For God knows what convoluted and clown-ass reasons, Skate Canada has determined that the public must not ever ever EVER believe not EVER that any of its figure skating partnerships are romantic. Lately they've resorted to tactics that are the marketing equivalent of a parent hiding nutrients in a vegetable-averse kid's omelet or lasagne.
SC goes to quite a bit of facebook trouble also, to emphasize that within partnerships, sex ain't happening.
But this is fine for one of their figure skater's facebooks. (I read this last summer, so it had remained visible on Jessica Dube's fb for over 3 years.)
No un-vetted photo of Tessa/Scott or Jessica/Bryce ever makes it onto anyone's fb, but this thing sits right there.
It was in the "boxes" section of her fb. This screen capture doesn't have her name, but it was sitting in her fb with her name all over it and comments from her friends below it.
Yes, she's French Canadian but she did the quiz in English and slapped in asterisks and said "as a joke!" so she was fairly well having it both ways here. She knows.
I think back then Jessica was in what she terms a "gangsta-girly" fashion phase with the head wrap bandana and she also sported puffy gold earrings at times, and so the favorite word to say may have been part of the package.
Yet she found it prudent to asterisk some key letters.* The rest of her possible favorite words are spelled out.
I took the quiz so I could see the answers. I scored about where her friends scored - except for Bryce, who crushed the field and commented that he thinks Jessica may have lied on her quiz.
During the Patrick Chan pseudo-brouhaha about China, where it later emerged it's entirely the fault of selfish, unpatriotic corporate Canada that Skate Canada has shit for sponsors, it turned out Patrick Chan didn't realize there were human rights violations in China. Then people jumped in to say you barely have a history requirement in Canadian high schools so it's not his fault. And then it's mentioned the USA is almost as bad.
Well shit, then how did I find out about it? Oh that's right - when I was in school they taught me to read.
And come to find out - since I was aware that China had been accused of human rights violations - this makes me a political scientist. According to an attorney/backer who spoke up for Chan.**
Maybe it's making more sense why Debbi Wilkes speaks to the public as if they learned the alphabet song only yesterday.
But it's okay! Who cares if our figure skaters haven't got no education (even those who've applied to the University of Colorado). We not only don't care if everybody knows our skaters are ignorant - we'll defend it. He's a figure skater. Give him a break - Patrick didn't even know China was its own country til last week.***
Say this stuff loud and proud and Skate Canada has no problem. In fact, what could have been an - eh, there-goes-Patrick-again situation turned into crisis management (at last - Barb MacDonald had a crisis! You know that got added to her bullet-pointed credentials even before she sent her customary a.m. email to ice-network.com.) with Thompson talking and Barb talking and reporters who live in the SC tank prompted to get the SC spin out there.
A 24-hour news cycle event turned into a week (it's figure skating, so 24-hour is a little generous - how about 25 minutes). They took a skater's whine and blew it up to a posturing, grand-standing clusterfuck with at least two SC officials getting their names in print. What SC does best. Your government funding at work.
In the category of other things SC and the "skating community" thinks is just fine to put out there, I recently went looking for a Dube Davison article I remembered reading, where somebody working with them felt it important to tell us explicitly that they used to be "lovers". Not a "couple". "Lovers." Try as I might, I couldn't un-read it.
So I took some pepto-bismol and googled the article:
Ew
I don't understand - if "everyone knows it" then why does this person also add that "you have to say it." If we already know it, no, you don't. But basically what the fuck kind of article is this?
Skate Canada gets an almost pornographic enjoyment out of detailing the extreme closeness of "platonic" (or former lovers) figure skaters in their partnerships. First of all - since when is the sexual status of its figure skaters any business of a skating Fed let alone a component of its marketing? But Skate Canada wades right in with truly creepy enthusiasm, relishing every detail. We're told what's in the shared Weaver & Poje family breakfast tacos. We're informed about intimate marriage/sports counseling for platonic partners. Every five seconds Skate Canada sticks a thermometer up the rectum of some skating partnership and reports back with the blow-by-blow (not literally blow-by-blow, cause they're platonic, but you get what I'm going for here). And then they drop the chaser - they're PLATONIC.****
It keeps re-impressing me as a little off.
_________________________
*I know there's no excuse for that word and I also know why there's no excuse. That makes me a social anthropologist.
**Why do skaters get to pull the skater-ignorant card. What about the rest of us? "He's a figure skater - not a political scientist." Do vets, students, cops, office managers, personal trainers, nurses, etc. get to go there? "I don't know what that wet shit falling from the sky is called - I'm a UPS driver, not a meteorologist!"
