The camara loves Debbi Wilkes but is only "in like" with Barb MacDonald

Scott and Tessa, Skate Canada's biggest stars, are interviewed on CBC by P.J. Kwong. Skate Canada knows this interview will get the most hits, and by far. Interview begins:



There's Barb, perfectly framed between Scott and Tessa's heads. Her back is to us,
but her face is turned towards "our camera". Notice the camera angle, and
how from this angle at this moment, with Barb in frame, we can't see Debbi Wilkes.

 

Barb is chatting, corporate communicating, as one does. Still framed between Scott and Tessa's
heads, not an inch of her lovely profile is blocked. Don't shift or anything, Scott and Tessa!



Barb must say bye bye - she crosses face first into the right of the frame.
She didn't know we were there!  When she sees us, big smile. 



New camera angle. And - oh my - who is now immediately moving into
the position framed between Scott and Tessa's heads?







Someone with important Director business to discuss right there in that spot.








Debbi is in position. Uncanny. Dead center framed by Scott and Tessa's shoulders and faces.
Not an inch cut off. I hope Scott and Tessa don't get stiff necks.

 

Deb checks the camera position. Normal, natural. What anyone would do.
Just seeing if her stars are conducting themselves as the great representatives they are. 
Nice new hairstyle, Debbi.



Debbi stands tall. She has excellent posture. But, a potential issue has arisen!



Holy shit - Debbi Wilkes is blocked from the camera filming Scott and Tessa!!
Debbi Wilkes is blocked from the camera filming Scott and Tessa!




Clear THAT camera? But I'm not blocking anybody!



But clear she does, walking backwards, yet. The camera guy wonders wtf.
Such a common reaction when Skate Canada/Scott and Tessa are in the mix.



Ponytail lady backs away til she's hidden behind Scott.
Is that side-eye Debbi is giving our camera? Let's make sure
everything is still in position.



Debbi is restored to the prime frame position and waxes vivacious, but not so
vivacious any of her moves off her mark and we can't see her face.



OMG, full body shot, dead center framed by Scott and Tessa!
So random, so convenient, everyone not holding a camera has
their back to the Scott and Tessa camera, except Deb angled 3/4ths towards it!
 Her luck is remarkable.

 The uncanny part is no matter where the camera swings, you can see Debbi full on in the frame:



It swings to - and there she is (and Ponytail now knows her place)



It swings fro.

As PJ's interview with Scott and Tessa opened, Ponytail entered the frame from stage right and crossed down to Barb. I don't know what Barb was doing until Ponytail got her cue to enter, but whatever it was, she was able to give Ponytail her immediate attention. I imagine Barb was busy overseeing, and, seconds after the interview started, she realized things were well in hand and exited the frame  - possibly to check her blackberry to see what it was the USFSA had done days before.

I love that there are quite a few people in the visual field between the camera and Debbi Wilkes, including the guy in the black jacket with his back to the camera.Yet not a single one of these people is blocking any part of the sight line between the Scott and Tessa camera lens and Debbi. *
___________________________
*Poor Weaver & Poje appear to be getting filmed/interviewed a few paces down the hall, but Debbi and Barb don't seem to give a shit about THOSE sight lines.

Nice Thoughts

I have permission to share the following - because while obviously the point of view is not all that favorable to Skate Canada, the thoughts therein are more comprehensive and measured than my own on the same topic (below this):

SC's coverage of HPC has caused me to wonder, what are the federation's goals for the coming season, what kind of budget are they dealing with, and what would define "success" for them? Bringing new fans to the sport is a major goal of every federation, and certainly in the past, SC has discussed that (hence, the "tough" campaign). But outside of that campaign, and the backward approach they've used to market Tessa and Scott specifically, there's very little that SC actually puts out there to the public. Even on Skatebuzz, they provide some interviews and updates on the skaters at various pre-season and seasonal events, but that's about it. In the off-season, when SC should arguably be working to facilitate interest in the sport, Skatebuzz mainly posts videos of interviews with SC famous personnel (the "where are they now?" segments) or highlights of the NCC/ACGM meeting.

What is the point of Skatebuzz, exactly? Is it simply to give existing fans a more in-depth look into the ins and outs of the Canadian skating world? Because it seems like it spends just as much time celebrating the federation itself.

