously-convicted-on-drugs-assault) and Edmonton (http://www.edmontonsun.com/2014/12/30/strathcona-county-mounties-probing-suspicious-death-on-edmonton-outskirts) stir up the base and keep our streets unsafe for unConservatives.  He already pulled a little insider action (Duffy, Wallin, anyone?) to get one Conservative candidate police chief, Rick Hanson, to get on board with wild murders that support their own careers with rich entitlements: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-hand-pick-police-to-serve-on-federal-gun-panel/article9648887/.  It’s not really about income-splitting, people; it’s about splitting the people who are allowed to have guns and kill people, from those who aren’t allowed to have guns and people.  This much the PM understands and mandates.  And the more guns, for Hanson and Harper, the merrier.  Of course, Hanson oversaw a “gun amnesty” by which the Calgary Police Service collected firearms and then resold them to collectors and gun shops–just Hanson’s way of making sure that as many illegal and unregistered firearms could get into as many hands as possible–hopefully so as to create crime and mayhem that could further his career and that of his new boss, Jim (“T-Bird”) Prentice.

To be fair, as the following article (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-police-officer-pleads-guilty-to-firearms-offence-1.853499) makes clear, key new gun collection practices were supposed to come into effect some years ago:

“Insp. Ken Marchant said that in the future, officers would not be sent out to collect guns for amnesty programs — participants would have to bring them to police.”

“Participants.”  I like that.  I’d like to show up at a police station in Calgary and say “HI!, I’m a participant!!”

(In other words, instead of being forced to give up guns for future resale and collectors auctions at cop gunpoint, gun owners would be allowed to bring them in, of their own free volition, to have them collected and redistibuted, for profit and/or private investment, by the Calgary Police Service under Chief Rick Hanson.)  As for the practice of keeping cop gun resellers on pay but without actually working or doing any kind of job (unlike normal law-abiding citizens and taxpayers), but rather, just getting paid lavishly with huge pensions to do nothing–Chief Hanson declined to offer comment.
 

By declaring that war has been declared (on Canada, which it hasn’t been), Stephen Harper, a fundamentalist Christian, is trying to foment hatred and war amongst Canadians.  He’s using his usual divide and conquer tactics, which politically and partisanly always look good after whoever uses them is dead (Harp’s one of those “short-term” legacy guys).  Harper has kids, and they’re going to have to go on living, and they’re going to have to go on believing that the world is really as simple as their father thought it was.  Harper’s kids will be sheltered from reality by their income-splitted wealth, but the kids of most Canadians will not be; those kids will have to figure out a way to get along with others.  They will be the true Canadian patriots.
 
[And since we’re talking about it, and since I’ve used the term “fundamentalist Christians,” it’s worth pointing out that Islam today is only replicating in many ways what happened during the Crusades.  In other words, it was Islam, not Christianity, which accepted wayward souls or infidels, in days gone by.  I surely don’t defend anything going on now, and may have more words to type, but for Christians to regard as shocking what Muslims are doing now is just silly.  A Christian in Yemen today probably has a lot better hope than a Muslim in pre-early modern Europe.  A little perspective, please.]

 

Harper has clearly sized up his Ontario seats and Muslim votes, and in the most cynical way possible, determined that he would come out against Muslim Canadians—despite whatever canny Kenney can do (talk about mining the ground for leadership contenders). 

But we shouldn’t look at it this way.  No-one and no-state or even handful of twitterers has really declared war on Canada.  Our very own Prime Minister, who ought to be sober and stable, has jumped up and amped up the rhetoric like a hi-school teen and told us we’re all under threat—forever.

 

No, we aren’t.  Despite Stephen Harper’s long-mulled political strategies and his fundamentalist Manichean view of the world, no, we’re not.  We’re Canadians.  We’re made of tougher stuff—we came from all over and we figured out how to survive from the people who were already here, and we’re determined to re-enact that—and we will never, ever give in to cheap gun-crazy paranoid fundamentalists who want to tell us what our “values” are when they’ve never had to actually earn some themselves.
 

 

–zr

 

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Zorg Report: Henghomeshi: the Tightest Bond

 

I suppose what this title, above, refers to is the bond between celebrity untouchables and the legal star system.  Just as Jian Ghomeshi’s “star” has been falling, so it seems has his legal representation seen its “star” rising—Marie Henein, “fearless and brilliant” according to so many (e.g. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/meet-marie-henein-the-fearless-and-brilliant-lawyer-defending-jian-ghomeshi-1.2851592). 

 

The ethics, the matter of the trial—quite irrelevant—what’s really important is how the legal system gets to regard itself.  Brethren and sistren leap to her side to aver her abilities; didn’t the same just occur with Jian recently?

As Christie Blatchford reported, Henein, as the Master of Ceremonies at an Ontario Criminal Lawyers Association gala, regaled some 450 lawyers and judges with quips like:

 “As criminal lawyers, we represent people who have committed heinous acts,” she said on Oct. 29. “Acts of violence. Acts of depravity. Acts of cruelty.

