Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Evan and Tanith versus Scott and social media girlfriends

Although I've referenced Evan Lysacek and Tanith Belbin many times in the past, it still squicks me out a bit to straight up call them a sham, even though I believe they were a straight up sham. But at some point I have to own what I think, and as this is a blog and not a news site, I am going to declare that I believe they were never romantically involved for the reason most people would guess it never happened, and the relationship existed to buy the glamorous ice dancer a little privacy in her actual private life, and to create an official private life for Evan.

For Evan, I think his perceived need for an "official" private life had a lot more to do with his show business aspirations, and what he felt would make him an appealing endorsement prospect then with any pandering to the supposed prejudice of the U.S. figure skating audience or the USFSA.

There may have been a little pandering to Scott Hamilton involved as well.



When they became a "couple" they were an "official" couple. They released an account of their relationship to the mainstream media. (They became closer during the tour, they liked a lot of the same things, his family loved her, her family liked him, it was just perfect.) After they broke up, Evan mourned a bit in New York magazine.

It wasn't like this:

Oh he's just thrilled. And so convincing.
Hide and seek, baiting and switching, setting up stings, but most of all - KEEPING IT OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. Tanith and Evan were never "now you see it, now you don't" which appears to be the staple of the operating procedure for the Cassandra Sham. Why do they want to be seen but not seen? What are they avoiding?

From the start the thing with Jessica was markedly stupider than the deal with Tanith/Evan, yet the Canadian media all pretended it wasn't.

How does a guy whose girlfriend
  • is an Olympic teammate (on a small figure skating team) 
  • whose youtube video where her face is sliced open has gotten millions of hits and was mentioned in the NY Times,
  • who was a figure skating Olympian for Canada at the same time HE was a Canadian Olympian, skating on prime time national network television to The Way We Were with her official "ex" boyfriend who was "ex" because Scott Moir was her "now" boyfriend,
  • a girl who is continually interviewed by the same outlets that interview him,
manage to keep the girl's name unattached to his in just about every piece of mainstream figure skating journalism for his entire figure skating career? How do these journalists interview her and then turn around and interview him, ask him if he's dating Tessa and he says no, and they don't say - yah that's right, I just interviewed your girlfriend Jessica last week? How is she reacting to all this?

How is it that not once was Scott asked by Tracy, Debbi, P.J. or any of the sports/entertainment media types - "your girlfriend is Jessica Dube. She was the bronze medalist in 2008 with her partner when you and Tessa won silver in dance. 2 years later - you won gold in Vancouver and she and her partner had a disappointing competition."

"Is there jealousy? How is she handling it? Does it have an effect?"

Or Rod Black: "Three nights ago, Jessica Dube and her partner saw their Olympic dream die on this ice. And now - here she is. The moment. Watching her boyfriend Scott Moir. Win the gold medal. Olympic champion."

Seriously? Rod Black never wanted to emote all that?

Scott, I believe, never even said "my girlfriend" on video or podcast. He'd only even say that much in print. Otherwise, it was awkward, hedging, hypothetical, conditional clauses.

Jessica Dube sits right in the middle of his family on national television - placed there to be seen by us -  just days after she and her partner skated in front of Canada, on Canadian ice, and were disappointed, and of course the networks that spent millions for the Olympics - and figure skating is the crown jewel of the winter Olympics, and these skaters are Canadian skating in Canada - the major broadcast media worldwide didn't acknowledge her.
Because ... they were respecting the super duper private Scott and Jessica who shied away from discussing their love in nicely packaged mainstream media soundbites? Scott and Jessica preferred to kiss and cuddle and coo and smarm in front of thousands of strangers on social media?

The photo above of Tanith/Evan was taken in 2008 on the red carpet in connection with I believe a Tom Collins party. Tanith Belbin was still competing with Ben Agosto. They were USFSA stars, popular Olympic silver medalists, and aiming for Vancouver. If the whole point of appearing at fashion shows, on red carpets, and other mainstream events is to promote yourself as a brand with your partner (as Scott and Tessa purportedly did the entire year following their win) - then why did Tanith run around appearing at events with Evan? Why didn't she stick with her own platonic partner, Ben, promoting the two of them as a brand and a duo? She and Ben were still mid-career - they were aiming for Vancouver.

But Tanith had no problem making appearances in her own right with her official boyfriend who was also a figure skater and a teammate.

But not Scott.

