Well, this is familiar

I went to yelp to look up reviews for the Moir family's Shoeless Joes.  The place didn't come off as terribly welcoming or appealing in the way Scott promoted it last season (in contrast to the Bungalow where Tessa, the owners and chef/cook went out of their way to present themselves well and communicate they cared about the promotion and cared about our business.)

I wanted to see if it was a different story in "real life."

On the yelp page I visited, Shoeless Joes  had three reviews and two of them had to make you laugh. I have the classic  lines in italics:

We have visited this location a number of times as it is close to home and work and one thing stands out. Service needs help. It usually starts out reasonably well but as the meal wears on, wait staff vanish. One of our party left before we were able to get her bill.

On an earlier visit, one member of the party gave up on food after the waitress went missing for 25 minutes. She seemed to be in the kitchen area chatting with other staff.

Open face steak sandwich was cooked properly and a reasonable value, Ruben received positive comments as did the Pulled Pork sandwich.

Food seems to be fine but service is lacking and will make us think twice before another visit.

and

Just doesn't do it for me - Found the food a bit greasy and the staff preoccupied with other things than serving me. Typical bar food fare which can be found (less greasy) elsewhere. On the bar side, good atmosphere - Standard sports bar look/feel.

Did Scott train the staff ? "Start out full of good intentions, promise them food, then AWOL!"

The Humane Society?

This is a minor wtf but it is certainly consistent with Scott and Tessa's tendency to live with a disconnect between what they say and what they do.

I was  reading a summary of the ice dance press conference after this past season's 4CCs in Japan. The skaters all said very nice things about their partners, and Scott in particular was quite touching when he spoke about having Tessa as a partner.

The skaters also talked about their charity work. Charity work is a privilege available to skaters whose lives are training and competing, versus skaters whose lives are training, competing, and earning money to subsidize their training.

So with that in mind, Scott/Tessa and Davis/White are involved with charities, and Madison Chock isn't - she's too busy coaching in her down time.

One of Scott and Tessa's charities is the Humane Society.

I'm going to guess that they don't donate a gazillion dollars to the Humane Society, but rather use their public profile to promote the Humane Society's core values and agenda.

Of course then on facebook in front of thousands of facebook "friends", Scott does this:

Here's Canada's Humane Society about marine mammals in captivity, with a specific focus on dolphins.

http://www.hsi.org/issues/captive_marine/

The Humane Society web page, needless to say, also has information about respecting wildlife habitat, which is certainly consistent with hiring a catamaran that's pumping fuel into a starfish bed while you jump out and manhandle yourself some starfish.

Here's some observations from an ordinary Canadian about Saona Island starfish:

When on a tour to Saona Island or when snorkeling at your hotel, please do not remove the starfish from the water. They can survive only 10 seconds out of the water, but if you see how many people travel from the Bayahibe Cove to Saona Island in a day, imagine if half or even a quarter of them do it and the damage that is being caused. You can see them fine if you keep them just below the surface and take yourself down to their level. Just because they don't scream or squirm doesn't meant that they aren't uncomfortable.
The water is crystal clear, so we don't actually even need to pick them up at all. You can see that in this picture which is taken from the boat: …webshots.com/photo/2637688010064234328YlDjOI If the reason that you are taking a picture of yourself with a starfish is because it's cool to see that form of wildlife up close and personal, please give it the opportunity at a good long life that should be the case living in that Caribbean paradise! Some people say that the starfish are planted there (not) and plastic because they're hard and unfamiliar feeling (not), but they are truly a living being and should be respected as that.
Just something to think about. I was spending some time this evening looking at various pictures on the internet and found myself becoming angry seeing how many shots there were of people putting them on their heads and holding them out of the water and smiling.

You know where this woman is different from Scott and Tessa: "Just something to think about." She bothers. They don't. About so many things. They are template "Do as we say, not as we do" types.

 Anon Tourist photo from Saona Island

I'm not being picayune. I didn't make them adopt the Humane Society as one of their charitable causes. And unless they're idiots, they know the Humane Society is more than just cats, dogs and bunnies.

I know it's a pain in the ass to live according to your tree hugger principles, but nobody forced Scott and Tessa to support the Humane Society, and it's a little weird that in the few times Scott actually appears in public around anything to do with the animal kingdom it ends up romanticizing animal exploitation.