“Or, as Jian Ghomeshi likes to call it, foreplay”;

or, referring to her work on the defense of accused sex offender and Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan with palsy-walsy Eddie Greenspan, she said they had a collegial relationship over many files: “Some collegial, some regulatory, some light BDSM.”

Amongst the gang-pack of lawyer-judges chortling over Henein’s comments that night will almost certainly be the one who will be “judging” the accusations of women against Ghomeshi—is it any wonder women won’t come forward, when the legal system’s most august body, represented by one of its most admired female lawyers, has already joked about their traumas?  You’re being choked to the point of wondering if you’d ever wake up again, and Ontario’s legal establishment is chuckling over cocktails at the bons mots of its most cherished female-positive symbol and your “alleged” plight?

Talk about a Henghomeshi made in heaven.  A celebrity, mixed with a legal star, goes up against just some girl who got picked out by Jian.

Marie Henein has made it plain:  get abused by Jian Ghomeshi—get abused by just about any guy—in Canada, you get off. 

Let’s parse Henein’s statement:

Mr. Ghomeshi will be pleading not guilty.

We will address these allegations fully and directly (note how she echoes Jian’s Facebook statement) in a court room. It is not my (one would have assumed that it wouldn’t have been anyone else’s, but Marie wants to insist on it being hers-“my”) practice to litigate my (once again, Marie wants to insist upon the primacy of herself, the “my”) cases in the media. This one will be no different.

Henein’s choice of words here is instructive; she keeps the focus on herself, and she indicates that trials are typically conducted in the media, but hers won’t be.  It says something about the legal profession that she—and it—think they have to stress that they don’t conduct trials in courts anymore, but rather, “in the media.”  It’s hard to know what she means by not conducting her trials in the media—few 5-year-olds would have imagined they’d be conducted anywhere else—but since she brought it up, she makes it amply clear that, if the opportunity affords itself, she will, indeed, conduct her trial in the media, using her media clients.

We will say whatever we have to say in a court of law.

We will not be making any further media statements, nor will Mr. Ghomeshi be making any further media statements.

Thank you.

Well, even the Blatch is star-struck—in her article (http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/11/07/christie-blatchford-jian-ghomeshis-lawyers-sexual-violence-jokes-expose-double-standard/) she writes to Henein, but not about anything involving the case—just about perceptions.  The Blatch knows loss of her connections would leave her much, much less time to write about her dogs and get paid for it.

Some national conversation.  We never meant to have it; we never did have it, we never will have it.  Legal stars like Marie Henein will get media celebrities like Jian Ghomeshi off, and we will all go back to getting outraged from time to time.  Also raped.  The Blatch will write about her OWN experiences sometime. 

Back to normal.

–zr

 

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Zorg Report: Henghomeshi: the Tightest Bond

  I suppose what this title, above, refers to is the bond between celebrity untouchables and the legal star system.  Just as Jian Ghomeshi’s “star” has been falling, so it seems has his legal representation seen its “star” rising—Marie Henein, “fearless and brilliant” according to so many (e.g. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/meet-marie-henein-the-fearless-and-brilliant-lawyer-defending-jian-ghomeshi-1.2851592).   The

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Zorg Report: Henghomeshi: the Tightest Bond

  I suppose what this title, above, refers to is the bond between celebrity untouchables and the legal star system.  Just as Jian Ghomeshi’s “star” has been falling, so it seems has his legal representation seen its “star” rising—Marie Henein, “fearless and brilliant” according to so many (e.g. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/meet-marie-henein-the-fearless-and-brilliant-lawyer-defending-jian-ghomeshi-1.2851592).   

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Zorg Report: Zorg Report 2014-11-04 04:31:00

In Full Damage-Control Mode, CBC Urges: It’s Not Jian Ghomeshi’s Problem—it’s Yours

One of the most shameful things about the Ghomeshi situation is that the CBC, in full damage-control mode, is trying to pretend the story is not really about one of its pampered and lucubrated longtime employees, but rather that Jian, poor Jian, is just a symptom of a much wider societal crisis.  In other words—no-one at CBC is or was responsible for Ghomeshi—he’s just a guy who represents 10s of thousands across the country today.

All this may be.  #beenraped/neverreported is worthwhile looking at—when would it not be?  But conflating it with Ghomeshi to get CBC off the hook for not dealing with a known predator in its midst for years and years is, if anything, reflective of Ghomeshi himself, who conflated in his Facebook post his healthy kink life with vengeful prudes out to get him.

 

To distance itself from Ghomeshi, and to shield its managers and executives from being associated with him, the CBC is now going all-out on radio and TV and every platform to panelize to death the issue of sexual violence and “why women won’t come forward.”   It is citing whopping statistics and fairly hauling people off the streets to sit under the bright lights and furrow their brows and express grim chagrin over how the problem that Ghomeshi merely represents (but isn’t, in and of himself, an especially notable example) just seems so persistent.  Some of the CBC’s expert panelists include talk-show hosts (yes, talk-show hosts) or just everyday journalists.  The CBC thinks that a media “insider” has more knowledge and insight to bring to bear than actual experts—this is yet one more example of self-satisfying hubristic conflation:  have a talk show?  Good.  You must be qualified to discuss the issues around non-reporting of sexual assaults. All this panelization, presumably, is to show that the CBC really, really cares about this terrible issue that, sure, did affect some guy it hired and kept promoting for a long time, but that really affects THE WHOLE COUNTRY much more than just that one guy.