How come it's okay to roll around in the sand with Jessica on facebook in front of thousands but she can't make it to the Gemini awards as Scott's date (Scott can still present with Tessa on stage)? How come Scott and Tessa are all over Canada appearing together and but Jessica is never there as part of the action (a la Tanith tagging along the time Meryl and Charlie threw out the first pitch at a baseball game)?

How come in between taking care of her chores Cassandra Holbin tweets her head off about Scott Moir and wishing she could go to Japan, but apparently (and I'm ready to be corrected) she doesn't weigh in with support when he and Tessa have to stop the program?

How come Scott only shows up on a three degree of separation facebook album with his girlfriend but the girl doesn't show up with him anywhere else?

And what happened to the whole cuddly, romantic, Dominican '09, Mexico '2010 and Xmas kissy style? Why is it now mostly group poses with Scott's eyes hitting anyplace but his girlfriend's face? What are they ducking? Why do they want to show but not show? Why show at all if you're going to play this game?

Why don't they keep the Cassandra/Scott photos to "secret" facebooks if they're so gun shy? Why does someone whose facebook is publicly visible have to have the photos? Why are so many of Cassandras albums private but she makes sure Scott's presence can be seen by any random creeper?

And why are his "girlfriends" - both of them - so absolutely crazy for showing off their relationship on social media platforms when Scott Moir himself isn't on social media?

We all know the answer. I'm sorry, you have to be willfully not wanting it to be true, invested in some fan way, not to understand that these relationships exist in two dimensions only and even then it's not enough to make Scott comfortable.

The blog has said this before - many times. And a question that keeps coming up, coming up, coming up, is how can people who know him and love him stand to see this year after year?

I get why he does it. He's pleasing other people. That's part of who is he is - the people he's pleasing have emotional power over him.

But why do they LET him? Why does the older generation support it? Why don't they give up their self-interest and say - live your life, that's much more important than how we can capitalize on yours and Tessa's success, or from associating ourselves with you, or promoting ourselves with you. You've helped us out four years now, live for yourself. You've repaid us.

He's 25 for God's sake - it's horrific and utterly mortifying that a man would spend most of his twenties living like this for public consumption. It's horrific that a husband and dad would be pretending to boyfriend a gal whose mother tweets her if she's taken out the garbage.

There is no way this is okay, healthy, or doesn't cause a psychological wound. I honestly think the reverb on this will last a long time.

I don't think it really registers as what it is with the hometown group because of their deficient maturity level.

Why don't they say we don't need it from you - and we'll respect who Tessa is and the time you need for yourselves?

THIS, by the way. Does not support "Scott and Tessa". It supports the Ilderton Skating Club, which is the Moir skating business. Scott and Tessa's names are used to sell the shirts.

Of course you can cheer them at London Worlds without wearing retina-blistering yellow. You aren't a bigger fan because you're wearing the sweatshirt.

I have nothing against the Ilderton Skating Club (run better than Skate Canada at large, as far as the skating part is concerned, IMO) or the Moir family per se. But I do have issues with their priorities.

I look at that photo and all I think is that THAT is what too many people in Ilderton have been spending their energy thinking about instead of what their beloved Scott Moir is compelled to be doing.

He never looks as uncomfortable and/or OTT among his Michigan friends and connections as he does when he's among his nearest and dearest in Canada. In Michigan, he looks like an adult. A man who can be respected, a peer. But when touching base with his roots, they seem to need him to revert and regress. Or maybe that's his coping mechanism.

It might actually make them happy that he has to live a lie in public - it makes him belong to them more and it also restricts what he does in the larger world to an extent (ROOTs, for example) leaving more of him for them. It makes them more important - they're the "official" Scott Moir headquarters.

It consolidates their proprietary interest in Scott and Tessa. It makes them special - Scott and Tessa belong to them even more when others don't really know the truth about Scott and Tessa.

There must not be all that much to do in London or Ilderton (I kind of believe it considering how at a loss for ideas Scott and Tessa were when they were out there "promoting London"), so the sham is VERY entertaining. And Scott is just "Scotty" - he's always been moody. Easy to rationalize especially if he doesn't press the point.

I sometimes can't believe ANYONE would encourage someone they love in the toxic idea that it's not just for his own benefit, but for the circle of people he loves. They, IMO, could make it easier - let him off the hook - but  don't want to sacrifice what they're getting out of it. They're just unwilling to look at his interests as possibly separate from theirs.

Not only is he shamming, he's participating in the most low rent, humiliating scheme of lies and petty tricks ever cooked up by a set of people with an unearned complacency triple their brainpower (not just that he has to deny Tessa like Peter denies Christ, but he has to treat fans like shit when clearly it made him extremely uncomfortable to do so) .

