Fans on the short bus

Happy twenty-seventh birthday to Scott Moir, still officially pretending the woman he's been married to since shortly after his twenty-second birthday is not his wife. Still officially pretending his daughter doesn't exist.

It's been mentioned below that Alma Moir has started following Kaitlyn Lawes. I guess pre-season on this love story is now over.

When I look at the latest group of newly-minted VM fans, they are exactly the same as the 2010 group of VM fans. Publicly exchanging fan fic and speculation, but believing if they tip toe, Scott and Tessa won't notice. Fingers crossed, if everybody's real quiet, Scott and Tessa might work up the courage to tell each other how they feel and maybe even do something about it.*

It's ridiculous, but I can't disparage it too much, because it's what all fans do with all real life "OTP"s. It's only Scott and Tessa who mock and exploit the hell out of it, fans never knowing the joke's on them.

People inside and around figure skating who endorse Scott and Tessa's behavior believe what they do is justified because of the kinds of fans around figure skating.

The reality is these are the only sorts of fans figure skating wants and acknowledges. These are the fans Scott and Tessa cultivate. When these are your fans, you've got a year-in/year-out free pass.

From the comments section in the post below:

August 27, 2014 at 9:13 PM

I don't like how the ISU conducts itself. It's insulting to the supporters and consumers of figure skating that they're sold a bill of goods, expected to swallow it, and further encouraged to support the sport financially.

But, huh. According to your logic, why should I care about that? Why should I care about being told D/W's win in Sochi was legitimate even though it reeked of ISU corruption? Why should I care about how that impacts other people in detrimental ways, perhaps in ways that I will never see or know about in great depth?

The bullshit with your above post and so many others like it is that when V/M are getting screwed by a corrupt organization that can fuck with them and its audience and paying supporters JUST BECAUSE IT CAN GET AWAY WITH IT, the criticism of that is deemed acceptable. When V/M fuck with their audience and paying supporters JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT, the pathetic and poorly constructed "why do you people give a fuck???" attempts to redirect the conversation come raining down.

In the two posts below I considered if corporate sponsors, particularly "Please be aware we are SATURATED in integrity" brands like Lindt chocolate, would feel comfortable partnered with star athletes of any other sport who were doing to their supporters what Scott and Tessa are ritualistically doing to theirs (outlined in the posts below), including all the backdoor, hashtagged: "look at me with @scottmoir @fakegirlfriend #staycool #rolemodels" bullshit they generate on other people's accounts.

I think no. I think those that handle sponsorships/relationships, etc. for the particular corporations/networks/publications/publishing houses that partner up with Scott and Tessa are comfortable trampling over checkpoints only because it's figure skating. The key is status. We have no status, so they don't bother with standards.

When people show you who they are, believe them.

Maya Angelou

Once again, I looked up Steve Milton, sportswriter. He's written nine "books" about figure skaters. Nine. In all that time - two decades -  he hasn't felt the need to read CoP, or recognize for himself the difference between a step and a turn, an edge or a flat, which - nobody's surprised. I look forward to his tenth and eleventh figure skating books.

When he writes about hockey and football he writes about the actual game, which he knows, because, you know, real sport.

He's in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame for his work as a football journalist. Per The House of Anasi's bio he's a National Newspaper Award finalist, multiple Ontario Newspaper Award winner, and Gemini Award finalist. The House of Anasi is the publishing house that put out Scott and Tessa's book all about their platonic love, "written" while Scott and Tessa were married and expecting their first child.

You'd think a legit guy like this would have a qualm or two about pumping out a book under his name that markets itself as the truth, but is a complete, total hoax, but apparently he had none. Why no qualms, Steve? Because it's us. Scott and Tessa deserve the publicity, celebrity and financial opportunities that come from selling their true story, but they also need to have that precious truth unsullied by skating fans knowing anything about it. This makes complete sense to everybody around them. I feel pretty sure that, given the green light by his subjects, the eminent sports journalist Steve Milton would, without a second's reflection, happily explain why it's okay to write and sell a fake biography as a true biography as long as it's to skating fans, and how Milton's first duty/responsibility as a journalist was protecting the likes of Scott and Tessa from the likes of us.