This is craven in the extreme.  If the CBC really wanted to address issues of sexual violence, or non-reporting of assaults, or how the legal and judicial systems prevent abused women from coming forward, then it has tremendous resources at its disposal to do just that.  It could get The Passionate Eyeonto it.  It could hire a documentarian/commission a documentary.  It could put together an Ideasseries.  If CBC hasn’t done such things already, yet is now treating the Ghomeshi story as simply one troubling little symptom of a massive mud-spectred (I draw on Jian’s Facebook page for that one) national malaise, then it obviously wasn’t doing much at all in the past to fulfill its journalistic mandates.

Canadahas a fairly robust history of egregious sex criminals—Paul Bernado, Russell Williams, Luca Magnotta.  How many people in B.C. are more than one or two acquaintances away from a woman who was victimized?  Now, I’m not saying that Ghomeshi killed anyone, but where was the CBC on drawing massive social extrapolations from all these earlier cases?  I don’t think it would be difficult for any sentient person not to look at any of these horrific examples and not instantly come up with ways in which to generalize the problem and suggest that the Bernado’s, say, were just symptoms of a much, much more widespread problem.  Karla Homolka, an abused woman, only “came forward” when she got a deal from the justice system.  Perhaps the easiest thing we do, as human beings, is see one example of something and draw a sweeping generalization from it (the legal system is supposed to be about gathering numerous examples, but that doesn’t seem to be working out so well, either).  The CBC, calculatingly, clearly decided: “we’ve gotta make this Ghomeshi thing go away; we’ve gotta make it look like it’s everyone’s problem, not ours.” 

For shame. 

I can’t speak for Mansbridge or Mesley or Tremonti or whoever at the CBC, but as they all dutifully led their panels about non-reporting, I really kind of felt that their hearts weren’t in it and that they’d been ordered by their bosses to do  this  panel   now!  I just said I could be wrong.  Maybe Mesley wrote all her own questions.  Who knows? But there was no urgency in any of the panelistic/CBC interviewing responses—this was Operation Ghomeshi Coverup in full flight.

This story isn’tabout the broader story of violence towards women in society.  It is about Ghomeshi.  As I have already said, any statistics aside, if an average guy serially lured women to his home so as to assault them and secretly videotape them, then that guy woulddo time.  If he wouldn’t, then perhaps any lawyer or judge or cop or academic or actual offender or, fine, talk-show host, could write in to say just how and why not.  This story is about over 9 women who have now come forward about *1* guy, and to pretend there aren’t more is Pollyannaish.  Further, to pretend that this egregious case can simply be blended into some sort of general “violence against women” theme can only militate against ameliorating situations for the general populace.  Ghomeshi won’t do time.  But his story, and the way CBC has handled it, will make it seem like “oh, yeah, that violence against women stuff–I hear Ghomeshi was into it; worked for him.  His bosses protected him.  No probs.” The Pollyannaish theory ought to be that not 1 case of assault is ok, but the CBC is saying that, since it’s at least 9 so far, we might as well call it general and not specific and blame “society” instead of an offender.  In this way, the CBC is working against women coming forward.

And yes, I know, any and everything is just “alleged.”  Nothing is proven.  Just alleged.  Got it.  That’s all it is—alleged.

Very, very, very few people go through life and can look back on it and say that they never experienced any unpleasant sexual or sexually exploitative situations.  But Ghomeshi’s case isn’t everyone’s case—it’s a serial case that was enabled and enabled by the CBC; as the Qexecutive producer who fielded a harassment complaint from a young female member of Ghomeshi’s “team” aptly said, there was no way to pursue anything against Ghomeshi because Ghomeshi’s show was “a f—-ing juggernaut” (http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/10/30/q-journalist-who-alleges-ghomeshi-threatened-to-hate-f-her-says-she-complained-to-boss-in-2010/).  In other words, Ghomeshi was too big to fire, and that gave him carte blanche with young women and made him untouchable by CBC brass.  He knew it, they knew it, and now he’s trying to say he did nothing wrong, and CBC is trying to say it’s everyone’s problem, not theirs.  For shame.

Take the case of Reva Seth, one of Ghomeshi’s late accusers.  She is, or became, a lawyer.  Not a talk-show host, a lawyer.  You might think that someone such as her, a member in good standing in the legal profession, would have a very clear and active desire to support her profession and try to prevent or prosecute the kinds of behaviours of which Ghomeshi now stands accused, and of which she now accuses him.  But she didn’t.  Ghomeshi was too much of a celebrity, one that CBC carefully groomed and nurtured.  If a female lawyer was unwilling to pursue action against him, then who would?  No, this story isn’t about some general societal problem, though if it makes us think about and confront one, good.  If Reva Seth were assaulted by any old Joe Who, I suspect Joe Who wouldn’t have kept seeing his star rise, as Jian’s did.