And yet such is the apparent power of Ilderton that when it comes to making a choice - treating well-meaning fans like shit it is.

My opinion of the Ilderton crowd is they have a juvenile, chip on the shoulder sensibility that has some sharp edges and we all know that a juvenile sensibility is often also selfish.

The blog started because I knew Scott and Tessa were married. Because I knew this, I understood that everything they put out to the public, everything they were selling about themselves off ice, was performance. Ironically, it's on the ice where they're who they really are. Exactly the opposite of what Tessa pretends.

It wasn't just defensive lying, it was proactive lying with a set of instructions about how we were to think, and it was also announced what we already thought. All lies.

Added to that, Jessica spam had become offensive and meanspirited. It was clearly sport for those most involved.

Because it was performance, that makes us the audience. An audience is entitled to critique a performance put on for its benefit. And that is what the blog has been doing.

Performances also reveal things about the performer. In the case of the sham, it revealed an attitude towards the public and a sense of entitlement on the part of the performer (Sell a book, REALLY? Tout lies as never before told truth and charge for it? Make up a rift when the evidence it's a lie is everywhere?). A lot of it seemed just an excess of zeal. Everybody had so much adrenalin from the Olympics, everyone around Tessa and Scott was on such a high from Virtue and Moir's win that the sham became a way to channel some of that adrenalin.

But lately, with the launch of the Cassandra sham, you kind of have to think. Of course they'll treat the public this way.

These are adults, all happy to encourage a man they actually love (who is clearly unhappy doing it) to represent himself to the world as much less than the man he is, with much of how he represents himself the absolute opposite of who he is and how he behaves and what he values - and who he wants to be. No wonder he doesn't care about anything but him and Tessa. What else is there? He's not Scott anywhere else - he's serving a million masters.

This bunch aren't protecting Scott and Tessa. They're protecting themselves.

P.S. "Believe" is an ironic slogan for a crowd of professional liars, hoaxers and scam artists.

P.P.S. I also find it ironic that this group is good at the sloganeering part of embracing values, to where they turn meaning absolutely inside out - like "what you see is what you get" but they don't get the part about living them.

30 comments:

  1. What I'm finding interesting with the Cassandra thing is how the rest of the Facebook Moirs appear to be steering clear. They're not even friends with her on there - at least Sheri and Carol aren't.

    Why is that? Jessica is still hanging out on their Facebook friends list and is following the ol' gang on Instagram. (Speaking of which, can't wait for more pics of the happy couple there! Chop, chop guys!)

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    1. Among the things I find interesting is 23 year old Cassandra Holbin still lives with the parents and is still subject to how they want their household run (understandably) - and that while living there still at 23 needs to be prompted by mommy about her responsibilities - as if she's in middle school. And her parents thought this sham role was a good idea.

      Maybe if Cassandra wasn't inclined to leave the comfortable nest and do something with her life, her parents thought this would be a jump start.

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  2. I think you should find better things to do with your time.

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    1. 6:36

      Does it bother you that there's a great deal of interest in this subject? Everyone sees these things and this is the only place they can be discussed with some freedom.

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    2. I think the Moirs, the Hilborns, Ilderton, and a bunch of other people should find better things to do with their time, such as living up to the values they pretend to have instead of running a middle-school level hoax on the public.

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    3. 6:46

      Could these be the same morons setting up fan-facebook pages for Virtue/Moir? Besides the page that was ostensibly created for the team of VirtueMoir, now an account has been set up just for Tessa (created by a "friend." Really? you don't say), and it's easy to guess one will be coming soon for Scott. I'm sure it's just coincidence that a slew of Moir family and friends are "friends" of these pages. And lest we forget Tessa is supposed to have a boyfriend who isn't Scott, the newest profile picture features Tessa with her alleged lover.

      Raise your hands all of you who think these are just their latest brainchild for dumping sham crap on the devoted fans.

      They never give up trying, do they.

      Yeah - a bunch of morons.

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    4. Actually, if the pages you're talking about are ran by a French fan (fan-france), I don't think it's them. The joint V-M page has been around forever and a day, and the person behind has posted odd messages in the past on Scott's old fan fb page that one fake Tessa page. The new Tessa page that was started today only has 10 friends. Except one random guy from London and Craig Buntin (who also seems to have become friends with 17 other people at the same time--so the request likely came from this new page instead of vice-versa), the friends are all fans from far flung corners of the globe.