I wonder if there's any area in their non-skating lives whatseover - whatsoever - where what they say and what they do actually match.

P.S. The Humane Society isn't anti-food chain, it's just anti-exploitation and abuse, and it's pro-respect.

That last might be the part Scott struggles with.

Celebrities who have fucked up on twitter

While it goes without saying that very few public figures are as experienced in the realm of celebrity as the Moirs and their friend Heather, below the blog lists a few high profile personalities who have blundered badly on twitter despite working with a matrix of professional managers and public relations representatives, and despite years and years in the spotlight. Their tweets created a backlash, and required public relations mojo to get their asses out of a sling. Their twitter blunders weren't just what they said and how they said it. It includes what they favorited and photos they posted.

1. Alec Baldwin
2. Ashton Kutchner
3. Jim Carey
4. Kenneth Cole (the company)
5. Rep. Anthony Weiner
6. Al Roker(!)
7. Sarah Palin
8. Kim Kardashian
9. Gilbert Gottfried (he tweeted himself out of a job)
10. Lisa Lampanelli
11. Hope Solo
12. Chris Johnson of the Titans (He blasted fans)
13. Paris Hilton (hers was epic)
14. 50cent
15. Scott Baio

There are businesses and services that have sprung up to put out twitter fires and contain fallout and prevent mistakes from recurring. That's how prone even thoroughly media trained personalities working for professional organizations with actual functioning credentialed qualified hard working technologically savvy public relations departments are to fucking up on twitter.

Most athletes are on twitter because everyone is on twitter versus being on twitter to advance a specific agenda of perpetuating their own lies while discrediting people - through garden variety belittling plus a few fake photos -  who are actually telling the truth.

Furthermore, it's doubtful that if these athletes were trying to proactively discredit other people who are telling the truth, in order to perpetuate their own hoax, that it would be their own fan base and supporters that they were targeting. Ask Chris Johnson how that went over.

This is a fabulous plan of action to undertake free-style on a public social media platform that attracts an international subscriber base numbering in the millions and is also consistently monitored by mainstream media and gossip pages. I'm sure the Moirs will show everyone how it's done.

Do Carol Moir and PJ Kwong hope @casshilborn gives Scott a beautiful daughter?

For the record:

I snap-birded skating_Heather9's tweets to see why Carol Moir, with her private twitter account, and PJ Kwong decided to be one of her whopping 10 followers.

After all, it's not often that the entire fucking twitterverse has more common sense than these two high profile Skate Canada members but this is one of those times.

What am I saying, there are dead plants with more common sense than this crowd.

Heather hasn't done much tweeting and she's a one-topic gal. What tweets of hers appealed to Carol Moir and PJ Kwong?

This one?

Cause the baby Tessa gave him is ugly and fictitious, correct, PJ and Carol?

also:

Oh. The child is a thing, as well as not being real.

I look at all of those athletes with their babies and young children up on the banner and wonder how many of them would green light their child being dragged through twitter like this just to score points off some fans on the web. Or which of these athletes would allow their families to support that.

I suspect none of them. I think this is just another way Scott and Tessa are "unique."

The kid isn't even three and already is a pawn the Moirs are using to piss on the segments of the public on social media who have the nerve to say this child exists.

Suddenly social media counts? They confuse me.

And any time there's a chance to take a shot at Meryl, well, you don't have to ask twice.

Heather links to this blog. Because Carol and the rest of the Moirs just hate the blog that much, they follow someone who links to it.

They are egging on a poster/troll perfectly willing to use a little child - MOCK a little child - as a weapon to taunt the public on twitter.

Carol is this kid's great aunt.

That's right, Toddler Moir, you are an it. Nobody has ever seen you.

Fake, genderless child. That's fucking cold, Carol.

Let me point out, Carol Moir, that Scott and Tessa's baby, marriage, and fan denials re same are explicitly discussed on one place - this blog. It's a dedicated blog people have to visit intentionally.

OTOH, Heather is trashing and mocking this child's existence on a public account on a social media platform with millions and millions of subscribers. At least ten public search engines exist to retrieve tweets from twitter archives. They don't go away when they're off twitter's own timeline.

Heather is a stranger (to the child, and to Carol Moir) and an idiot who is merrily having sport with this little kid's parentage, identity, gender and validity, on a public twitter account, using the child and her self-positioning as a Scott Moir insider to taunt whoever comes upon her account. Carol ups and joins twitter and first thing, decides to encourage Heather.