An awful lot of CBC people must have held their noses around Jian, and one understands that the public broadcaster was desperate to have a popular show of any kind, even if that never really was its chief mandate.  But an awful lot of people at CBC have an awful lot to answer for, and as a supporter of public broadcasting, I am disgusted and ashamed by CBC’s attempts to pretend the Ghomeshi story was a national societal one, and not one that involved one of its most attentively preened employees.

Or, put another way, if the CBC really wants to get to the bottom of why women don’t report assaults, then the first place it could start interviewing would be in its own boardrooms and executive suites.  Then it could “Go Public” or “Go (and talk to the) Public” and do the kind of journalism for which it has historically been honoured.

–zr

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Zorg Report: Zorg Report 2014-10-28 05:55:00

(Please read or scroll to the bottom to see the actual record of this thread.)

50 Shades of Jian Ghomeshi: Parsing Jian’s Infinite Self-Regard

 

(The first five paragraphs are basically about this blog and the provenance of this post/blog, so scroll right down to the sixth paragraph if you don’t really care to read about me and so on but rather about Jian’s self defense.  Jian’s words, naturally, are in BOLD.)

 

Well, today Jian seems to have made me do something I said I’d never do again, write a post about his show.  Or used-to-be show, I guess.  I wrote a post about Q in late 2011, and then another in 2012.  At that time, I said I was done with commenting on the show, and I was, except that, eventually, in late 2013, I did write a post in which I responded to a few of the most common criticisms I received over my two posts.  If you look at my blog, you see that, essentially, I just let people comment and generally don’t answer back.  If people want to say something, they can, and unless the content is outright unacceptable (e.g. “lemon meringue causes blindness”), I let it stand, expletives and all.  I think I’ve only ever deleted one comment, after a pause and for a reason similar to that suggested by the example just given above.

I probably wrote that 2013 response because, yes, my posts about Qsurely caused more clicks to my blog than anything else I’ve ever written.  I guess Jian is about the only “celebrity” I’ve ever written about, and I guess if I wanted more clicks, I’d surely write about a few more.  Something that surprised me about the responses I got was just how many I got that agreed with me.  I mean, when I google, I’m generally googling for something or someone that I *like*.  Maybe I’m weird that way.  I’ve sure never googled “Rush Limbaugh,” say, or even “Jian Ghomeshi.” Further, when you want to comment, I don’t think you always want to comment when you see something you agree with; rather, you jump in to comment on something you’re against or want to talk back to.   Therefore, I’m struck that so many people wrote in to *support* what I was saying—or, perhaps, as time went on, and more accurately, to posts others, not me, had made and that I had not moderated or responded to.  However one looks at it, it is heartening to see that, yes, so many people do care so passionately about the CBC.

When my dad told me on Sunday afternoon that Jian had been shown the door, I must say I was very surprised.  I was so surprised that I did something I’ve never done before, visit Jian’s Facebook page–to see his self-defense, like the one he mounted each day on his show when he read letters and got back at people who criticized him (but who couldn’t, obviously, respond in turn themselves.  And no, no, I have not ever written in to or phoned into his show).   Even such a tiny nano-instant of my visiting his Facebook page (or clearly this post itself), constitute micro-indications that Jian’s fame and fortune will only grow as a result of his firing.  I doubt he would have posted his “I’m not guilty” plea if he didn’t intuitively grasp as much.

In my two critical posts, I gestured towards issues of Jian’s sexuality, but if you read the posts, I think you’ll see that I didn’t make a big deal of it (whatever you think, you’re free to comment and I won’t take down negative or attacking posts, as is the custom of this blog).  Public figures must deal with private issues, such as those involving sexuality, in a way that most of us don’t have to.  I don’t say “ways,” because that would be to suggest that every single person, regardless of celebrity, does not have to address issues of sexuality.  Maybe I’m just thinking back to Rick Mercer’s comments on how public figures have an obligation to be candid about their orientations (e.g. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/10/27/rick_mercer_comes_out_again_after_his_rant_goes_viral.html).  I did not, or do not feel that I made a big deal of Jian’s sexuality, because I very much do agree with him, that private sexual lives, even in the cases of celebrities, should be, essentially, private.  Everyone is entitled (or condemned) to that.  But you can’t also say that Jian hasn’t made sexuality a big topic of his show.  I’m not saying that he shouldn’t have; I am simply saying that, if I talk about macrame all the time, then I can expect others to talk about macrame in relation to me, and I’m a hypocrite if I suddenly become outraged by the association.

At all events, true to his self-regard, Jian opted to declare his sense of injustice in the most public way he possibly could, so let’s look at it.  I thought I’d only reflect on a few things, but on reading his statement, I don’t see how anyone—who wasn’t even involved in his private life—could fail to want to discuss much of it, even interlinearly.