If Skatebuzz isn't directed at bringing in new fans, but is instead meant to provide a more extensive look into the world of Canadian skating, than why does Skatebuzz merely give thirty second peeks into that world with bad music in the background. 

And why is the site director for Skatebuzz making $95,000 to $110,000 a year running a website that for the most part, provides nothing more than a few short interviews and live-streams of certain competitions? I guess what I'm getting at is, what is Skatebuzz supposed to do for the federation as a whole? How does it help grow fans for the sport? And if that's not the point of the website, what is supposed to be growing fans for the sport? Is growing fans for the sport via public outreach even that important to SC outside of their CanSkate programs?

Skating is an expensive sport. The Canadian economy is struggling. Skate Canada can only fill half of the seats in the arenas for major competitions. Yet they have the World champion in men's singles and perhaps the greatest ice dance team to skate in several decades. And still, Patrick Chan is down to one sponsor and Tessa and Scott appear openly allergic to anything that would require them to leave their carefully crafted bubble. Something is terribly wrong with this picture. Canada is a skating nation. It can't all be about hockey (which is also expensive to play). Twitter is free to use. SC is paying its Skatebuzz director a nice salary.  So the fed is hurting in ticket sales, have three amazing skaters to hang their hat on, and yet do very little to reach out to the public. In terms of simple economic analysis, this makes no sense.

And what's amazing to me is that only after being chastised on the internet for A YEAR did SC even attempt to better publicize HPC and other pre-season events to the public, and while I'm glad they've provided photos and videos, it still looks like a poor man's version of what the USFSA could do in its sleep. If there hadn't been a lot of uproar about how "SC sucks at this" on the internet, would they have changed a thing?

But again, all of this really has me thinking about "the bubble." It seems that it isn't just Tessa and Scott who live in it, but that SC exists in a much bigger one (of which Tessa and Scott exist within, along with all of it's other skaters), rendering them unable to see how badly they're botching things up. It feels very insular and elitist to me.

Educational Blog Series

Ripped off the post title from Charlie White's twitter.

First up:

June 15, 2010:  One of Scott's status updates on his "personal" facebook before he restricted it:

“Tessa Virtue does not have facebook! If you are friends with her on facebook then you are friends with a fake. So not cool."

So - NOT cool?

Seriously, WHY DOES SKATE CANADA SUCK SO MUCH!

Somebody shared their thoughts on Skate Canada, public relations, Skatebuzz and HPC in a more measured and comprehensive way than I'm about to talk about it, and after I vent out my rant below, I'll share their point of view in another post.

About High Performance Camp:

Watching Skate Canada go about what for want of a better word I'll call its "business" it seems to me that promoting itself (Skate Canada) and promoting the officials (Debbi and Barb) takes precedence over promoting Canadian figure skating and figure skaters in a way that engages the public. Skate Canada wants to be very visible, very "busy" about what it's doing, impress people about how good the current officials are in their jobs, particularly Debbi and Barb, but it seems to me these women SIT ON THEIR ASS when it comes to other responsibilities as reflected in their titles.They don't know what to do with themselves other than event management (a logistics job) and telling us how cool Skate Canada is or impress with how big time it all seems.

The recent High Performance Camp promotion is a case in point. The USFSA had its Champs Camp immediately prior. Many of their skaters, already on twitter, tweeted entertaining photos from the camp-like activities (teams dressed up a la classic US television), funny volleyball, off-ice goofing off, and a great twit pic of a late night pizza delivery. All seemingly straight from the skaters to us. When video interviews came up, the skaters were interviewed in a hallway just off the ice, it seemed, and the interviewer was not visible. So again, no visible filter between the audience and the skaters.

Of course the USFSA was all over Champs Camp. But they KNOW THEIR JOBS on the promotion end. We didn't SEE the USFSA all over everything - they did some tweeting, but the "experience" part of it came largely from the skaters.*

But Skate Canada wants us to see - Skate Canada. To show how very busy they are - ON CAMERA. How professional it all looks -  a scrum (that word scrum is so inside-baseball too)! Look - the directors milling about on-site, overseeing the action (on camera)!

And - I love PJ Kwong, but she was just as visible in the interviews as the skaters. Skate Canada really wants those bodies between the skaters and the public, doesn't it? It's funny, when the WSJ and NBC did segments with Virtue/Moir after the Olympics (and other skaters) JUST THE SKATERS were on camera.