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    5. The joint VM page is run by someone named Marie Moir. This is not a coincidence.

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    6. And anyone can use any name they want on the internet to do whatever they want.

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    7. Anon 6:11

      So? It doesn't make these pages any less about dumping crap on the fans. This new Tessa page with the profile picture of her with a "boyfriend" instead of her skating partner puts to rest any doubt about the reason for its existence.

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    8. Whoa guys, calm down. I think it's just a well meaning fan who sadly thinks that Tessa is dating that huge douchebag, Semple.

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    9. Yeah I think it's just a fan who doesn't understand the difference between fan pages and personal pages. And the fact that you're not supposed to set up unofficial fan pages anymore anyways.

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  3. http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/world-of-sport/torvill-dean-finally-admit-dabbled-romance-121334603.html

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    1. The fact is for years Torvill & Dean's bio included the information that they'd dated as teens when the partnership began, and it ran it course (conversely, the press would drag out the hackneyed "didn't want to ruin the partnership" - which is a fantasy that only lives in pr).

      It seems likely the "as teens" part of the story was meant to acknowledge, pigeonhole, and then dismiss the bond (yep, they acted on it but then got past it. There's your explanation). Very typical for-public-consumption version, IMO.


      Of course they had a thing - ever hear the two of them chew pieces off his ex-wife, Isabelle Duschenay? Whatever the reality of Dean & Duchenay's marriage, or however nuts she may have been, it's totally inappropriate to slag off on her the way they both do.

      It seems to me there's no living with that guy (Dean), and nobody knew it as well as Torvill, and that's why their relationship became the odd lot, odd duck, arrangement it's been all this time. It's nothing to do with being skating partners. More to do with one being impossible to live with, but the connection endures anyway.

      While people are at it, they ought to look up Astaire & Rogers actual history.

      Luckily for them, the issues confronting both of the above duos were never a problem for Virtue Moir.

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  4. "I think the Moirs, the Hilborns, Ilderton, and a bunch of other people should find better things to do with their time, such as living up to the values they pretend to have instead of running a middle-school level hoax on the public."

    If they did, then what would you do with your time? And I with mine, lol.

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  5. Hi,I am far from the Czech Republic.Please I have a guestion.Where can I get a photo with signatures Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir? I like canadian figure skating pair Tessa and Scott.They are the best and I support them.Please help me, write to my email address: hegerova24@seznam.cz.Thank you very much.

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    1. I can't help with the autograph requests but if I were you I'd inquire at the email listed on their webpage. danny.fritz@imgworld.com.

      Just note that they are notoriously difficult to contact.

      I'd email the above and ask if it's possible to receive a signed photo if you sent a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the management company. A self-addressed, stamped envelope is almost always required or the mailing costs for autograph requests would spiral out of hand.

      I don't know if the mailing address there is still valid or not, but it's the logical start.

      Or look on ebay. For example, this seller is selling an autographed photo:

      http://www.ebay.com/itm/TESSA-VIRTUE-AND-SCOTT-MOIR-SIGNED-PHOTO-FIGURE-SKATING-GOLD-VANCOUVER-WOW-/160966140294?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_2&hash=item257a546186

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    2. Thank you very much for the information. You have advised me.
      I believe that Scot with Tissa win World Championship in Vancouver. They are amazing on the ice and exceptional.
      Thank you and greet you in Canada.
      Jana

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  6. Why does Tessa play along with all of this ? Sure, she loves her privacy and would cut her tongue off before she lets anything private become public, but having your boyfriend/husband/whatever-they-are, pretending to be in a relationship with somebody else must hurt no matter how professional who try to deal with it. Especially in the case of Jessica - she was freaking everywhere !
    The Moirs show great disrespect towards Tessa and I can't imagine Scott is happy with the way his family treats her.

    I'm a bit worried about Tessa, she looked miserable at the 4CC Champions Gala. At the end she wouldn't even try to to the goose anymore. I hope she'll be fine for worlds.

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    1. I've said it before; I feel safe in saying that if Tessa wanted to pull the plug on the sham, Scott would be overjoyed. If all of this hurts (in the hurt feelings area) that would be Scott, or at least it hurt in the past. We can see from the Funny Face season interviews and even in Ice Sweat and Tears that Tessa was as vigilent about lying as ever. Scott sometimes tries to be clever, it seems to me, but Tessa dispenses with clever and just straight up uses the language of separate off ice lives to where, as has been observed, she's ridiculous.