Jian states (BTW, where was one of Jian’s many “teams,” the legal one, on this??):

 

Dear everyone,

I am writing today because I want you to be the first to know some news.

This has been the hardest time of my life. I am reeling from the loss of my father.

(This is a very unfortunate collision of events.  I feel for Ghomeshi’s family, and I am truly happy to think that his father went to his rest thinking only that his son was a successful media personality.) I am in deep personal pain and worried about my mom. And now my world has been rocked by so much more.

Today, I was fired from the CBC.

For almost 8 years I have been the host of a show I co-created on CBC called Q. (“I co-created”—well, it’s nice to know he had a hand in his own show.  I suppose he didn’t “co-create” Play.) It has been my pride and joy. My fantastic team on Q are super-talented and have helped build something beautiful.

I have always operated on the principle of doing my best to maintain a dignity and a commitment to openness and truth, both on and off the air.  (Uh, no, my friend, or you wouldn’t be here right now.  In today’s world, it isn’t even six degrees of separation; it’s more like three.  I’ve never met Jian in person, and as I think I said in an earlier post, I’d probably enjoy meeting and talking with him.  But his celebrity enabled him; it made him bask and act as if he were untouchable.  I heard his earlier band’s songs. I have a friend—yes, a young-ish novelist who lives near Toronto who freely noted Jian’s sparrowlike qualities when we were talking one night.  I doubt that she has anything but the remotest regard for this chapter in Jian’s life, but she did note his advances.  Or there’s the friend of mine who noted Jian basking on a visit to my fair city at a very popular bar with a couple of young women with whom, it’s probably quite safe to say, he was not on a last-name basis.  They may have shared many things, that threesome, beyond their cab, but again, it is not too much to doubt that a “mutual” plane ride back to Torontowas one of them.

I don’t begrudge Jian anything about his sex life—you do what you want to do.  But there is no question that his public, taxpayer-supported profile enabled his sex life.  If Jian were the exact same guy with the exact same looks but he was waitering while he worked on the Great Canadian Novel, I’m sorry, but he would not have been able to lasso girls half his age and tie ‘em up back at the ranch.  His “celebrity” gave him opportunities, and, rather than being grateful for them, he flaunted himself.  I remember when I was in a hiring situation for a large public institution.  I looked at the applicants, and one, very out, looked like easily the best one.  But only a couple of clicks on the internet brought him up to me, clubbing in his leather n’ studs man lingerie.  I didn’t care about the guy’s private life, but he applied to work at a large public institution, where he’d be paid by the public, and would come into contact with countless people, many of whom might not share his sense of “off-air dignity,” as Jian puts it.  I guess you might say I’m a prude or a homophobe or a discriminator, but I think of it the other way around—I think he was guilty of very poor and self-indulgent judgment.  This isn’t a case of a double standard for gays vs. straights holding hands in public; this is a case of just not thinking about the consequences of your actions—or, thinking that you are above them. 

Jian’s self-admitted BDSM relationships with girls half his age aretroubling to me.  His celebrity did enable him, and he’s as smart as he looks if he didn’t think his “private” indulgences, generated by his public profile, wouldn’t come back to bite him.  He used the CBC and Canadian taxpayers to fund his “private” life, and he seems oblivious to as much.  Maybe he should join a band on the folk circuit and then see how much outrage (“pain,” “shock”) he could generate about his “jilted” ex-girlfriends.

 

Not many people reading this post would say that they had never been in a position of sexual dominance—physical, financial, maturity-wise, whatever—many are daily.  I’m willing to buy Jian’s argument that his hookups knew what they were doing, but for him to pretend that there wasn’t a power imbalance based on his celebrity, and that he’s being unfairly maligned *because* he’s a celebrity just won’t wash.  In his public pronouncements, he seems to conflate “desire” and “morality,” and that’s a conflation most people, even celebrities—and contrary to cliché—just don’t make.)

I have conducted major interviews, supported Canadian talent, and spoken out loudly in my audio essays about ideas, issues, and my love for this country.

(Yes, the vaunted “feature chats,” which Jian so self-lovingly and really rather embarrassingly always touted.  The fact is, most of his guests are on standard press junkets, and if you want to know what his “major interviewees” have to say, just watch a show from New Yorkor Boston or Chicago, or read a magazine, a couple days earlier.  It is a mark of Jian’s signature self-regard that he actually thinks that celebrities seek him out and wouldn’t talk to anyone if it weren’t him.  As for “supported Canadian talent,” mostly I’d be willing to buy this, but since Jian put it out there, I have to reflect and honestly say that he was much more craven and fame-seeking when it came to foreignguests, not Canadian ones.  I don’t know.  I’d have to hear the show.

 

 All of that is available for anyone to hear or watch (table of “feature chats” by nationality, anyone?). I have known, of course, that not everyone always agrees with my opinions or my style, but I’ve never been anything but honest. I have doggedly defended the CBC and embraced public broadcasting. This is a brand I’ve been honoured to help grow.  (Again, I haven’t got much of a problem with this, but Jian had to imply that he was the one who revived a dead organization—one that has only been around for about, oh, twice as long as he has.)