Barb and Debbi appear to want to brand Barb and Debbi with the public, so the public will see Barb and Debbi as their touchstone and conduit to the skaters. What a wonderful public relations scheme by Barb and Debbi - for the benefit of Barb and Debbi. If there's an apparent priority to anything either of these women do as they perform whatever their duties are supposed to be, it's self-aggrandizement and job-protection.

So what happens at HPC? They, too, have 'team building' exercises -  an activity that's usually promoted at the earlier summer meeting. But nobody's on twitter, so Skate Canada's twitter account tweets poorly lit, out-of focus blackberry captures from the HPC "fun and games" with "amusing" captions in flagrant imitation of the USFSA skaters' tweets (Let's face it, that SC twitter is likely Barb). Barb, as Barb, also tweets this:

I don't know who the fuck any of the people are in this photo.
What's supposed to be very cool? The way awesome back-lighting?
Is there anything we CAN'T see in a stock photo?

Part of the fun and games was a contest drawing Skate Canada's logo. I can just picture the congratulatory back slapping over that one.

Mostly Barb and the others seem intent on promoting themselves, concertedly branding themselves in these jobs with the public, while DOING SHIT.

Barb, one of the few Skate Canadians ON twitter by HPC (hey, why encourage the figure skaters to be on when the officials are already on?) linked to a Skatebuzz video of practice (with the worst, youtube audio-library-type audio track in the WORLD) with the tweet "What's been keeping me busy."

I still don't get it Barb. WHAT has been keeping you busy? Why are you all up in HPC? You're the Director of Corporate Communications. HPC from the media end is all about sports media and the usual figure skating groupie-cum-reporters catching quotes and writing up pre-season blurbs. Did you round-up a whole bunch of potential sponsors and persuade them to attend/observe the awesome? 

If Barb and Debbie are really glorified show-runners, venue managers and bullshit artists (not really artists - hacks), then WHO the hell is doing the business development, sponsor-solicitation, etc.?  Debbi's marketing contributions appears to be telling skaters to start emphasizing how tough this sport is. (They key word now is "masculine.") Skate Canada also seems to have a vague idea that it would be effective to tell everyone that figure skating improves your hockey playing.**  And of course, doing a change-your-off-ice-partner-and-dance hoax perpetuated through social media. And -- what else, that isn't just logistics?

Once HPC was over, apparently Skatebuzz leaned on all of its figure skaters to get themselves on twitter posthaste. And figure skaters did, openly sharing that their Fed wanted them to get on twitter.

So Barb and Debbi are paid at least partially to "us too" what the USFSA has just successfully done (that Barb and Debbi didn't think of doing themselves), but half-assed and too late.

The Canadian Skating Federation is one of the major players in the international world of figure skating. It has a magnificent history. It's currently run like the Skating Federation of DumbFuck. It reminds me of Albany in New York, or the days of Tammany Hall. Cronytown.

If anyone is interested, I'd encourage them to look up the USFSA officials in jobs similar to those held by the familiar faces at SC. Look at their qualifications and background, look at what they seem to spend their time doing, and look at their faces to see how familiar their faces are to the public. Look at the challenges they face - no different from those facing Skate Canada. And look at recent attendance and television ratings for U.S. Nationals versus Canadian Nationals.

I think when this is all over, Debbi and Barb will have a comfortable retirement, be familiar faces they can capitalize on as consultants, they will market their previous association with Skate Canada to a fare-thee-well to get consultant fees, and Skate Canada as an organization will be on its ass with no coherent marketing plan, no competent public relations infrastructure, half-empty arenas, low television ratings and still "not enough men."  Barb and Debbi though, will be doing GREAT.***
__________________________________
*And, their body language was relaxed and natural, their faces animated and expressive, their remarks at least seemed extemporaneous. Not like Skate Canada, where they smiled like pageant robots, stood more or less rigidly in place and we could see the seconds ticking by in their eyes, waiting for the encounter to be over. Their facial lines seemed tense, their responses neat little bumper stickers. Programmed can't come close enough to describe them.