Everybody involved in the sham appears cloaked in sanctimony. Scott and Tessa should be protected from the unseemly interest fans have in their relationship. Scott and Tessa should also be able to profit from the unseemly interest fans have in their relationship. Scott and Tessa are entitled to encourage prurient interest in their relationship and their private lives, so they can keep profiting.

Everybody feels that way about every project Scott and Tessa undertake - a couple of reality shows, latest sham rollout, getting themselves on social media. Look at Shannon Woodhouse, the program manager of the University of Western Ontario's Joint Motion program. She's not risking anything when she uses her public social media account to facilitate the latest round of Virtue Moir hoaxing of the public.

From the University of Western Ontario's landing page:

Public Accountability
The University of Western Ontario is committed to openness and transparency in all our operations.  We are an institution supported by and accountable to the people of Ontario and of Canada, and we make every effort to provide information as to our activities and to monitor our performance in key areas of interest for all the constituencies we serve.

They mean in how it conducts itself as a university, not whether or not one of its employees goes out of her way to help set up a public hoax for the personal benefit/agenda of the local heroes. Besides, Woodhouse covered her ass. She just waxed fanlike, and said she saw Lawes/Moir together. We know what she was doing, and so does UWO, but she can get away with it. Apparently when companies like Lindt, and public institutions like UWO commence to bragging about transparency, it just means in the areas in which they're accountable. If they're not accountable, none of that shit matters. They're all doing it right in front of us, they can thumb their noses at it. We do now see just what all this trumpeting of integrity is worth. It's situational. Some people, such as figure skating fans, are too low status and inconsequential to be treated with the most rudimentary respect. Hell, it's not even the absence of respect that's on display here. It's contempt.

Alma Moir, who has just become one of Kaitlyn Lawes' followers on twitter, has coached UWO's synchro skating team for three decades, and coached at the Ilderton Skating Club since forever. That's how she earns her living. She's a notable in London and Ilderton, and for at least seven years she, and her entire family, which includes other Moirs who coach at the ISC and at UWO, have actively participated in hoaxing, tricking and aggressively manipulating the supporters of her sport and the fans of her son and his wife. Nothing wrong with it, and by "wrong" they mean "We can get away with it."

I suppose it's possible that Scott and Tessa lied their faces off to Steve Milton, a guy who knows all of the key players going back two decades. If so, they exploited his name and credentials, and deceived him into putting his good journalistic name on a bunch of lies, making a fool of him and potentially damaging his reputation down the line. I wouldn't put it past them to do it because they suck at making connections, or doing any kind of action/result math.

But I don't think so, because Tessa was awfully pregnant at that book signing Milton attended with them, and he's subsequently reiterated their platonic status, taking the obligatory sideswipe at fans while he was at it.

And as it went for Steve Milton, so it went for the "W' network. I think the W network might have been cautious about a reality show featuring a couple of champion tennis players who were married with a child, but for the reality show pretended to be single/dating others while instructing the public to tune in and see their real lives, like it or not. Those champion tennis players might be hesitant about it as well. But at least we know ethical concerns wouldn't be a factor. The question is only, "Can we get away with it?" and with champion tennis players, it might have been a gamble. Figure skating is a different ball game. Everybody now knows that in figure skating, you can make anything up and pretend it's true. You can get away with anything, on ice and off. Just look at all the people going out to make the most of that. It's instructional, that's for sure.
________
*This group of fans, who see Scott and Tessa as real life fantasy figures, who discuss, speculate and create fan fiction in plain sight in public areas of the internet, are the only fans that Scott and Tessa recognize. And yet, Scott and Tessa lie about THESE fans. All of the fan fic these people write is a triangle. In these fan fictions, the authors believe in Jessica, Cassandra, Kaitlyn, and position Tessa as looking in from the outside. None of these people are writing fan fiction about Scott and Tessa, the married couple with a daughter. These fans that BELIEVE Scott and Tessa, and everything they do pivots around swallowing those lies, while Scott and Tessa, when they interview, pretend these are the fans who keep thinking they're romantically involved.