All this has now changed.

Today I was fired from the company where I’ve been working for almost 14 years – stripped from my show, barred from the building and separated from my colleagues. I was given the choice to walk away quietly and to publicly suggest that this was my decision. But I am not going to do that. Because that would be untrue. Because I’ve been fired. And because I’ve done nothing wrong.  (Not “sure, I’ve made a few mistakes,” but “I’ve done NOTHING wrong.”)

I’ve been fired from the CBC because of the risk of my private sex life being made public as a result of a campaign of false allegations pursued by a jilted ex girlfriend and a freelance writer. (If this is really true, then I do feel bad for him; it can happen to anyone, and, yes, celebrities or people in positions of power and authority can be especially vulnerable.  Still, little malignity is entirely motiveless.  If his tormentors are self-interested, venal people, that should come out, as he says it will.  I could be wrong, but I have a funny feeling he has more legal representation than they do.)

As friends and family of mine, you are owed the truth.

I have commenced legal proceedings against the CBC, what’s important to me is that you know what happened and why.

Forgive me if what follows may be shocking to some.

I have always been interested in a variety of activities in the bedroom but I only participate in sexual practices that are mutually agreed upon, consensual, and exciting for both partners.  (Jian’s use of absolute language is again striking here.  Who has ever always and only participated in sexual acts that are consensual and “exciting” for everyone?  This only reveals a stunted, selfish, and dangerously self-exculpatory attitude towards sexual relationships.)

About two years ago I started seeing a woman in her late 20s. Our relationship was affectionate, casual and passionate. We saw each other on and off over the period of a year and began engaging in adventurous forms of sex that included role-play, dominance and submission. We discussed our interests at length before engaging in rough sex (forms of BDSM). We talked about using safe words and regularly checked in with each other about our comfort levels.

(I think if you asked Jian if he was one mean wordsmith, a man of infinite sensitivity to language and adroitness with its deployment, you know, despite the grammatical infelicities of his own post, what he would say.  Ok, now put yourself in Jian’s position.  He says “we talked about using safe words.”  Now I defy you, I absolutely defy you, to put yourself in Jian’s shoes and, if what he says about himself is not true, not write “we used safe words.”  “Talked about safe words?”  What can that mean, when the first thing that would come to anyone’s mind, especially an accused’s, would be “used”?  Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but I ask you again, if you were Jian and feeling as unjustly wronged as he says he feels, wouldn’t you automatically write “we used safe words,” instead of “we talked about using safe words”?  Again, where is his legal team on this one?  This is like saying “I told her one day I’d rock her world, and then another day I hit her with a rock and she got mad—what a ^&%&^%!”)

 She encouraged our role-play and often was the initiator. We joked about our relations being like a mild form of Fifty Shades of Grey or a story from Lynn Coady’s Giller-Prize winning book last year.

(He doesn’t remember the name of the book?  Well, he remembered Coady’s name, and this micro-instance again, for me, demonstrates Jian’s soaring self-regard.  In his self-regard, he probably just thinks he’s once again drawing attention to himself as a great supporter of the Canadian arts and some so-so author who will be glad to be mentioned alongside him.  Yet he chose, knowingly, no matter how fast he dashed off his Facebook statement, to draw Coady into his private affairs.  Maybe Coady is his BFF; maybe she loves and supports him still and can never think ill of him.  She is probably at least secretly pleased to be mentioned in his bondage post because she can only sell more books as a result—“hey, here’s that author Ghomeshi talked about—it’s like 50 Shades of Gray!”).  Whatever Coady thinks, though, I once again ask you to put yourself in Ghomeshi’s shoes; if you were in his situation, would you name-drop and draw in others?  He says his private life is his own; ok.  So if his problems are his and his accusers’ and theirs alone, then making reference to the public art of others as if to justify his private behaviours constitutes narcissism in the extreme.

 I don’t wish to get into any more detail because it is truly not anyone’s business what two consenting adults do. I have never discussed my private life before. Sexual preferences are a human right.

(Sure, I’ll buy that sexual preferences are a human right, but we’re talking about sexual activities, and those aren’t.  Once again, Jian seems to be conflating his desires and practices with the petticoated morality he scorns and ascribes to others.)

Despite a strong connection between us it became clear to me that our on-and-off dating was unlikely to grow into a larger relationship and I ended things in the beginning of this year. She was upset by this and sent me messages indicating her disappointment that I would not commit to more, and her anger that I was seeing others.

After this, in the early spring there began a campaign of harassment, vengeance and demonization against me that would lead to months of anxiety.  (If what Jian says is true, I agree that this is awful.  “Campaign” makes it sounds as if the whole world knew, which it obviously didn’t, but whatever.)