Congratulations on your fabulous judgment and maturity. Take some new bird-flipping profile pictures, Carol. Perhaps you can make that the new logo on the Ilderton Skating Club's next run of florescent-colored sweatshirts.

Oh, and PJ - you represent SC, which is at least partially run on public funds. You're not Scott and Tessa's personal pr rep. So maybe gaslighting the public on twitter out of a misbegotten sense of discretion isn't the appropriate choice. At least don't enable a troll. And ignorance, your fallback position, is, IMO, a limited utility excuse. After all, as Heather says:

While Heather overstates the relationship, yes. Yes PJ would.

So this:

is very not cool, PJ, as is this:

Yes, Heather is a sensible person.

Which of course means Heather's got the smarts of a bag of rocks, why else would brain trusts like PJ and Carol Moir relate?

Hear that Toddler Moir? Your daddy is going to marry and have gorgeous babies with @casshilborn, your mommy isn't daddy's type, isn't as gorgeous as @casshilborn, and your mommy is a bit too princessy.

You know what I know for a fact? Even if Tanith Belbin were hiding her fucking DOG from the public she would not permit this kind of callous, revolting name-and-existence-in-vain horror on fucking public TWITTER. Even while hiding her dog's existence she wouldn't endorse this as Carol Moir has endorsed Heather. She has more fucking respect for her dog, D.J., than Moirville shows Scott and Tessa's child on the biggest social media platform on the planet.

Because you know the only thing Moirville respects? Their egos. That's what this is about.

Speaking of respect:

Yes. Very disrespectful. You see, respect, that's a thing Scott, Tessa, PJ, et al, are entitled to receive. It's definitely not something they need to show others.

I kind of feel that Moirville may have vibed with this Heather tweet:

and Toddler Moir will appreciate this in a few years:

Just in case the photos TM sees one day are unsettling, let it be known a total stranger who has Great Aunt Carol's approval saw them like this.

That's right TM, nobody knows if you are male or female. Carol Moir and PJ think this is a sensible comment. Also, mommy is single, so guys can still try and figure if they can angle daddy for her phone number.

I'm sure he'll be happy to pass her number along. If he even has it. According to his and mommy's interviews, neither knows for sure if the other is going to be at practice til they arrive at the rink, so maybe Daddy doesn't have mommy's number.

Maybe it was this tweet that appealed to Carol. It trashes Meryl Davis:

You know what I've always noticed about Moirville: for a bunch of hypersensitive, self-protective "adults" with obvious chips on their shoulders and easily affronted egos, who cry over themselves at the drop of a hat, they certainly don't shy away from dragging others - now including a toddler - through the mud if they think it gets them up on points. They're sensitive when it comes to themselves, but their brutality is hair-raising when it comes to others, including what they co-sign on twitter regarding a small person not yet three.

And any time there's a chance to take a shot at Meryl, well, you don't have to ask twice.

There's more but I'm taking a break before I add them. I feel a little nauseous.

P.S. I actually think they do this because they're only sensitive to themselves, not others, and they think this is funny. What's serious? Their egos. They have their priorities sorted, we can see that all over this twitter.

And of course, if there were no baby and no marriage, Carol would follow some random twitter twit with about 100 tweets and 9 followers who was babbling on compulsively about a bunch of stupid as fuck rumors. Right?

The brains - they were doled out sparingly in the Ilderton community.

You kind of have to wonder if Heather's passive aggressive digs at "princessy" Tessa isn't a way for Carol to express her own attitude via a surrogate like Heather. After all, an entire community has to be re-directed with this sham - that's some kind of mega boundary issue. Which probably wouldn't exist at all if Tessa weren't so princessy and in need of boundaries. The Moirs could all crawl straight into bed with Scott and Tessa and advise/give feedback 24-7. So maybe it feels good to Carol to have some of her feelings expressed through Heather.

Although it's hard to figure what appeals to her about mocking a two year old. But then, it's only a two year old. Big deal. It's not like it's Moirville that's being mocked.