The mutual condescension is interesting. The fans are patronizing Scott and Tessa, protective of a Scott and Tessa that don't exist, protective of a couple of celebrity ice dancers who in their eyes, remain in some sort of high school level social dynamic (IOW, they're at the same level as these fans) and lack any of the sophistication that anyone who is in the public eye acquires after six months, let alone after seventeen years. Scott and Tessa patronize and condescend to these fans. These are the fans Scott and Tessa want, but they also distort what these fans believe. I wonder what these fans think when Scott and Tessa do their spiel about "We're not together and we don't know how to convince people other than to just keep repeating it!" Do they think Scott and Tessa are talking about the blog? Then who were Scott and Tessa talking about in the years they said these things before there was a blog?

Why would you ADD people?

As it defies common sense to bring even more people into the sham circus, that is naturally what Moirville is busy doing.

I'm bringing a comments section discussion from the previous post into this post.

As noted by a participant in the comments section below, this girl:

was a skating student of Alma's. She also tweets to the girl whose twitter screen cap is below, a girl who who calls Alma's attention to a fan she wants them both to sneer at.

They are all such assholes and I guess before Toddler Moir is even three she's being trained to be an asshole herself or else have tremendously thick skin. Otherwise I can't imagine anything more fun to find on someone's public twitter than my daddy being seen out with his girlfriend.

OTOH twitter has to be a dream come true for Scott in some ways. Obviously, Moirville has an unending supply of skating community members eager to get involved in Scott and Tessa's business, and with tweets like this Scott doesn't even have to pose for a photo. Someone can just tweet that they saw him. It's totally hands off. With Sochi less then a year away, let's make this as messy and dickish as we can, shall we?

That's asinine, but this, though, sucks:

Umm*, you know who else exists, you asshole, Alexandra Vaiay? The fan who made that playlist. This is an actual person, not some abstract group of "fans".

Why NOT humiliate her on your public twitter. Why NOT call Scott's MOTHER's attention to this fan on the assumption it's crazy and embarrassing. Let's mortify someone who hasn't done one fucking thing to you, you fucking sack of stupid. Yes, if I were that type of fan, there would be nothing more hurtful than having my innocent online fan activities called to the attention of my favorite's mom so she could endorse how ridiculous I'm being.  What Alexandra Vaiay is doing on her twitter is a hell of a lot more fan-like, bitchy and overinvested than a figure skating fan enjoying the sport enough and respecting her favorite's music choices enough to make a playlist.

OTOH, the playlist fan can take under advisement that she's targeted by people who can barely turn on their computers, so they probably imagine the playlist fan has spent hours working with  IT professionals to string that thing together, and to them, that's #crazy. But if they were the sorts of people who knew where the on button is, on their computer and in their brains, they'd realize online applications/software streamline the process.

What's not crazy is living through your kid and his wife, your brother and his wife, your neighbor and his wife, your coach's youngest son and his wife, your ex highschool classmate who left before graduation and his wife. And using twitter to fuck with your relative's fans and supporters. That's not #crazy.

What are they doing on twitter besides not providing any positive attention for Scott and Tessa's Sochi prospects? Do they run "Virtue Moir" through the search function to find out what fans are doing so they can mock them? They've probably got a lot bottled up since they restricted their facebooks. We know them. It's not enough to be meanspirited amongst themselves. They like a big audience of strangers.

Seriously - why don't Scott and Tessa petition to skate their programs in a lab? Keep the crowds out. Just run through the programs under the critical eye of the ISU's judges and have them report the scores later. Let the other skaters skate in public, in front of actual people.

I don't know if Scott and Tessa can skate their best breathing the actual air also being breathed by mere fans who paid mere money to watch them compete. Likewise, how on earth do they manage to perform in shows when all these fans are attending.

If they're not paid, they not only ignore fans, they actively and publicly disparage them. If they're paid, they will lay it on. When not paid, they do things like host a fanpage and then ignore all the fans who do basic things like say Happy Birthday, until they bolt for the exit because their newest fake girlfriend has just joined twitter and they don't want to be around when fans find out about it.

People wonder how spoiled Tessa is, or how obsessed the family is with Scott and Tessa, but I want to know how spoiled that senior generation is - Carol and Alma & Co. They are certainly undisciplined and completely unaccustomed to the need to consider other people's feelings.  They act like they've never left the play pen, which, in a way, they haven't.

I think it's high time Moirville provided everybody with their profile of an acceptable fan. Apart from a willingness to shell out money for yellow sweatshirts and fabricated biographies, is anything else on the list?