      But she believes she's protecting herself from something. However, more and more the question is WHAT? Fans are the easy scapegoat, but due to their blatant lies about fans, it's clear they are only a scapegoat and pretext, and not the real reason the lies continue.

      When Scott and Tessa were lying about their 'rift', Tessa mentioned once that during the height of her CES struggles she worried that people thought she wasn't as good as Scott.

      What people? Fans? Skating community? Members of Scott's clan and community who saw their jackpot dream threatened by Tessa's struggle and possibly policed how diligently she worked through it, or speculated that if the dream failed, it would be down to her?

      The sham occupied a lot of Moir/community time. It was a way to involve the community by proxy, keeping them at least a bit out of Scott and Tessa's hair, it seems to me.

      As to Jessica - she was freaking everywhere anyway. That's one of the reasons she got the job. To manage time efficiently, so Scott didn't need to use any of his real life time on this. Most of the time he had some type of other obligation, so just throw Jessica into the same time frame and you've killed two birds with one stone. For instance, if you're obliged to attend some community or skater wedding, that's a logical sham opportunity, because you're going to be there anyway. In the case of community weddings, your cousin Cara is there to manage Jessica when you're not taking pictures (which is a small amount of the time), and in skater weddings - other skaters can do the job.

      In a different comments section, it was mentioned how Scott said he wasn't sure if his mom was telling the truth about keeping all his medals in his old room at Ilderton. Scott doesn't live in Ilderton. He lives with Tessa. Yet Jessica would announce on facebook that she was en route to 'Ilderton'. What sense did that make? Why not Windsor? Why not London? Why not Detroit? I'm in a long distance relationship with my beloved amoreux but whenever I see him we don't meet up at his home or apartment, but at his mom and dad's where his cousins, parents and neighbors are up in our grill?

      The reality seems to be that Scott was paying a visit to Ilderton so why not ship Jessica in for some photos. She's dating the Moirs more than Scott. At the Olympics, and on many other events, he barely saw her. The sham existed mostly by association.

      Then the Dominican. Tessa was, unusually enough, scheduled to be out of the country with her mom and sister (in France and Monaco). As Tessa was away, Scott went to the Dominican along with Jessica, Veronique and Jonathan Dube, and when there he glommed onto a brace of American couples/families and hung with them.

      Also don't forget that Bryce was in the picture. He kept himself out of the frame, but he was very useful.

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    2. Also - why borrow neighbor Jay Loosley for a photo op at an empty Shoeless Joe's in London and have him publish the restaurant photos of Jessica and Scott with him and his family? And why did Alma and Joe stay out of the photos that time? Why didn't they just photograph Jessica and Scott at the house?

      In that case it seemed to me that everybody just rendevoused at the restaurant and no 'visit' was even happening that time.

      The one time Jessica visited Windsor and made a big deal of it on fb, she was actually in the Detroit area with Bryce to work with a choreorapher. So that was just another convenient merge of business with sham. All other times Jessica went to Ilderton, which, if you think about it, was just ridiculous. But she went there because it was the Moirs and the community that did most of the Jessica wrangling, not Scott. Scott was and is completely uninterested in shamming in his real life time. He has to incorporate or it doesn't happen.

      Even in Paris (TEB 2009). Jessica's parents managed to afford the trip. She and her parents and Scott and his did some photos in what appeared to be a very restricted area on Paris near the Sacre Coueur and Montmontre in the late afternoon, and then a few photos after dark. At the time, Tessa had hours of pt a day. As well, Tessa and Scott shot some night time Paris video on a carousel for their Olympic fluff piece - riding the carousel and blowing bubbles. There's a double decker carousel right at the foot of the Sacre Couer. It appears to me that the Dubes/Moirs simply posed for some photos (and climbed Sacre Coueur) ahead of the Scott/Tessa video shoot, while Tessa was at pt. Then when it was dark Tessa arrives for the video shoot, and a few extra night time photos are snapped of Jessica while that's being done.

      See how efficient? Scott's personal time with Tessa isn't impacted - she's at pt. He is scheduled to be at Montmontre/Sacre Coueur anyway, and so is Tessa, so that's where they take some sham photos. And the two fams are there as buffers.

      That's how they worked it.

      And now with Cassandra - she's part of the same crowd he has to touch base with, hang out with a few times a year - his old Medway buddies (it's amazing how he's treated as an alumni when he went to Bluevale Collegiate and didn't even finish Medway). So there you go - add in Cassandra and sham and there's a task at hand, something to joke about and focus on instead of how much or how little you all now have in common.