P.P.S. It was more then 10 years ago, but it's hard to forget that back then, Alma Moir, no mere "fan", but a prominent skating insider, cavalierly "outed" Brian Boitano to a journalist without a qualm. This is a woman who has subsequently aided and abetted an extensive, pro-active social media jack-off on her son's supporters and fans all to occupy and entertain herself and her family and conceal her son's legitimate marriage and child from those not worthy enough to know about it. Boitano has never discussed his private life, but that didn't stop Alma from exposing what she believed about his private life to score points for Canadian skating. Has Moirville changed at all since then?

And - some other Moirville moron doubtless failed their due diligence and recommended Carol jump on Heather's twitter, and, without doing her own due diligence, Carol did so, because the internet is a place you can be reckless - even if you have no idea what you're doing, and why, because the rest of us are sure to be stupider, correct, Moirville?

What recommended Heather's twitter to Moirville? Was it her playing fast and loose with the existence of Toddler Moir? Was it her fawning over how hot Scott is with Cassandra?

Or was it her continually taunting Scott and Tessa supporters and fans who have the affrontery to possess brain power stronger than a 10 watt light bulb? I suspect it was that.

So to repeat.

Scott and Tessa are married, they have a young child. That is the truth.

Moirville has spent a lot of time having sport on the internet, pretending this isn't true. Their activities have been characterized by horrible taste, sour grapes, a mean streak, stings, set-ups, a fucking freight train of passive aggression, and enjoyment in mocking and having sport with those who support figure skating and support Scott and Tessa.

They've been called out here, and occasionally elsewhere, and they think they're entitled to a double standard - they can proactively jerk people around, but their targets aren't allowed to react or Moirville will turn around and pretend to be put upon victims.

So, weasels.

And as horrible as they've been demonstrated to be at all things internet, especially when it comes to the sham, they still can't keep their fingers out of the pie. When anyone would common sense would simply maintain the status quo, or, even better, just shut up, they stir the shit. They are unbelieveable.

Why now so shy?

Let's be real. If Scott and Cassandra wanted a "private relationship" Cassandra wouldn't put him on as her profile pic, and she wouldn't be on twitter and neither would Charlie and his wife.

You know the old bit about Winston Churchill (think it was him) telling some lady "we're just negotiating price" when she was offended at being thought a lady pro, but had no problem hooking up for a million or so. (I'll look up the correct anecdote later - is it Churchill, is it Oscar Wilde, or is it George Benard Shaw? Other?)

So IOW, Scott and Cassandra aren't being discreet. It's pretend discreet. It's the same old bullshit. Hey look who I'm fucking! My kid won't mind this at all!

So let's look at Cassandra's latest profile picture:


Here it is:

Oops, my bad.

Cassandra Hilborn's  facebook profile photo, June 2013.
Scott Moir and girlfriend, Cassandra Hilborn, 2013.

There ya go, Toddler Moir. Daddy on the beach with his latest girlfriend.  Twitter says he wants to marry her after Sochi. You'll be three - maybe you can be in the wedding.

Cassandra, like his prior girlfriend (Jessica, the one he almost married) really really really really likes to pretend your mommy doesn't exist. Also? Like the other girlfriend, she seems to really love her job.

Some fans think it doesn't have to be Scott in the picture, but it's Scott. We all know his silhouette by now.

Before observing how prissy Scott has become compared to the olden days whoring himself out for the sham, a question must be turned over to all observers - WTF with the feet? They've got shoes on. Is Scott in black socks and platform sneakers? Is it rocks?

What happened to the good old days, when Scott was merely planning to marry, compete in the Olympics with, and then procreate with, Tessa Virtue, instead of now, when he's married to and raising a child with her (and her mother - shades of G&G).

The good old days:

Scott with Jessica Dube, 2009. Less than six months before Scott
married Tessa, less than a year before Tessa was pregnant with
their child. These photos exist because of those planned events.
The way to honor and protect something precious to you is to
degrade it in public. Scott learned that at church. Tessa learned
that in psychology class at Windsor U.

Look at that. Bare feet, bare body contact, beach. Toddler Moir wasn't yet with us, but was, at the least, most definitely a twinkle in soon-to-be Daddy's eye. These photos are less than two years prior to Toddler Moir's birth and less than six months prior to Scott's wedding to Tessa.

But these days Scott prefers twitter to tell rather than show, and he apparently sees distinctions between what's appropriate when you're committed, engaged, in love and planning a family in the near future and what's appropriate when you're actually married and the child is here.