Why couldn't this person who made that playlist be a fan of somebody with a fucking heart, like Moore Towers Moscovitch? Or ice dancers who have a freaking clue about publicly treating their public with basic decency (Paul/Islam).

I don't know, maybe Alma, Carol and the other Moirs with restricted twitter accounts should lay down a few guidelines for those they follow, especially people they know. Such as try not to basically single out a fan by name (or even screen name) on twitter, and shame them.

http://8tracks.com/parapluies/tessa-scott

That would require thought. They are allergic to thought.  Things like thoughtfulness and basic decency are too much trouble. They're just a bunch of social media slobs but I also think, as the blog has said many times before, they have a sensitivity chip missing. Because, a lot of people, this type of insensitivity and casual cruelty just doesn't happen, no matter how careless or inattentive they're being on social media. If it's not in you, it's not going to happen. If that's who you are, however, then it's going to show up all over the place.

Ironically, nothing brings them to tears faster than they bring themselves to tears. Get them talking about themselves and the floor is littered with crumpled tissue. Other people, not so much.
 ______________________
*"Ummmm" is right up there with "shrugs" and "lol" in the pantheon of overused, ass-covering disclaimers on the internet in cases where someone is completely obsessed but trying to play  themselves off as not.

P.S. - this season, in addition to .gif-ing the shit out of Meryl and Charlie's programs the second they're unveiled, it might be nice to keep an eye on stories such as the one that came out recently about Paul Moir and Sherri Moir getting ice skates to that low-ranked ice dance team whose skates didn't arrive in time for them to compete. Track where stories like this come from. Who brings them to the attention of the media? How are good deeds like this discovered?

P.P.S., as this is a twitter post, and in honor of the tumblr linked in the comment section, here's a sample of the twitter stylings of Cassandra Hilborn:

You guys, she sobbed.

Scott was, of course, on tour with Tessa. Which makes Tour - 1, Cass - 0 sort of resonant.

This is also classically narcissistic sham. It's not life. It's about CASS.

I've said it before, Moirville has big mouths. And I sometimes wonder just how enthusiastically they embrace Tessa, or is it really that Scott loves Tessa, and Tessa is the reason Scott won a gold medal, so of course they LOVE Tessa, but do they love her in her own right, for her own qualities, or is it a Jackie/Ethel situation where they wish she was Ethel?

The tone of the sham - especially this iteration, with "Cass", calls that into question, IMO. It's like this Tessa dissing shit is creeping into things. It's probably all her fault they're stuck making asses of themselves shamming. If Tessa didn't have her own life, then she could hang. And everybody could crawl up her ass and into her business - for real, not just behind her back. Maybe Scott would be more available and less whipped.

And maybe Cass, who as we know is tweeting under Moir supervision - is just acting out some wish fulfillment. Maybe the competitive tone that creeps into all things sham stems from the source - those who run it.

Cassandra will look great in yellow

The Ilderton skating club (and Alma Moir) is using London Worlds 2013 and Scott and Tessa as a fundraiser - hawking Worlds 2013 versions of the 2009-2010 Olympic "Believe" sweatshirts in a flattering shade of yellow at $20.00 per.

The cause is worthy - its bursary fund, which assists the club and young club figure skaters.

But boy, they really work the Scott and Tessa thing for the town, don't they?  Did they want Tessa and Scott to win the Olympics because of love for them, appreciation for their hard work and talent, and home town pride, or because they thought if Tessa and Scott won, Ilderton, and skating enterprises Moir, would hit the jackpot? Don't even mention all the support we gave over the years kids - you'll be paying us back the rest of your lives.

If I came from Mayberry I wouldn't want Mayberry to think it owned me. I don't think I'd want to serve as an exclusive Mayberry fundraising resource that Mayberry gloms onto whenever I'm town for something crucial to the next year of my career, when I'm in town as an elite athlete for the most critical competition of the pre-Olympic cycle (and we know the type of tunnel vision that requires), and I'm a spouse, and I'm a parent to a young child. But sure Mayberry, climb aboard on my back. I'm always ready to hand over the pound of flesh demanded in payment for your support. Where would I be without you? 

Or maybe every time I rolled into Mayberry I'd know it would be a nightmare no matter what, so may as well pile all the agendas on top of me at once and get it done.

