Tessa Virtue's Brain

About the interview with Russian fans, here:



and here:


If Scott likes people who are "out of the box" he's got one in Tessa Virtue. But what I really think is, she's so tightly wrapped inside her box she's out of the box. The way it happens when someone travels so far up their own ass the only exit is via a foreign solar system.

Based on what we can see here, along with Tessa's tremendous willpower and drive, she's someone very narrowly experienced despite her precocious personal life and mega miles logged in international travel. Someone who insufficiently examines the things that inspire her.

I mean, let's HOPE that's it.

The meeting with the Russian fans was mostly pleasant and relaxed, but punctuated with outbreaks, at expected junctures, with the usual graph-spiking WTF-ery we've come to expect from Virtue and Moir.(i.e.: the mega face reddening, downcast eyes and huge pauses following: "What does partner mean to you", the reality show where the cameras are just following them around as they carry on their normal routine, the "hard" year they trained the Latin free dance - that was such a hard year, what with Tessa's surgery and all, and they loved the program but never got it where they wanted it to be, all your fault, Baby Moir, and the part where they probably won't write another book because there's nothing left to tell - everything's out there.)

Just based on some of her interview responses when the Russian fans interviewed Tessa, Tessa misses clear connections between particular ideas - doesn't follow their implications in any sort of reasoned sequence - and she likewise fails to place some of the material that inspires her (such as The Fountainhead) in any larger context. She seemingly approaches life with an extremely narrow focus, while repeating how much she wants to be balanced.

Compartmentalization isn't balance.

She also again presents as someone whose method of dealing with information that doesn't conform to her agenda is to tune it out.

That's fine when your agenda is skating, and potential distractions from one's training focus, but it's a little scary applied to the rest of someone's life.

With Tessa we have a woman who would take both The Fountainhead and To Kill a Mockingbird - novels with diametrically incompatible world views - with her to a desert island.

Granting her the benefit of the doubt, she must read The Fountainhead narrowly, and not absorb that, in Ayn Rand's world, there are the elite, and there are cattle, and, in Rand's world, compassion isn't just a waste of time, but against nature. And the riff raff that is ordinary people are personally arrayed as obstacles between you and your goals, cause it's all about you. They're litter cluttering up your path.

And contempt is a good thing. If you feel contempt, chances are you feel it because you're a superior being for whom the presence of so much waste of space (humans not on your level) is an affront to your sensibility.

I will assume Tessa just relates to the single-mindedness with which The Fountainhead's protogonists follow their passions, and relates to their belief that there's inherent value to their passions (architecture rising to the level of what Rand thinks is art in Howard Roark's case in The Fountainhead). And maybe she relates to the Randian disdain for emotion (weakness) and her elevation of passion (fuel), as if those things are in conflict.*

(I love how Rand kind of rates "feelings" on a scale of values, and how it's the opposite scale of values of nearly all religions, and nearly all ethical systems.)

My best takeaway with Rand is that passion is what you personally feel for those who are your equals, what you feel for your exalted goals and your agenda, and emotion is having any feeling at all towards the rabble, and emotion is also the useless, base and trivial feelings experienced by the rabble, by the useless multitudes who contribute nothing.

I love how in Rand's world everything is compartmentalized - everything CAN be compartmentalized. There's nothing holistic or organic. No cause and effect or integrated systems. It's all ruthlessly parsed.

I want to look into that Windsor U psych program some day. Seriously.

Maybe it's a Windsor - "Psych!" - program.

The Maya Angelou quote Tessa used in the interview with the Russian fans:

Disclaimer: I'm not a Maya Angelou fan. I think she's the epitome of hot air. She may be a very nice person, but her whole deal is the regal demeanor, the deliberate, portentuous cadence, and the sonorous tonality. What she says SOUNDS like it must be pretty meaningful, but come on.

Tessa's quote:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Oh what bullshit. They certainly fucking do remember what you said and did. Virtue and Moir may WISH that people only remember how they made people feel, but people are going to remember and re-watch how they skated (that's what they did, isn't it?) and people are going to damn straight remember the epic, aggressive hoax, the bill of goods they sold to the public all the while proclaiming how open, honest and genuine they were being.