They certainly were committed to making us believe back then. Maybe that's a secondary meaning of those Ilderton Skating Club sweatshirts. Believe they are platonic. Believe Scott is in love with Cassandra.

It makes you wonder where the limits actually were and are. Absolutely nothing is as important to them as maintaining control of this story and being right, and maintaining the power position, even though they are, you know, in the wrong. They've lied, they've fucked fans over, they've run a scam and a hoax, and they continue to be mightily pissed fans are uppity enough to push back.

For real, that interests me. Is it a caste thing? Would they be pissed if they'd scammed some other entity and got push back? Like police officers? A mortgage broker? The tax department? Airline security?

But fans are supposed to lie down and be rolled over, after they've pulled out their wallets?

Moirville will live and die to prove their "rights" to do what they did to and with fans. Just looking at those Jessica photos I wonder where the lines really are. It seems more important than anything. Would Scott go so far as to make his and Tessa's lies TRUE just so Moirville could be right?

Who knows. He's got no balls when it comes to Moirville. They've got him by the short hairs. For years now they or something has had the power to make Scott treat himself with disrespect.

P.S. - Looking at the past two Canadian championships, it's obvious Skate Canada threw VM under the bus. That won't change in the upcoming season; Benoit Lavoie has hired on a Canadian Tire marketing dude as CEO (to be fair, how many Wharton graduates were chafing at the bit for the job?).

But Skate Canada doesn't want to throw itself under the bus. Wouldn't it look odd if Kaitlyn and Andrew came clean (or at least didn't deny) about being a couple after all the nonsense from Scott and Tessa? I wonder if SC is behind W&P's past year's re-assertion of being platonic.

Benoit Lavoie - he's made no secret of his plan to work with the ISU after leaving the presidency. I wonder if he's stocked SC with empty suits like Wilkes and Thompson (Dan), so SC will have nobody with the weight and savvy to challenge what the ISU is doing with DW vis a vis VM? IOW before he's even left he's selling out his own skaters to enhance his standing with his future colleagues?

Things that won't exist

When Scott and Tessa's actual status is reported, whether it's back-doored or front-doored, the narrative will go like this:

Scott and Tessa very young, very sensitive, fierce competitors, fiercely protective of family.

Fans - uber fans, uber intrusive, uber barrier-breaching, overly familiar. Examples of inappropriate fan behavior - isolated examples - will be dredged up to represent the whole.

And that will be it - if it's discussed at all.

What won't exist:

• Jessica's facebook - never existed
• Scott's fanpage
• Menage a Trois sur la Glace
• Debbi Wilkes and Skate Canada personnel and other skaters staging a sham photo call at the Olympics after the free dance
• Debbi supervising sham mise en scenes at Canadians gala practices
• Jessica in a horse-drawn buggy paraded like a prize pig down Ilderton's main street
• Things like Jessica trolling for autographs accompanied by prison matrons Kate Virtue and Alma Moir at the GPF in Quebec with an assist from Skate Canada volunteers
• Barb MacDonald using Above the Crowd and twitter for sham promotion
• Jessica front and center with the Moirs at all Canadian competitions in the Olympic year while none of the North American national broadcast media acknowledged her presence (even though she'd been a high profile subject of several media profiles at the same events) and instead identified people around her, all while the same national broadcast media highlighted other romantic relationships among other athletes.
• Our Journey from Childhood Dream to Gold
• Steve Milton's many comments to the public about how Scott and Tessa are platonic and the public is deluded
• The mise en scene at Skate Canada (with Semple)
• Alma's facebook
• Cassandra's facebook
• Cassandra's twitter
• Scott and Tessa's skype from Paris, about staying in Paris an extra day
• PJ's lies
• withdrawing from the 4CC's in 2011 and why
• The blog doesn't exist

If fan suspicions are dealt with at all, it will be under "although rumors".

That's a LOT of public domain stuff, most of it put out by Scott and Tessa themselves, slated to be ignored by the official media. It says a lot about how official media protects what it believes to be its turf. Which, in turn, protects Scott and Tessa.

If any of Scott and Tessa's dirtier antics reach mainstream media, the mainstream media will treat it as information they picked up independently, not as information that has been discussed by fans for three straight years on public platforms. Mainstream media dislikes when the public gets a jump on it just as much as Moirville dislikes having their behavior towards fans called out and criticized in public by fans.