I wonder if Ann Arbor has these expectation$ of Charlie and Meryl.

What am I saying. Remember that article during Canadians, how Scott and Tessa flee the insularity of Canton for the refreshingly NON-skating obsessed region of Ilderton and London? Meryl and Charlie probably have it way worse. All of Canton up in their grill, clamoring for their time and attention. Detroit never gets out of their face.

I know there was often a sea of Michelle Kwan support when she competed, but it wasn't organized, and I don't think it was from her dad Danny's various enterprises. Plus she was a California girl and even if when she skated there the stands were filled, people from California go out the exits and have other stuff to do besides figure skating.

It just seems like a crass thing to focus on during these worlds, in particular. At least in this way. But hey, this is the last worlds, so better squeeze the pump.

Yes, children, everyone thinks you're going to lose to Davis White at these Worlds, setting Davis White up to defeat you at the Olympics. Yes if you can't soundly defeat them with Carmen you may be screwed.

But forget that. What have you done for Ilderton lately? This is Ilderton's big chance - while you're still eligible, and they've done so much for you. It's family.

The pitch is - buy the sweatshirts to have a sea of visible support for Scott and Tessa, but at $20.00 a sweatshirt (which won't produce a fortune in that venue, it's true) - the point is to sell those shirts and fill out the bursary coffers.

The Moirs get right in there promoting. I certainly hope they're aiming this initiative at family/friends they already know have secured their tickets and will be attending or rooting. I hope they're not doing fan outreach, prompting fans to dig into their pockets for the Ilderton skating club.

Because the gall.

Thoughts:

• are Virtue Moir supporters having an easier time with Worlds tickets than other fans? The Ilderton club's goal is for the venue to be a "sea of yellow".
• When is it going to be the Virtues' turn to capitalize on their famous kids/relatives? One of Tessa's brothers teaches school - doesn't that school have fund raising drives it can piggyback onto something Scott and Tessa are doing? Are no Virtues opening restaurants in London? I believe the Virtues supported Scott and Tessa coming up every bit as much as Moirville did.

Maybe the Virtues have their hands out in private.

Ilderton as ever proceeds on the notion that everybody is an extrovert, no less the people competing. Everything's about group, group, group. God forbid you're the personal space type of person, or a breathing room believer. You'll suffocate.

• Are these people gonna buy the sweatshirts, cheer their lungs out, then head off home, or are they going to be working their contacts and burning up email trying to see if Scott and Tessa have any time to spend or if Scott and/or Tessa could spare some time cause it would thrill Kelly, Grandpa, Suzie, Uncle Phil or little Emma and make their life?

I haven't worked it out entirely why I think this if off-putting - it's just a gut feeling. An extremely tension filled Worlds at home. And mom and aunts and everybody are whipping up the town to be all up in your grill, and they are also whipping up the town to purchase some sweatshirts and do some fundraising in your name.

Maybe competitive athletes can think of nothing more exciting and there's nothing they appreciate more.

It's family, so no matter what other pressures are on them at this Worlds, THIS is something they have to support.

There's something about it though. It feels inconsiderate. But that's me. I don't come from a small town that's about nothing but figure skating. If I were an Olympic figure skater about to take the ice at home, maybe I'd want everybody I know to shell out $20.00 for my mom and aunt's club bursary fund and fill the arena cheering, because I certainly want to be even more in their debt. No better time to get that done than an athletic competition where the pressure is excruciating.

Whatever - if you're a Virtue and Moir fan - a real fan - you'll dig into your wallet and get one of these fabulous yellow sweatshirts. $20.00 is the least you can spend after all Virtue and Moir have done for their fans.

Whatever else is planned in addition to aggressive sweatshirt hawking, you know it's going to be a sham-palooza. I fully expect Cassandra in the yellow Believe shirt to turn up in instagrams and profile pictures and mobile uploads - if not parked mid-Moirs.

ETA: Another thing - the self-appointed fan police - those who claim ties to the Moirs or knowledge a couple of steps removed - need to check themselves, IMO. Bear in mind that if we are meant to take Scott and Tessa's platonic status for real, anyone who suspects they have a baby is nuts, and should be treated as nuts, just as it would be if a bunch of fans got together and speculated that Meryl and Charlie had a secret baby.