**Canadian Figure Skating. Still Not Gay.

***I have a question, and it's not rhetorical. When I read Canadian skater stuff, I read that there's not enough men. There's never enough men in figure skating, but it really seems to bother Skate Canada SO much. But then I look at the Skate Canada skating disciplines. Skate Canada has had two different men's World Champions in 3 years, and they have a very promising junior guy coming up. They have the Olympic gold medalists in a young ice dance team, and a fairly strong ice dance roster behind them. And it turns out there are a number of strong N.A. ice dance men on the loose too, partnerless. Ice dance men. ON THE LOOSE. The world is upside down! Out of nowhere, pairs is suddenly on the upswing and instead of the high maintenance, mood-case champs exemplified by Jessica Dube in D&D, the two top teams are hungry, driven and eager to take risks.  But then we get to the women, where the Skate Canada junior national champion can do ... a double axel. The American junior national champion can do triple/triples. The RUSSIAN National Champion, who is younger than the SC junior national champion and ineligible for the ISU international senior scene this season, can also do triple triples and everything else. As can at least two other girls in Russia, including their Russian junior champion.

Are Skate Canada's skating programs not making enough money because there's not enough guys? Is that it? Why are they so obsessed with men?

Scott Had a Great Weekend in Muskoka

That's nice, right?

Here's what I remember though. In 2009 on Scott's birthday, Jessica posted on Scott's wall: "Happy birthday babe. Wish I could be there to spend the day with you."

Then a day or so later Jessica went to Muskoka (without Scott). Had such a great time she apparently changed her flight home (per Sandy Lee). It's a holiday weekend this weekend in Canada too, and one thing I know about Jessica is she never misses a vacation.

When she got home she posted something like "Back home after a great weekend in Muskoka (or up north, or something close to that.)  "Thanks to the Lee family for that."

Sandy Lee is a diligent sham enabler and a member of the Ilderton/London/Ontario "skating community". Knows the Davisons and Moirs.

Scott has touted Muskoka as a favorite vacation spot, and obviously, Jessica has a place to stay when SHE's there - in fact, she's been there without Scott and was in 2009. Bryce's folks have a cottage, there have been many skating weekends up there.

So what do I think. Do I think this is a set up? "Jess" is going to put Muskoka photos on her private facebook? Are those who can't SEE her facebook going to know she was in Muskoka with Scott on his birthday weekend thanks to an upcoming profile pic Jess Dube puts up and thanks to Scott casting a wider net on his fan page?

Are they doing this because they're a little bit leery of shamming it up at Skate Canada this year?

Would Scott actually take his fan page, a semi-refuge from the sham, and send up a sham flare so fans who do not have the privilege of being accidentally on his "personal" facebook get baited into thinking his birthday thanks were genuine (the first birthday thanks he's bothered with in three years in response to facebook well wishes) his Muskoka shout out was genuine, and none of it had an agenda?

I hope not.

I think it's a shame because he flushed fans out of his personal page so nobody would take a second look and other outsiders wouldn't look at it with new eyes, but he still wants the sham benefits of a wide net.

On his fan page, he offers barely more than he originally did hosting thousands on his "personal" page. Nothing not already in the public domain. "Going to Korea/Russia/Taipei" "In Korea/Russia/Taipei" "Home from Korea/Russia/Taipei". From time to time he'll upload photos already in the public domain or link to an interview in the public domain. But something as personal as, hypothetically - "Happy Canada day - celebrated beating Charlie White in golf!" is too revealing. A candid from a competition or HPC is never offered. That's his privilege, if he's that private. So fans get happy when he actually acknowledges birthday wishes and mentions he was in Muskoka. And what does it turn out to be? Bait. So when Jessica's public profile pic goes up, even fans shut out of the facebooks will know it's from his b'day weekend in Muskoka and he can sucker them into buying a lie. That's an asshole.

Costumes

Okay, tangent. After the discussion directly underneath the post below, I went looking to see how gay and/or flamboyant Brian Boitano dressed in his prime and here's him on the podium at the 1988 Olympics: 

He jumps right out at you as the gay one.

It looks like they got together on the phone before the lp and coordinated their outfits - but what's gayer - red or blue? It's a judgment call - Viktor Petrenko could be sneaking up on the Brians and running away with the title. The flamboyance! Why couldn't these guys have been understated like everyone else in 1988!

Sergei Grinkov:

Sergei may have sprigs of cherry 
blossoms running up the side of his robin's egg blue
costume. And what's at his waist? Is that .. pink?
{{Sergei}}

 Katerina Witt:

Bestemianova and Bukin:

Lovely program.