This is a power struggle, pure and simple. It's not about privacy. Scott and Tessa behave intimately in public, do a bridal magazine photo shoot, are open enough that anybody with a few degrees of separation can get the basics confirmed.  Enough fans know so that using "we have to keep it a secret from skating fans!" holds no water. And ironically - and IMO unsurprisingly - when fans know they immediately become more circumspect and respectful than they may be when they don't know.

It's a power struggle. That's all this is. It's not about the information.

Moirville (and those surrounding them, and Skate Canada, and Scott and Tessa) do not subscribe to "do unto others".  They are "because we are who we are, we can do whatever the fuck we want to and with fans, and fans better not push back." Boy, the pissiness about the push back!

The blog started because of how Moirville behaved. As the blog has said repeatedly, they treated supposedly sacred, private matters as sport. They entertained themselves with the sham. They laughed in fans faces with the sham. It was a pretext to mock, prank, trick and fuck with well-intentioned people, something that Moirs enjoy doing as a sideline, as is characteristic of most people who are very secure in themselves.

The excesses of the sham themselves were both about Moirville's need to be overinvolved with Scott and Tessa, but also about Moirville exploiting what they believed to be the parochial assumptions of stupid fans. Stupid fans believe that a married man and a dad would never pose kissing another woman on the lips, napping with her, having her on his lap, cooing back and forth on social media. An engaged man probably wouldn't do that shit either, not even as part of a hoax. It's just gross, and has so much blowback for his new family and his planned family.

What better reason to do it! Fans think they wouldn't be that gross. Well, they WILL be that gross!  As long as fans don't know the true state of things or don't have it confirmed, for some reason Moirville thinks it makes it less gross, instead of what it is. A married man posing like that to fuck with people. Dude. You're still posing like that, and you're still married, so it counts as disgusting. WE have nothing to do with it. It's you and what you're doing.

The entertainment and the skating media are happy to tell Scott and Tessa that fans are dreamers who wish they were together, cuing Scott and Tessa to throw cold water on fans' dreams. Scott and Tessa still get asked. Years on, you'd think journalists would pretend they couldn't ask anymore because the subject was tired, but nope, here it comes again.

Overall the interview pattern pushes fans into the role of stooge. It doesn't matter how repetitive things get, continually painting fans as a bunch of yahoos who can't separate reality from fantasy never gets old.

Fans are under one misconception - they think the media is adversarial to the public figure.That's not true. In entertainment, that's never true. They're adversarial to US. We're just the $$. They're on the side of the public figure. They want to preserve access, they like having all the story, the story behind the story, they like knowing the gossip, they like the not-for-publication stuff. The "preserve access" stuff is real, but it's also a way to divide the elites from the not-elites. We've seen this with mere fan "insiders" who have ten shit fits when the sacred info becomes more widely known. The more people know, the less "insider" they feel.

The entertainment and skating media are unwilling to ask Scott and Tessa about the fact that many fans say they are married with a child and lying about it. Straight up - ask it so they can deny it. Put it on fans. Say fans are saying you guys are married and have a child. It doesn't matter that it's not all fans. Not all fans confused Scott and Tessa's "characters on the ice" with their real lives - in fact, almost no fans did. That didn't stop the media from focusing on the beliefs of a bunch of fans that Scott, Tessa and the journalist totally made up.

This marriage-and-baby rumor is real. It''s a perfect club to beat us with. So ask! Blame us! Have a laugh amongst yourselves, as you enjoy so much.

P.J. has a sense of humor. Imagine if someone tweeted that Tanith and Ben were married with a kid, or Meryl and Charlie married with a kid. Wouldn't P.J. simply say no, or laugh, or have fun with it, versus getting sanctimonious, high-horsing it, and acting like the rumor was seriously inappropriate?

We didn't say Scott and Tessa ATE a child, P.J.

It's said they HAVE a child. Inside a lawful marriage.

What P.J. finds seriously inappropriate is mere fans pushing back against the crap.

Otherwise, what is so offensive? As a lie, or a foolish fantasy, it makes fans look ridiculous. Scott loves that. Their favorite media stooges love that. Scott loves bringing up fan misconceptions. He loves making up fan misconceptions to belittle and dismiss. There is no figure skater alive with Scott Moir's commitment to telling us what we think about him and Tessa. He's incessant. One wonders where he gets his convictions about what we think about him, seeing as he and Tessa are never on social media and live in a bubble. Maybe via the same efficient, VM-specific osmosis filter that told him we'd confused Tessa with Carmen (right after he'd finished telling us fans thought Tessa couldn't skate Carmen because they were nothing alike).