You do not take it upon yourself to thrust yourself into a fan conversation somewhere and proclaim them wrong by virtue of your superior insider status.

What would be the point? The blog has been talking about it for 2 years. Why is it so important to put in check about half a dozen fans chatting on a fan site somewhere? That accomplishes what? Virtue and Moir have already made it clear that what fans say and think has no bearing on what they're going to claim fans say and think, and the media is going to go with Virtue and Moir's version. Fan speculation or even outright assertions don't affect the Moirs at all. They're undeterred.

So the purpose of interfering is -- what?

Something to do?

That would be it. It accomplishes nothing but to satisfy the ego of the person butting in.

Scott and Tessa, and any fans who speculate or reason out about them - are none of these people's business. They tried it with the blog and with fan discussions that took place prior to the blog. But now they've decided well, we can't control the blog types, but we better set the "safe" group straight.

They need to back off.

It's not their business, and furthermore, it only fuels the speculation because no other figure skater has self-appointed family friends or acquaintances or connections running around policing what fans say, while the subjects themselves keep their mouths shut. When some people thought Charlie was Jewish, Jacquie White went somewhere (wikipedia?) to say he wasn't and actually almost overshared about where the idea originated. When people fretted that Kristen Moore-Towers' news was a split with Dylan, SHE went to facebook to say that wasn't the news.  But every busybody in Ontario thinks it's their business to check fans when it comes to Scott and Tessa.

It isn't. Fans are allowed to think for themselves and see for themselves. If Scott or Tessa or any actual Moir or Virtue wanted to set the record straight, they've had ample opportunity. God knows they talk about a whole bunch of other stuff.

And furthermore, I think some busybody going the extra mile to make sure fans think something that was for Scott and Tessa's kid wasn't for their kid is absolutely grotesque. That kid is going to grow up.

P.S. Obviously, the motivation for a lot of the fan police is to protect the insider status. They enjoy being the ones who know something others don't. The "don't like to share" might also explain some of the home town enthusiasm for the sham as well.

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

Psych!! (Remembering Monaco)

Remember this?

I'm trying to picture Meryl Davis/Charlie White feted by a formally attired party consisting of prince, family and relevant connections. Meryl and Charlie POSING WITH THEIR MEDALS. I'm trying to picture Tanith donning a cocktail dress and joining in the official photograph over there in the forefront alongside Mrs. White. Asinine, right? Tanith has shammed in her lifetime but on such an occasion with her real boyfriend, it would be tacky to stick her in the photograph.

Monaco is hard to forget. First, at Worlds, Scott mentions that next, he and Tessa are going on a romantic retreat to Monaco. Don't get your knickers twisted fans, they've already denied they are romantically involved, but haha, let's just let that sink in while adding cryptically - "Seriously, we're going to Monaco."

As intended by Team Virtue Moir, newly formed on line communities of Tessa and Scott shippers were now hoping, wondering and imagining about this trip, and of course, keeping an eye on the facebooks set up expressly for them to keep an eye on. In short order, Alma Moir presents on her facebook wall a public album called "After Torino - Our Trip To Monaco!"

... with JESSICA!!  BWAHAHAHAHA!

I've seen shams before, but never fans intentionally baited, their hopes raised on purpose, the better to slap them down. That's how this sting was executed. Scott set the bait, Alma snapped the trap shut.

As presented in Alma's album, fans might conclude the trip's purpose was for Scott and Jessica to stand around with different parent groupings all dressed up for an occasion in which Tessa was participating, but seldom seen. Why? She's Scott's partner, they both were there, fans knew it, and knew the dressy clothes involved Tessa too. The album was public to the fans - did Alma & Co. think fans weren't as interested in seeing Tessa as they were Jessica? Why elbow Tessa out of the frame?

This is yet another instance of everyone running this lacking sense. They had to belatedly shovel in a few extra photos of Tessa as fans were beginning to think she had been dragged along only as a human medal stand.

Like all prior and subsequent albums, the album was only pretending to share something. It's actual purpose was to display Jessica and the "relationship."

Team Virtue Moir typically ignores the collateral implications of what they've set up, and habitually ignores good sense. Which I guess is to be expected seeing everyone involved believes the public has the collective IQ of lint and deserves equivalent respect. When it comes to IQ, I think they're in no position to judge.