It came to light that a woman had begun anonymously reaching out to people that I had dated (via Facebook people I’d dated via Facebook?  Jian, you gotta quit dating so many people via Facebook ;). Just another example of this great literary avatar kind of, just, like, not paying attention to what he was writing) to tell them she had been a victim of abusive relations with me. In other words, someone was reframing what had been an ongoing consensual relationship as something nefarious. I learned – through one of my friends who got in contact with this person – that someone had rifled through my phone on one occasion and taken down the names of any woman I had seemed to have been dating in recent years. This person had begun methodically contacting them to try to build a story against me. Increasingly, female friends and ex-girlfriends of mine told me about these attempts to smear me.

Someone also began colluding with a freelance writer who was known not to be a fan of mine and, together, they set out to try to find corroborators to build a case to defame me. She found some sympathetic ears by painting herself as a victim and turned this into a campaign. The writer boldly started contacting my friends, acquaintances and even work colleagues – all of whom came to me to tell me this was happening and all of whom recognized it as a trumped up way to attack me and undermine my reputation. Everyone contacted would ask the same question, if I had engaged in non-consensual behavior why was the place to address this the media?

(All, all, everyone, campaign—again the extreme language.  Why was the media the place to address it?  Uh, duh, maybe because, like, uh, duh, you’re in the media, AND MUCH OF YOUR ENTIRE SHOW is based on precisely such ‘content’?  And why did you, duh, choose to address this ON SOCIAL MEDIA?)

The writer tried to peddle the story and, at one point, a major Canadian media publication did due diligence but never printed a story. One assumes (if they “assumed,” then how do you know they did “due diligence”?) they recognized these attempts to recast my sexual behaviour were fabrications. Still, the spectre of mud being flung onto the Internet where online outrage can demonize someone before facts can refute false allegations has been what I’ve had to live with.  (It’s true that the internet is a nasty place—look at the swearing comments I’ve gotten from Jian’s supporters—but that’s one more reason, as a publicly-paid person, to be extra-vigilant about your public and private behaviour.  Besides, as Jian would know if he’d hosted a radio show lately, the balance has been tipping against the internet trolls for a long time; if I get 20 hits on this blog post, 18 will be from Jian’s lawyers. Think I’m imagining things?  Read Jian, below, about “piling on.”

Oh and, Jian, if you call your next book Spectre of Mud, I promise to pre-order.

And this leads us to today and this moment. I’ve lived with the threat that this stuff would be thrown out there to defame me. And I would sue. But it would do the reputational damage to me it was intended to do (the ex has even tried to contact me to say that she now wishes to refute any of these categorically untrue allegations (then get her to call the CBC and get your job back). But with me bringing it to light, in the coming days you will prospectively hear about how I engage in all kinds of unsavoury aggressive acts in the bedroom. And the implication may be made that this happens non-consensually. And that will be a lie. But it will be salacious gossip (the gossip monger, mongered?) in a world driven by a hunger for “scandal”. And there will be those who choose to believe it and to hate me or to laugh at me. And there will be an attempt to pile on. And there will be the claim that there are a few women involved (those who colluded with my ex) in an attempt to show a “pattern of behaviour”. And it will be based in lies but damage will be done. But I am telling you this story in the hopes that the truth will, finally, conquer all.   (Jeesh Jian, if you are already envisioning and speaking of “pattern of behaviour” accusations, I think you’re cooked.  Just sayin.’)

I have been open with the CBC about this since these categorically untrue allegations ramped up. I have never believed it was anyone’s business what I do in my private affairs but I wanted my bosses to be aware that this attempt to smear me was out there. CBC has been part of the team of friends and lawyers assembled to deal with this for months. On Thursday I voluntarily showed evidence (you taped every session?!  Studio QRSTUV?) that everything I have done has been consensual. I did this in good faith and because I know, as I have always known, that I have nothing to hide. This when the CBC decided to fire me.

(Yes, so, as you state, it was a cumulative thing.  The CBC just finally decided, after all the TV shows and radio spots, the boutique studio and massive staff, the concert junkets, and so forth, that, no, they just couldn’t back you anymore.  You’re into taxpayers for millions and millions of dollars, with an employer who has given you opportunities almost nobody would ever get, and yet you want to bankrupt them by suing for 50-55 million.  Maybe call your next show “Chutzpah,” Jian.)

CBC execs confirmed that the information provided showed that there was consent. In fact, they later said to me and my team that there is no question in their minds that there has always been consent. They said they’re not concerned about the legal side. But then they said that this type of sexual behavior was unbecoming of a prominent host on the CBC. They said that I was being dismissed for “the risk of the perception that may come from a story that could come out.” To recap, I am being fired in my prime from the show I love and built and threw myself into for years because of what I do in my private life.