Dear God those costumes are gay and loud. No wonder nobody watched figure skating back then.

(It's curious that the Besti squat named after Natalia's move is done now mostly by ice dance men. Do they know this in Canada? How it's a Russian girl squat?)

Here's Brian Boitano in other costumes:

Oh how gay.

If the wife-beater were white-gold shredded spandex with sparkles, or red shredded spandex with gold thread like the guys wear in CSOI, or if the darn thing would only be torn into rags after he did his back-flip, it wouldn't seem so gay.

 Here's Brian Orser who shows you how NOT to do what Brian Boitano would do:

Blue, collared button-down and dark skate-trousers. 180 from that gay, black sweater vest, gray, collared button-down and dark skate-trousers the other Brian is wearing above him.

God Brian, you make me sick! Why can't you dress like Brian?

This is a little marginal for me. It's a show program, I get that. But Orser 
needs to pick one color, shrink it to 1/8th this size, slash the fabric so 
the details of his chesticles peek out, tighten up the pants, do some 
pointing and get spray tan. Then he won't be as gay.

I really love Brian Orser and this is not really about him, but about Skate Canada. Shortly after Brian Orser won his Worlds 1988 gold medal (3 perfect 6.0's), In 1998, and as referenced by the comment under the post beneath this, Orser was the subject of a palimony suit which ended up outing him - apparently the first figure skater thus outed. [the original timeline, which I googled after a commentator on another post confirmed to me that Orser was indeed out and how it came about, is from an article I googled that incorrectly stated the sequence of events. The second comment below this post I will assume has the correct sequence.]

Yet fourteen 3-4 years later Skate Canada's Alma Moir singled out America's Brian Boitano - not Canadian, no palimony suit and not nearly as many flowy, billowy shirts as people recall (kind of disappointing) - as perpetuating figure skating's gay image, an image thankfully straightened out by Kurt Browning. You'd think the guy with the palimony suit in Canada, the Canadian figure skater and famous co-star of the epic "Battle of the Brians" held in Canada, would be considered to have furthered that gay image of Canadian figure skating more. But I never took the seminar on how to tell which of two hugely talented, intelligent, personable, masculine, good-looking, tastefully costumed male figure skaters is spewing gay all over the sport's image.

But I know one thing:

It's not him.

 

Perhaps Mrs. Moir cited Boitano over Orser because Boitano won the Olympics and Orser did not. That would also explain why she praised Browning as the man who came along and de-gayed things, because he won

zero Olympic medals, of any color.

Next is Johnny Weir, whose niche-appeal costumes include this black number with the outline of a corset indicated in pink fabric on the shirt. It's not a real corset, it's a motif, but damn it's outlined in pink AND men don't wear corsets (except Alec Baldwin under all his suits on 30 Rock).

Another reason you want to get rid of gay image people like Johnny Weir is you never EVER want figure skating to be entertaining.

Now we come to Scott Hamilton's favorite American antidote to the shame that is Johnny Weir:

That's  more like it.

When I read the comments people inside the sport have about this stuff, I think despite all the hinting around the message could be this:

Don’t be gay. Be straight. If you’re straight or claim to be straight, do what you want. Wear anything you want – if it comes off a little gay just mug a whole lot to prove you’re tongue-in-cheek which always = straight.

If you are routinely on the podium and you keep your sexual orientation reasonably undercover, wear what you want, skate to what you want, spray as much tan on yourself as you want and if your sleeves billow or you’ve got some peek-a-boo mesh going on, but you’re mostly passing as straight, really we don’t care.

If you’re gay, but Canadian, we’ll overlook it. We love you guys too much to notice. We love you in spite of it, we do, and we always will love you in spite of it. We’ll never mention it, promise. We’ll help you out by pointing out foreign gay guys. Just YOU don’t mention it, but even if you do, we’ll probably pretend we don't hear and snicker at Johnny Weir some more.

If you are undecided about being known as straight or gay, or if you don’t want to fool around and want to assert yourself unambiguously on the straight side, wear this on the ice:

Official Straight Man's Costume of the ISU

Hey Barb?