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  7. "What people? Fans? Skating community? Members of Scott's clan and community who saw their jackpot dream threatened by Tessa's struggle and possibly policed how diligently she worked through it, or speculated that if the dream failed, it would be down to her?"

    IMO, you pretty much nailed it there. The fans certainly thought she was good enough, as did/does the skating community. I once read somewhere that while a lot of judges see Scott and Charlie as more equal, Tessa is viewed to be considerably better than Meryl, and really, the best of the four. That leaves Scott's clan and community, and given their other behavior, I absolutely believe that they were the people in question when it comes to those not thinking she was good enough.

    More than that though, beyond the skating, I wonder if these people have also thought she wasn't good enough for Scott, or conversely, that she was stealing Scott from them. Given how proprietary they are towards Scott and the juvenile "us vs. them" attitude these people have, I could easily see them viewing the lawyer's daughter from London as an outsider and as someone taking "their Scotty" away from them.

    Even now, as Scott's wife and mother of his child, I have a hunch that they still don't see Tessa as an invdividual person.

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    1. I've thought the same thing re:Tessa being an outsider. She is a bookish introvert with a Holt Renfrew closet - not exactly Ilderton material. Both Tessa and Scott send the message to fans of "we find you annoying", but in addition Tessa also says weird things (like the Carmen character thing) that sound vaguely like she's hurt somehow. I know she's been part of that community since she was a little girl, but with how posessive Ilderton appears to be of Scott, I think it's possible.

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    2. She's also more independent than that clan. If she was like Ethel Kennedy was said to be "more Kennedy than the Kennedys" - everything would be great. But her taste, psychology, temperment is her own. She's not a "clan" type. Therein, I believe, can lie some tension.

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    3. Fans are scapegoated by these two for so many things.

      It would be ironic if Tessa's remarks about how it "filtered" to her that some people were saying she was like Carmen (which was nowhere whatsoever among the fans or so-called 'skating community') was actually inspired by her hearing or finding out that some of the Ilderton & London crowd were snarking that she exercised that sort of power over Scott. The femme fatale who knew how to push his buttons and led him away from those to whom he really belonged.

      If there's anything to that, that's unfair not just to Tessa, but to Scott. As if Scott couldn't possibly be a serious person, as if one reason he feels so connected to Tessa isn't that she connects to what is ALREADY inside him, and she is the route to becoming who he really is. The concept that he's some basic hometown "kid" led around by his ... everything .. by a beautiful, talented and more clever "other" underestimates him if it exists. But it's a convenient and self-serving take on things for anyone who decides to look at it that way.

      It's too bad that skating 'journalists' are mostly groupies who don't examine what they hear or what they write, and are basically ignorant of skating even though that's a topic they cover. If things were different they'd know what Scott and Tessa claim about the fans isn't true, and maybe look harder at why Scott and Tessa were saying what they say. In football or hockey, the players can't really make up shit about their fan experience, because the journalists who cover those sports are a whole lot more informed about the market for it and the real dynamics.

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  8. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XCiFva3xjk Gonna miss them when they retire

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    1. I saw that - it's from last year (for 'Ice Sweat & Tears') and the lying is off-putting. Scott's a dad. Tessa's his wife and the mother of his child. When you're going on the record with something that's going to be out there forever, it's wrong to say 'when I move on' - clearly implying move on from Tessa as well as skating, and missing her laughing at what he says. And first saying his is the first face she sees in the morning and then sliding in "when she gets to the rink." Yes, they are hiding, but what does any of this accomplish? Why create occasions to lie? Isn't the basic, official lie enough? What would be threatened if they didn't structure the conversation with assurances that they live separately and will be even more separate after the competitive career is over. What?

      Is it just practice? They like to keep their lying chops fresh?

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    2. It is off putting how they *must* slide in as many disclaimers as possible. Ironically, the more they insist and protest the more it really sounds like lies lies lies.

      Skate Canada must be extremely pleased. Their star skaters have stuck to the script all these years, up to and including a documentary released in time to make the most of hosting Worlds in Canada. By continuing the
      lies, Tessa & Scott validate all of Skate Canada's hard work in pushing all those idiotic tabloid-type "personal" stories. If VM said it was any different, SC's executives would look like idiots. It looks like VM are playing nice for now.

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    3. Just a quick question - do you think Tessa's key necklace in the current video is the same one as in 2008-2009?

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