(“In my prime,” “the show I built”—he carefully doesn’t mention his other failures—once again, Jian’s incredible self-regard.  But more important is this question of “consent,” that Jian hangs everything on.  This is where his lawyers will be working overtime.  There is, in law, a difference between consent and knowingly doing something that is wrong according to generally acceptable social standards—that is what law and precedent are about.  If my friend says: “My girlfriend just broke up with me.  I want to die.  There’s no point in living.  Here’s a gun.  Kill me, please,” do I kill him?  I don’t care if Jian got “consent” six ways to Sunday; ultimately, the CBC, which had pumped so many millions into him, finally just said, “look, we can’t support this any more.”  It must have been a bitter, bitter decision at CBC, given all they’d invested in him.  What the straw that broke the camel’s back was we may never know.  My guess is that it was internal, since, despite Jian’s talk of all his outside attackers, we’ve never really had much “evidence” of that, yet anyway, whatever Jian says.

 

Let me be the first to say that my tastes in the bedroom may not be palatable to some folks. They may be strange, enticing, weird, normal, or outright offensive to others. We all have our secret life. But that is my private life. That is my personal life. And no one, and certainly no employer, should have dominion over what people do consensually in their private life.  (Agreed, but as in the anecdotes I’ve cited, and as in Jian’s own post we’re reading here, he seems not to realize how the public blends into the private and vice-versa.  He seems to want to have one set of rules for himself, and another set for others.  It is remarkable that he would “chat” with featured artists almost every day and not realize something as basic and fundamental as the fact that “private” and “public” lives are not categorically divisible.

And so, with no formal allegations, no formal complaints, no complaints, not one, to the HR department at the CBC (they told us they’d done a thorough check and were satisfied), and no charges, I have lost my job based on a campaign of vengeance. Two weeks after the death of my beautiful father I have been fired from the CBC because of what I do in my private life.

I have loved the CBC (I’ll buy that, but now you’d like to bankrupt it, to the tune of 50-55 million.  I’m sure you’re a valuable guy, Jian, but the damages you seek certainly say something about your sense of yourself and your ultimate commitment to an institution you say you supported.  Say you won your lawsuit; would you be thrilled to think of all your “super” colleagues being out of work?  What kind of party would you throw for them?  Wait a minute.  Got it.  And say you do get that big job in Londonor NY or LA, who wants to hire someone who will sue them for 50 mill if they raise eyebrows over the things they hear, and keep hearing, as you so readily detail?  It’ll be in the contract, Jian). The Q team are the best group of people in the land. My colleagues and producers and on-air talent at the CBC are unparalleled in being some of the best in the business. I have always tried to be a good soldier and do a good job for my country (as others have noted, probably not a good idea to compare yourself to a soldier, especially now—once again, it’s your incredible self-regard—but I do get that you’re using clichés and are dashing something off in a state of significant emotional upset). I am still in shock. But I am telling this story to you so the truth is heard. And to bring an end to the nightmare.

–Well, although I wrote two posts critical of (and also a bit positive about) him, I feel no special sense of schadenfreude over his dismissal.  As I said in my posts, I certainly support a show like his.  I do feel for his family, and I am glad that his father didn’t have to start confronting his son in different lights.  But as his self-serving post showed (and as my nano-gesture of visiting his Facebook page for the first time indicates), Jian knows that this is one step on a steady upward climb.  Can you imagine the “team” of lawyers currently negotiating his most recent book deal?  There’s going to be a need for fresh shirts and razors and takeout on that one.  In the 5000 channel universe, and the bazillion-station FM radiosphere, Jian’s stated recent griefs have no doubt been transformed into salivating glowing-eyed decisions over latest opportunities.

This post is basically just about responding to Jian’s statement, but I should have some kind of greater theme in mind, and fairly obviously that would be about how, now more than ever, real or perceived indiscretion leads only to greater fame and emolument.  Jian is aggrieved now, but he knows, and we all know, that whoever his “jilted” ex’s are, and whoever this “freelance writer” is, it’s not them who will be living on easy street as a result of any “scandal” involving him.  If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d have no trouble saying that Jian brought this upon himself purposely, just so he could get out of Torontoand get back to London, or on to NY or LA, where he wasn’t just on chump Canadians’ dimes.

 

I guess that’s for another post.  A recent poster to this blog wrote to Jian that his “15 minutes of fame were up.”  Oh, I don’t think so. In the meantime, and surely if it’s Jian’s way, this is very definitely to be continued. . .

 

–zr

{{4 years, 4 posts on this blog.

(I don’t blame you for getting bored, but I’ve as much a right and a responsibility as anyone to be held to complete account for what I have written.)

The first post, the one that EVERYONE read:
The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q — 17/09/2011

The next and final post, that a few read.
The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q — redux 02/03/2012

3rd post (that a few more read):
My decision to at last address some of the so many comments I got about my *2* Ghomeshi posts (my antique internet attitude has always been that you can respond and say whatever you want to say, and I won’t editorialize.  However, after many comments, I decided to take up a few of the most common ones).
The ever-incredibly depressing Jian Ghomeshi treedux — 11/02/2013

The recent post, that a few have read, now that he’s really famous (and a post that’s already starting to look really antique, like the once-powerful “Copps-May-Shelaghlah Swoonferit Theory of General Sexual Moral Infallibility”):
50 Shades of Jian Ghomeshi: Parsing Jian’s Infinite Self-Regard — 28/10/2014}}

 

 

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