They were willing to tell us some fans thought Tessa was like Carmen - that's pretty fucking #crazy, isn't it? That's insulting, what it suggests about Tessa - basically that she's a treachorous slut. Nobody shrank from asking that on the grounds that they didn't want to give it credibiltiy. In fact, Scott and Tessa made the issue up and arranged that it be asked.

If it weren't true, what would be offensive about asking them about how fans say they're lying and they're actually married with a child? That's actually just another hilarious example of fan fantasy and there's nothing the skating media and Scott and Tessa enjoy talking about more than that.

Why did P.J. act like we wanted her to ask Scott if he beat Tessa or something? She was asked if she would ask them about the very kind of hysterically funny obsessive fan delusion that Scott and Tessa LOVE to laugh about. Why wasn't PJ laughing?

Also about power (catching up)

This weekend I'll get more up to speed but for now I've been side-eying everything since P.J. Kwong answered "Heather" that she's never heard the "rumor" that Scott and Tessa are married with a child, and she would never ask them something so crazy, and she finished up with a hashtag called #stopthemadness.

What we have there is a self-styled journalist who claims she doesn't want to give credibility to something by asking Scott and Tessa about it.

P.J. knows this story to be true.

So what does P.J. really not want to make credible? The source. That's all it is. She knows the rumor is true. But talking about it is their perogative, not ours. We're not allowed.

It's not the credibility of the content she doesn't want to acknowledge. She doesn't think fans have the right to push back. That's what she doesn't want to credit. If they start talking about what fans say, especially actual things fans say, Scott and Tessa & their stooges think they are disempowering themselves.

And elsewhere, Skate Canada has a new CEO. His first order of business even prior to taking over (which will be June 17) was to declare Skate Canada one of the most professionally managed sports organizations in the country. That's a pretty mean fucking thing to imply about the Canadian sports industry.

This new CEO, Dan Thompson, is a former olympian, and a marketing guy, which means they've put a marketing guy, not an experienced businessman or organization man, or experienced manager, in as CEO of a national skating governing body.

Marketing guys aren't trained in performance, functionality, or organizational management and development.

They're experienced in image and presentation. Clearly, those in charge of the CEO search felt that Skate Canada had no issues on the management end, and in fact, needs no operations management at the top at all, despite the CEO title. Keep that vacant!

As a marketing guy, when confronted with an organization as mismanaged as Skate Canada, the first thing he does even prior to taking over is announce that the organization is as professionally run as any similar organization in Canada. Which - how does he KNOW? He hasn't even started, and management isn't his area. So the integrity - already pretty impressive.

But saying this covers his ass coming and going - lets people think Skate Canada is professionally managed, but if people think it's not, well then, it's no more fucked up than every other sports organization in the country.

Good job, Dan!

So Skate Canada has announced it's all about image, not performance. That's the only problem it perceives in how things have been done in the past.

Good performance actually drives a good image, but we're talking Skate Canada here - they've never been good at making the connections.

I'm waiting for the Paul-and-Piper-and-Debbi antics to resume as standard-bearer for Skate Canada's professional bona fides and its credentials as an organization run by qualified personnel.

Back to P.J. - P.J. knows Scott and Tessa are married and have a child, and she knew Scott and Tessa had a baby when they withdrew from the 4CCs. So she's basically posing as a monkey - see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. She never knows anything, if you notice. Everything the most random fan brings to her attention is always news to her. Figure skating is one of the most accessible sports there is at her level. She has all the scuttlebutt, she rubs elbows with all of the skaters, she knows everybody, has for years, Scott and Tessa's actual status is no secret in the "community" and she, especially, is part of the infrastructure, but she never knows anything.

Her answering Heather IMO reflects the hostility some in the skating community feel about a nobody calling out Scott and Tessa on their status and their lies.

Of course what the blog actually did was call them out on their behavior. The lie itself wasn't the problem.

The righteousness those who "protect" Scott and Tessa feel about Scott and Tessa stems, IMO, from many of them, like P.J., refusing to recognize what Scott and Tessa do on social media. I was going to say what they do 'second hand' on social media, but it's not second hand. It's directed by them and simply under someone else's name.

