Terms of Engagement

I don't know why I've become more squeamish with time instead of more jaded but I'm not listening to above referenced podcast. Scott is 33 years old. Late this summer (and this summer apparently is not as likely for his "wedding" as the following summer) he will be 34. He doesn't seem pressed. 

His eldest will be going on eleven.

For about 14 years or so Scott and Tessa have had a cycle of fake relationships - Scott more than Tessa. But Scott is approaching his mid-thirties and Tessa is right behind him. Scott's been in a holding pattern with his latest ever since he announced she was a "fiancee'" in an incredibly plausible stunt executed in front of a hometown crowd all of whom knew he was lying. 

When part of your image is small town Canadian and you are most emphatically - don't you ever think differently - absolutely the straightest guy for miles, you are gonna have to get yourself married. Scott's getting a little into the old maid, Waity Katy territory now (not that I thought Waity Katy ever made sense/was fair vis a vis Kate Middleton). Even his charming fiancee', a year or so his senior, has a first marriage under her belt, so at least she got her feet wet. As their home town Hall of Fame gambit illustrated, the time for contractual girlfriend relationships has past. I don't think he can be rotating different fake fiancees in and out of his social media as he did fake girlfriends so I'm curious where they think the drop dead line is and what's next. At some point while he's still on the fresher side of 35 he has to pull the trigger in one direction or the other. Those directions seem to be bluster on through with the fake or cut the shit. Naturally their every instinct would be Option 1, but I see pitfalls. 

What I really want is the whole nine yards - fake wedding, fake marriage, and then fake kids. Although this prospect lines up perfectly with the characteristic Moir/Virtue level of taste, judgment and decency, I feel the logistics are tricky. Look at Scott buying himself an additional year and a half before he has to think about it.

The past few - more than a few - years have demonstrated we don't have to worry about the entertainment media, whose capacity for complicity is infinite.

Scott on what I think is a morning radio show. He's asked about his best Canadian memory and unleashes a classic Scott Moir verklempt:

Ah well I mean ... don't get me emotional here on a Friday morning. Umm, Tessa and I were so blessed to be able to represent this country and to and uh any time I can think about taking her hand and skating to center ice ... it's just - now that we've had a little bit of distance looking back we realize how fortunate we really were... my favorite memory will always be uh the flag in her hand and one of her hands in mine and my hand on her shoulder and walking into the opening ceremonies of 2018 and looking back and seeing our teammates and uh - much like this campaign, knowing what this campaign and Canada represents.*

Very sweet, though the promotional pivot at the end is so on the nose it looks too much like Scott really thought he did something. I wonder if Scott has hit the stage of his public life where he's imitating his greatest hits. Just turns it on. With the added embellishment in this instance of laying it on with the accent so thick he sounds like a refugee from Fargo. That's not even Canadian..

*I'm not good visualizing three dimensions while reading in two. But Scott's holding hands with Tessa and another one of his hands is on her shoulder seems awkward.

P.S. rather than tacking on another comment just putting this P.S.

The Moirs are parochial and have a high opinion of themselves. Who you are is shown in action and the tactics during Scott and Tessa's decade and a half of lies have shown a malicious, mocking and self-satisfied stripe. There's now a Gadbois outpost stocked with Moirs and a prospective Ilderton training center. Are these people going to leave themselves on the back foot at this time? "Yeah, we scammed, lied and mocked you! Go ahead and judge us!"

I don't expect the Gadbois outpost to last that long but while it does there is no way Scott and Tessa admit anything. They probably won't admit anything on a matter of principle, but definitely not while the Moirs are up-status-ing their training careers.

Come se dice in English? Happy Ano Nuevo!

The Hilaria Baldwin expose (The Streisand Effect) is lots of fun, but it's worth mentioning the details have been out there for a long time. Her former classmates have been fact checking her actual background on different forums for years. She apparently competed around Boston in Latin Dance competitions on school breaks (not soaking up Spanish authenticity in upscale, expat-dense Mallorca, where her parents didn't relocate until 2011.). People who knew her pre-NYC knew her as Hillary Hayward Thomas and her parents as affluent Boston professionals. Never knew her to employ a wobbly Spanish accent that doesn't in the least sound Mallorqui or Catalan.

Alec Baldwin waxed creepily white-knighish in her defense on his own social media but himself has been hyping the "my wife is from Spain" meme for years in interviews. I don't think he was catfished - he knew. An adorable, "exotic" "European" (I threw out my TV! Who ees Alejandro Baldwin? Haf some vegan soup! I don't like drama!") younger wife whose NYU attendance thus makes her "internationally" educated is a more marketable credential than a basic trust fund baby from Boston.

She can rename herself what she wants. OTOH, gambits such as claiming she's mistaken for the nanny when she's out with her kids ("We need to do better") while her WASP ancestry pre-dates the Mayflower and she grew up on Boston's Beacon Hill*, or using MLK day as a social media teaching moment about color by holding her spray-tanned arm against her daughter's pale one makes the concepts of offensive, entitled and audacity feel inadequate.

Her facade got blown up via her response to an Amy Schumer tweet in which she neglected to use her accent, prompting another twitter account to comment on her "decades long grift" pretending to be Spanish. The floodgates opened and twitter came with receipts. I don't know why that was the tipping point.

Tessa Virtue connection - Nivea sponsored Hilaria Baldwin's most recent miscarriage post (the one prior to the birth of her fifth child). So there's the standards. I didn't know the sponsored post game had gone that low.

Naturally, Hilaria has been hyping projects based on the importance of one's individual authenticity and comfort in one's own skin. Like other influencers we know.

