Jessica Dube Loves Scott Moir

I could never promote that message of concealing who you are with all of this going on in Russia. I’m kind of happy that I did it on my own terms.

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Ms. Bucsis said she finally opened up after friend and teammate Kaylin Irvine encouraged her “to actually live an authentic life.”

Anastasia Bucsis, Olympic speed skater.

Bucsis reputedly participated in an LGBT documentary
filmed in Sochi on the dl. Sounds great, but no way
it's as raw and real as Tessa and Scott's Journey to
Silver in Sochi, Which They Were Lucky to Get,
Considering How Their Skating Has Deteriorated,
and How They Work Each Other's Last Nerve.

Anastasia Bucsis tweeted the image in the blog's post below this one, and she's the athlete standing next to Scott Moir.

Sure, we're talking apples and oranges. There's no parallel between Bucsis's journey, and Scott and Tessa's desire to commodify their chemistry, aggressively foist upon the public their publicly platonic relationship as the real deal, so tune in, cause you don't get authenticity this genuine every day, while pursuing a pattern of baiting, switching, jerking the public's chain, while concealing from their targets the fact that they're married to each other, and parents together. Scott and Tessa aren't inauthentic inauthentic. It's just the public they're screwing with, and we know what we're worth. Pffft. Everybody who matters knows about Virtue Moir. Grappling with private and public acceptance of your sexuality and lying about it until you and yours come to terms is a serious matter; making idiots out of a public that earnestly supports you, defends you, and believes everything you say is just fun.

Still, I hope Bucsis doesn't become a regular sham facilitator. I'd like to think that synapses do fire somewhere in Canadian sports.

Randy Starkman is an "Olympic Sports reporter", who, in April 2011, had this article published in The Toronto Star:

22 year old Anastasia Bucsis is Patrick Chan's girlfriend

And we have this from The Advocate, published in 2013:

Anastasia Bucsis proud to be gay

in which Bucsis says she came out to family and friends two years ago. Which means, in 2011. This timeline suggests that in April 2011, at age 22, Anastasia Bucsis was in a thriving romantic relationship with Patrick Chan, inspiring him on and off the ice, according to Starkman. But before 2011 was done, Bucsis realized she was actually gay. Wasting no more time, she came out to family and friends.

Except:

Being closeted and not knowing any other speed skaters affected her performance in 2010, where she competed in the 500-meter event.

Closeted means "knew she was gay." In 2010.

I suppose Bubcis could have been so fearful, so committed to denial, that by 2011, she was in an actual romantic relationship with/deceived a young man who just happened to be Canada's highest profile male singles skater, the front-runner for 2014 Olympic gold, a guy who just happened to be promoting his short program as the story of a young man in love for the first time.* Whatever, by the end of 2011, Anastasia was done living a lie. I hope Patrick took it well. That has to be what happened there. It can't be that the relationship was an expedient publicity thing for both, for their separate agendas. What are the odds?

In the 2013 article, it's said Bucsis doesn't want her sexual orientation to be her entire identity, and her coming out publicly, in advance of Sochi, was a response to Russia's anti-gay policies. Not wanting her sexual orientation to be her entire identity certainly puts Bucsis ahead of Scott Moir, who wants his heterosexual, active duty penis to be most of his public identity. It never takes a rest, that thing. Always on task.

I'm not suggesting that Kaitlyn Lawes is gay. But as soon as it emerged that Kaitlyn Lawes was Sham Girlfriend V.3, we knew that Kaitlyn Lawes was promoting herself in a fake relationship. That's not anything we knew about her before. She handed us that one. In our role as the dumbass dupes, or at least in our role as the absolutely powerless, are we supposed to pretend not to know it's a fake relationship? Is it okay to ask why Kaitlyn Lawes would promote herself in a fake relationship, or to wonder, since she's in a fake relationship now, if her prior public relationship with DJ Kidby was also fake? I don't want to pussyfoot around, knowing she's got to be shamming for a reason, getting all euphemistic when it comes to one possible hypothetical (i.e., is this a Bucsis situation), while being perfectly comfortable explicitly hypothesizing the potential existence of a legit boyfriend she (and he) prefer to keep on the dl (a/k/a "the Cynthia Phaneuf option"). Both hypotheses are, in principle, equally benign. But we all know that not everybody, especially in Canadian sports, feels the same way.