On social media, Scott and Tessa have treated fans like garbage. On social media, they have not conducted themselves like the super private, super sensitive, hothouse flowers those around them (like P.J.) pretend they are, protecting what is personal to them.

That sanctimony is bullshit. We all know it. They have used their personal life as bait to fuck with fans and mock them. They've used their "secrets" as sport, and they've used fans eagerness to connect as a manipulative tool. Most of what they've done has obviously gone far beyond the boundaries of what they would need to protect what is personal to them. As we have all seen, they don't want to be left alone. When the topic of their relationship has quieted down, they agitate the waters. Of course, P.J. knows nothing about this. Nothing. She knows nothing at all. She never knows anything. I'm amazed people ever ask her anything on twitter.

If they are protecting anything that is personal to them it is the relationship Scott and Tessa have with Moirville. That relationship is not our fucking problem and we should not be scapegoated for it. But I can definitely see Moirville (many of whom belong to Skate Canada) resenting that the blog has talked about this relationship and speculated that their own overinvestment in Scott and Tessa and their own boundary issues have blown up the sham past where privacy requires. Their image of themselves is as better than the rest. Ilderton as Shangri-La. The people of Ilderton have better values, more character. But they way they have treated the fans on facebook from day one is the style of a bunch of insensitive, juvenile, mean girl boors. They are the classic dish it out/can't take it.

Moirville can't even make Shoeless Joes feel welcoming when its own gold medalist steps up and promotes it in a what's great about London video. We all saw it - it came off about as welcoming as the biker bar in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I think it's because Moirville inherently hates having to treat outsiders as important, and when you're doing a promo video for a sports bar, you kind of have to. They couldn't quite bring themselves to go there.

This is where social media protects them. Mainstream media hates social media, mostly because it gives the market a voice. You know Jimmy Kimmel's segment "Mean Tweets" where celebrities read mean stuff said about them in the twitter-verse? Some roll with it, some flip the tweeter off, some seem honestly pissed (Ray Romano).

*I* think - what the hell is the problem? People in the public eye have used media to sell to US for years, and what they sell is based on many unflattering opinions of "us". They've used media to lie, to misrepresent, and to spin. They use the media to talk about the public, the "market", the "demos", often in extremely dismissive and disparaging ways, possibly because all of us reading this stuff think they're talking about somebody else.

The hate for social media among many in the public eye and in the media stems, IMO, from the simple fact that the public can talk back. They'd love social media to be a tool only available to professionals.

We're not, as it seems some in the media imagined for years, reading what the professionals in the media are saying and allowing ourselves to be influenced as much. This is a source of resentment for people in the public eye, media professionals (like Aaron Sorkin) who think a platform must be 'earned'. They don't think they should have to compete with the great unwashed for the attention of the public. They're mad that they're now just another voice in a sea of voices. The narrative is a two way street. It's supposed to be one-way.

What this means is Scott and Tessa can show the worst of themselves on social media and it won't make a dent in their official persona. Nobody will ever recognize what they do on social media. There are people in figure skating who know what they do on social media, and people who don't. The ones who do will pretend they don't know.

They don't want fans to feel empowered. That's also part of it. It's a very cottage industry sport, media wise, and they're unaccustomed to answering to anyone and they sure aren't going to start now.

The point isn't that they need to answer to the blog. But they are really out on a limb if they feel entitled to straight up pretend they've never heard the "rumor" that Scott and Tessa are married and have a small child, and someone like P.J. feels comfortable gaslighting fans on the subject, or at least pretending that Scott and Tessa are so special she's justified outright lying instead of ignoring the question. This is entitlement. It's not how a professional "wordsmith" or a professional working in pr would behave, because even in social media, people cover their ass. They don't come straight out and hang themselves up with a lie, as PJ has done. Her justification is the very special status and circumstances of Scott and Tessa, which IMO is an attitude that can only exist in a sport like figure skating.

Finally, Charlie Moir is now on twitter, of course following @CassHillborn and vice versa. That's why he's there. It seems to me Hilborn's tweets are "too" protected. Charlie and Nicole have joined primarily to follow Cassandra, have a "restricted" (but not identical) list of followers, so more fans have access to what's being disseminated re Cassandra and Scott.