***He'd assumed it was a region of the country of Asia.
****I think all of Skate Canada's skaters in skating partnerships were required to be microchipped if they were on the Vancouver Olympic track. This microchip is programmed to de-platonic them the second one or the other declares the intention to retire after an upcoming competition.
SC goes to quite a bit of facebook trouble also, to emphasize that within partnerships, sex ain't happening.
But this is fine for one of their figure skater's facebooks. (I read this last summer, so it had remained visible on Jessica Dube's fb for over 3 years.)
No un-vetted photo of Tessa/Scott or Jessica/Bryce ever makes it onto anyone's fb, but this thing sits right there.
It was in the "boxes" section of her fb. This screen capture doesn't have her name, but it was sitting in her fb with her name all over it and comments from her friends below it.
Yes, she's French Canadian but she did the quiz in English and slapped in asterisks and said "as a joke!" so she was fairly well having it both ways here. She knows.
I think back then Jessica was in what she terms a "gangsta-girly" fashion phase with the head wrap bandana and she also sported puffy gold earrings at times, and so the favorite word to say may have been part of the package.
I took the quiz so I could see the answers. I scored about where her friends scored - except for Bryce, who crushed the field and commented that he thinks Jessica may have lied on her quiz.
During the Patrick Chan pseudo-brouhaha about China, where it later emerged it's entirely the fault of selfish, unpatriotic corporate Canada that Skate Canada has shit for sponsors, it turned out Patrick Chan didn't realize there were human rights violations in China. Then people jumped in to say you barely have a history requirement in Canadian high schools so it's not his fault. And then it's mentioned the USA is almost as bad.
Well shit, then how did I find out about it? Oh that's right - when I was in school they taught me to read.
And come to find out - since I was aware that China had been accused of human rights violations - this makes me a political scientist. According to an attorney/backer who spoke up for Chan.**
Maybe it's making more sense why Debbi Wilkes speaks to the public as if they learned the alphabet song only yesterday.
But it's okay! Who cares if our figure skaters haven't got no education (even those who've applied to the University of Colorado). We not only don't care if everybody knows our skaters are ignorant - we'll defend it. He's a figure skater. Give him a break - Patrick didn't even know China was its own country til last week.***
Say this stuff loud and proud and Skate Canada has no problem. In fact, what could have been an - eh, there-goes-Patrick-again situation turned into crisis management (at last - Barb MacDonald had a crisis! You know that got added to her bullet-pointed credentials even before she sent her customary a.m. email to ice-network.com.) with Thompson talking and Barb talking and reporters who live in the SC tank prompted to get the SC spin out there.
A 24-hour news cycle event turned into a week (it's figure skating, so 24-hour is a little generous - how about 25 minutes). They took a skater's whine and blew it up to a posturing, grand-standing clusterfuck with at least two SC officials getting their names in print. What SC does best. Your government funding at work.
In the category of other things SC and the "skating community" thinks is just fine to put out there, I recently went looking for a Dube Davison article I remembered reading, where somebody working with them felt it important to tell us explicitly that they used to be "lovers". Not a "couple". "Lovers." Try as I might, I couldn't un-read it.
So I took some pepto-bismol and googled the article:
Ew
I don't understand - if "everyone knows it" then why does this person also add that "you have to say it." If we already know it, no, you don't. But basically what the fuck kind of article is this?
Skate Canada gets an almost pornographic enjoyment out of detailing the extreme closeness of "platonic" (or former lovers) figure skaters in their partnerships. First of all - since when is the sexual status of its figure skaters any business of a skating Fed let alone a component of its marketing? But Skate Canada wades right in with truly creepy enthusiasm, relishing every detail. We're told what's in the shared Weaver & Poje family breakfast tacos. We're informed about intimate marriage/sports counseling for platonic partners. Every five seconds Skate Canada sticks a thermometer up the rectum of some skating partnership and reports back with the blow-by-blow (not literally blow-by-blow, cause they're platonic, but you get what I'm going for here). And then they drop the chaser - they're PLATONIC.****
It keeps re-impressing me as a little off.
_________________________
*I know there's no excuse for that word and I also know why there's no excuse. That makes me a social anthropologist.
**Why do skaters get to pull the skater-ignorant card. What about the rest of us? "He's a figure skater - not a political scientist." Do vets, students, cops, office managers, personal trainers, nurses, etc. get to go there? "I don't know what that wet shit falling from the sky is called - I'm a UPS driver, not a meteorologist!"
***He'd assumed it was a region of the country of Asia.
****I think all of Skate Canada's skaters in skating partnerships were required to be microchipped if they were on the Vancouver Olympic track. This microchip is programmed to de-platonic them the second one or the other declares the intention to retire after an upcoming competition.