Key point - when Bucsis came out, there was no mention (that I've found) of her having previously been "out" as Patrick Chan's girlfriend. Her contemporary narrative is that Bucsis was a painfully isolated closet case who, with the love and support of wise friends and mentors, found the courage to live an authentic life. But, if we remember that she was Patrick's public girlfriend, that's problematic - for Patrick. Sure, we now get Bucsis's side of things, but what about him? Why would he promote a fake relationship?

Let's not open that door. Just press delete instead.

These articles aren't information. They're chum. They're vehicles that provide the "journalist" with a clip, while positioning the subject(s) inside whatever frame it's decided serves their immediate self-interest. That's it. Whether the journalist is an "Olympic Sports Reporter" or a purple prose spewing groupie like Rosie DiManno, same difference. These "journalists" are hype hacks. For anyone who anticipates that the media will play connect-the-dots when/if Scott and Tessa reveal, nobody's going to connect the dots. Narratives are never matched against prior narratives. The only relevant narrative is today's.

At least Anastasia and Patrick didn't spend most of the 2011 Star article telling us how really really really real their love is, like it or not. Bullshit is standard operating procedure when athletes and celebrities position themselves in the public eye. It's content for content's sake, buzz for buzz's sake; the actual narrative is transitory, and often celebrities know the public is in on that. Scott and Tessa are different. These two continually underscore that they are not only the authors of their narrative, no matter how often it changes and/or contradicts itself, but the sole interpreters. They instruct fans what to think. They don't just lie their faces off, they take pains to emphasize how incredibly transparent, open and genuine everything is. It's one thing to market your bullshit, which pretty much everyone does, it's sort of another thing to market your bullshit specifically and proactively as standing apart from everbody else's due to how authentic and real it is, and then pat yourself on the back for your generosity and transparency. That extra step is pretty thuggish. They're not content to think the public might be responding a la - "Blah blah blah that's this week's story - maybe next week's will be more interesting." Tolerating any sort of sophistication or empowerment in or among elements of their public isn't in Scott and Tessa's playbook. They prefer to be better than, and condescend.

ETA: I just want to elaborate a bit more on the difference between what Virtue and Moir do, and regular spin/image shaping. Regular spin/image shaping doesn't often deal with facts, but attitudes, feelings, etc. For example, skating partners love and respect each other, can't imagine skating with anyone else, really appreciate this experience or that opportunity, aren't sure what their next step may be but are excited at what's ahead, blah blah blah. They could hate each other, be x-ing off the calendar til certain things are accomplished and they can be rid of the other person, they could find certain obligations and experiences tedious or worse, they could resent a whole bunch of shit, but at the end of the day, we're talking people lying about how they feel. If you think feelings are facts, maybe that's bad, but we all have to be diplomatic in our jobs. That stuff really does go to the professional side of things. Then there's the fake relationships, but very often, as with Chan and Bucsis, the two participants at least are actually single.

There's also stuff like Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries, where he later said something like he doubted she entered into the marriage with genuine intentions; it was all about the show. No duh, but, whatever her intentions, she actually DID enter into the marriage. Kardashian/Humphries weren't being marketed everywhere as an engagement/wedding/marriage while the reality was he had a wife and kids stashed somewhere and the entire thing was, factually, a charade.

Plenty of things are charades emotionally. "I hate you, but I have to pretend to love you." (Or vice versa, as with Scott and Tessa's "reality show.")

Scott and Tessa distinguish themselves because they actively, aggressively, market lies as facts. The selling point is that they're giving us facts. Where else is that done?
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*That's stronger promotion for Take Five than, say, "In Take Five, Patrick portrays a young man in love, a milestone the 20 year old has yet to reach in his off-ice life because he still shares a room with his mom."