Once again, this is a post rooted in speculation and questions. PERIOD.  That's all. I know facebook is sort of a legal limbo area, I don't know if facebook is covered by the legal standards or codes governing corporate/government transparency and accountability or what constitutes the line between personal and professional in Canada. I'm asking questions.

Anyhow.

Barb MacDonald is an employee of Skate Canada and Skate Canada receives government money. She's Director of Corporate Communications.

Barb MacDonald was working for Skate Canada during the Vancouver Olympics, while simultaneously affiliated with One Way Ministries. In April 2010, Skate Canada appointed her Director of Corporate Communications. Barb MacDonald didn't get out of One Way Ministries til June 2010.

Message boards (mostly gay male message boards, it looks like when I google) such as outsports and datalounge have been chomping on Barb's hide for more than a year without Barb feeling too fussed. They wonder why a professional evangelical (that means, a person whose life mission is to convert others to their beliefs) has been appointed Director of Corporate Communications at Skate Canada, when Skate Canada, you know, gets money from the Canadian government. These message boards say all kinds of unflattering stuff. It didn't bug Barb. Her facebook stayed public. When I saw her facebook, it was inoccuous, a few profile shots, and some proudly displayed candids from the Olympics. "Scott and Tessa". "Jess, Bryce and Annie" "A great representative of our nation!" wrote Barb under a photo of herself and Alex Bilodeau, and her friends enthused over her hitting the big time. Her info page simply recited what I reposted in the post called "one of Jess Dube's first 10 facebook friends." Nothing shady I could see, except for the fact that she IS Barb MacDonald, worked where she worked prior to Skate Canada, and for some godforsaken reason William Thompson hired her. But that's not her fault.

So here's what I want to know. WHY IS HER FACEBOOK NOW RESTRICTED? Why, after being identified as one of Jess Dube's first facebook friends, did Barb MacDonald close the shutters on her facebook? If she started out all restricted, fine, but she was open before.

Is there any reason Canadian taxpayers can't see what she's doing? She's not just interacting with friends and family, she's interacting with figure skaters who receive government support and she works for the organization that helps fund them - an organization that also appeals to the public for financial support, and solicits corporate support (an area where Barb and Debbi have been whiffing). Barb's facebook isn't her private life. She's doing business on her facebook, but also hiding. What's she hiding? Simply the fact that she was one of Jess Dube's first ten facebook friends? Is there a problem with that?

She had no problem with being that til this blog mentioned it, she had no problem being an evangelical appointed to a Skate Canada directorship by William Thompson, no problem having a bunch of gay male message boards chew on her ass for a year, but geez, let her get tagged as being one of Jess Dube's first facebook friends and she can't draw the blinds fast enough, including hiding her info page reciting her accounting of her professional background.

I understand figure skaters and their connections - Moirs & Co., Dubes - running around closing the curtains. But Barb is not a celebrity, and as an employee of an organization that receives government support, she is not really entitled to hunker down and burrow like a mole if she's hiding malfeasance or the appearance of it. I guess she can, but it looks shady, especially when she wasn't fazed by the outsports and datalounge name-calling. They didn't get her to change her fb status.

If a site such as this blog wonders if Barb is helping to pull the wool over the eyes of the public while aggressively marketing a lot of crap, all while in the employ of an organization that solicits money from the public, money from the government, and money from corporations, all while professing Christian beliefs - wouldn't the appropriate response be to ignore the trollish, harrassing site in question? Prove via transparency and staying the course and ignoring the wannabe pest that things are kosher? Truly, her facebook was nothing much, except for, of course, her friends list. But I imagine very quickly it would be difficult to tell she had been one of "Jess's" first ten friends or just added on as "Jess" swept in Skate Canada, and any visitors to her facebook would only be able to see she was a friend, period.

 I just want to know why, when it was such an unremarkable facebook, she slammed it shut when it was brought up that she was one of Jess Dube's first facebook friends, and when the blog wondered if any of what Barb was helping "Jess" and "Jess"'s other friends do wasn't contrary to Christian doctrine. Certainly the proper response to that is to ignore the accuser. It's the internet, it's a BLOG. Anyone can start a blog. She's had critics up her rear end since she got into the God business, and she's not a figure skater. She is at least in part a government employee. The way to react when someone questions your professional ethics and if your way of doing business is consistent with your religious beliefs is NOT boarding up the house. But that's what she did.