Let's look at some brand name famous people:

O.J. Simpson. I think people remember what he did.

Hitler: Same.

Miley Cyrus: Overdid the twerking.

Bloody Mary (Queen Mary I of England): She's called Bloody Mary cause people remember what she did.

Marie Antoinette: I'm pretty sure she's reputed to have said something people remember.

Henry VIII - What do people remember besides his break with the Pope and starting the Church of England (things he did)? He married six times and beheaded a couple of wives (things he did).

Kanye West: Imma let you finish.

Roger Federer: He played tennis really well.

John F. Kennedy: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Also, Marilyn Monroe.

Ted Kennedy: Drove a lady off a bridge and she died. Was a Kennedy. And a long term senator from Massachusetts.

Martin Luther King: People still watch his speeches on youtube.

Lance Armstrong: people are going to remember what he did. He won a bunch of Tour de Frances and was brought down by a doping scandal.

At holiday dinner tables around the globe people remember some hurtful thing said by mom, dad, sibling, cousin, etc. years before (especially if it's never been resolved). They remember that kind of shit more than the person who said it remembers. Same goes for the good stuff - they never forget when someone said the right thing at the right time or went out of their way to help.

How you feel about people is CONNECTED to what they said and did.

Maybe if you're drunk all the time how something made you feel is all you're going to remember, but where else is that true outside of Moirville?**

Unless you're blowing hot air for a living like Maya Angelou (forgive me, again, not a fan), in which case the whole game is about creating a feeling-based atmosphere that distracts from what you actually did (wrote a lot of empty poetry) and said (a lot of empty poetry and quotes that fall apart). You hope that what you made people feel (or, more closely, I think, what you made people experience) - will be your ticket to immortality, cause your words and deeds aren't going to cut it.

Well sure, where Angelou is concerned. She didn't do or say much worth remembering, but she did read and speak like it was engraved on stone tablets.

With Scott and Tessa, people are going to remember what they said (how they lied and lied and lied) and what they did (how they skated). How they made people feel will be embedded with both of those things, not separate from it, and only an idiot would think what people say and do isn't CONNECTED to how they make people feel. That was one of the most asinine things out of Virtue's mouth, and that's saying something.

P.S. Scott's first idea for a desert island book was The Saint, the Surfer and the CEO, but he realized if he's the only one on a desert island he doesn't need a book telling him how to treat people. Which - WTF.

I do believe they think how you treat people only counts as what you do to their face. If people don't KNOW you're treating them like shit, manipulating and exploiting them, it doesn't count as treating them poorly. And now it's even expanded to be, it's okay if people know, as long as you don't have to acknowledge it.

Life is all presentation mark to Tessa and Scott. It's all pcs. It's all the real world version of skating skills.

A blurb about The Saint, the Surfer and the CEO:

Jack discovered a powerful philosophy to reshape his reality and access his destiny. In this revolutionary yet gentle guide to living your life at its most authentic level

That's just sad. Well, as long as they live their skating life at an authentic level, lying their asses off and exploiting those lies for profit doesn't matter I guess.
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*I did some more Rand googling, and got some bio details. Not such a surprise that in her life she was aided and abetted by the sacrifices of others - her family, and her husband (whom she apparently treated like crap). I can see if she's of the mindset that this was her due, but at the same time, just the fact that she needed these sacrifices by others in order to get anywhere refutes her ideas about superior beings achieving their goals through sheer force of their unfettered, inherent superiority. She was plenty fucking fettered at the start, and need tons of help to start climbing.

Furthermore, by doing a reality show and all of their other attention-soliciting of the rabble, Scott and Tessa are having it both ways. They're not being independent, proud artists. They're manipulators and exploiters who constantly go to the rabble for an attention fix.

**Okay, cheap shot.

P.S. - about another Tessa & Scott book - Tessa says not until they've lived a few more years and have had more experiences. That's easy to take as a signal there's going to be no reveal after Sochi. These people are consequence averse. They're accountability averse, especially to the rabble, as it were. So it sounds as if they want to get a whole bunch of miles (years) between themselves and their lies. That way Scott can continue to tout books that promote an authentic way of being without having his ass handed to him by everyone in sight.

2011 blog discussion of Tessa and The Fountainhead