Right wing publications like The Federalist love to take the foibles of virtue signaling left wing celebrity progressives to undermine progressive values, but these observations about the corrupt entertainment media are not wrong: 

Domenech and Jashinksy agree that the media’s role in attempting to defend the celebrity shows publications’ corruption and unwillingness to provide accurate coverage to their audiences. 

***

In the aughts, bloggers like Perez Hilton earned a lot of money and a lot of backlash for harsh coverage of celebrities. Some of that backlash was warranted. But now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Rather than treating celebrities neutrally, the entertainment media treats them reflexively as protagonists. (See: the early coverage of Jussie Smollett’s hoax.)

No surprise Hilaria's "defense" has been gaslighty, but people aren't having it. That's because the media isn't helping her, absent the predictable NY Times. I didn't think the media would go in this hard on Baldwin, but she's been wading in cultural appropriation waters for one, and for two, I don't believe the media actively knew differently about her. For three, once on the scent, acquiring receipts takes no effort - poof, here's her yearbook, the home where she grew up, a few quotes from former neighbors. Baldwin was able to perpetuate her scam for over a decade because the media just took what she said about her background on face value. 

That's not the case with Tessa and Scott and the Canadian entertainment media which has enthusiastically cooperated with Tessa and Scott's con for well over a decade. That's where the points made by (sadly) The Federalist hit their target. CTV, for example, captioned Jackie Mascarin as Scott Moir's "fiancee'" knowing he's married to Tessa. This decades long complicity will complicate any coverage of their actual status. But we can be sure of a tidal wave of straw men and gaslighting.

Think about a guy on stage with his wife at a hometown Hall of Fame ceremony announcing his engagement to another woman while his own mom stood by lending her "authenticity" and the majority of those present knew this for the scam it was but kept their mouths shut or were denied an outlet to report what they knew. This is the sort of thing the Canadian entertainment complex has promoted and enabled. Where does that fall on the spectrum of audacity?

*Not to mention her boob implants, obvious 00 clothing size, strategically sculpted face, microbladed eyebrows, excruciatingly toned, flexible physique and blinding white, even dentistry (all $$$$ indicators) would guarantee fellow upscale mommies understood she was no nanny no matter what accent she deployed makes her claim even more comical.

Or much less than she would if her brand weren't a massive lie

I won't be able to take a comfortable breath until December 14, when the electors in U.S. states gather to cast their votes for president-elect. Although November 7 was a good day. 

Then I can figure out what Scott is doing and what's up with the rest of the figure skating world. Other things consume most of my bandwidth recently.

For now, from the latest Trashcan - Tessa and Scott thread on Fsuniverse.

We're told over and over by Tessa's PR she's the most famous woman in Canada, and also by her PR that this isn't anything she's pursued (see the obligatory "strain on her beautiful face" descriptors). But then we see she's nothing but a basic influencer with an indiscriminate roster of brand partnerships and sponsors. My favorite sponsored post remains the day she dragged her beloved late Nana out of the archives to hype the impressive 100 care packages Nivea was dangling in front of a Canadian senior citizen population of 5.9 million. For sheer oblivious vapidity that one is hard to beat.*

I've said over and over her social media is inane, some of her choices of social media "friends" more than problematic (the toxic Jessica Mulroney) and Tessa's adverb abuse renders her content nonsensical and self-parody. But, I wonder if the degree to which she and Scott have dug themselves in, continually re-digging and then occasionally upping the ante with the worst, smirk-iest, most hypocritical and unfortunately characteristic juvenile "shock" tactics has created issues behind the scenes when it comes to bigger opportunities. 

It's easy to be cynical and figure there are no boundaries, that they will be eternally enabled. Entertainment media is all PR and transactional and it also controls the narrative, with a back up from paid social media posts. But recently I've considered that maybe, professionally speaking, they've been marginalized more than they expected because they've never sought a way out of a 13 year (and counting) public deception that everyone "privately" knows about.

I mean there's the deception but that's compounded by a component lack of judgment, and also the thuggish idiocy that tarnishes their wannabe brand and is an offshoot of their faux self-representation. And the gaslighting.

They seem to operate as moving targets both in their brand affiliations and in whatever interview or podcast they've done last, never really building anything. If they were a stable unit publicly, instead of creatures of complete expediency/short term thinkers, maybe they'd experience a more significant investment in their post competitive potential.

*Nivea is a portfolio brand owned by the German conglomerate Beirsdorf AG but 100 little care packages is all it could cough up. Or - this pitifully stingy little giveaway reflected where Tessa ranks with them in a hierarchy of influencers and she's not in a position to say no thanks. In fact, she was tasked with, embarrassingly, hyping it up.

Now what about the gays?

In the universe of Skate Canada, the Mohawk is now the C step and the Choctaw is now the S step, if my once-removed (fsuniverse.com) reading of Skate Canada's email is correct.

"This is part of "work[ing] toward the decolonizing of our terminology and align[ing] with our commitment to anti-racism.""

Skate Canada needs to commit to a whole bunch of other stuff while they're at it but I'm not holding my breath.

But as to this refreshed attitude, let's hope we never see another one of these (from 2015 or thereabouts)

I remember when I saw this. I wanted to die. At the same time, everything Bourne skates has this vibe.

(Yes she was a show skater at the time but I've always seen her as exactly Skate Canada's cup of tea.)
 

Best Picture

I've got nothing for September. This photo though continues to look more like an SNL parody of their nonsense than the thing itself. Scott's acting always comes across like someone who read about the emotion he's impersonating but never actually observed or felt it. Tessa just works the posture and the.pageant persona. Not where she started but that's where she's landed.

From the comments section (posting this one out of order)

There's a chip missing with the whole crowd. I think despite her gentle demeanor Tessa is as much of a thug as the Moirs. She has implacable willpower.The same tremendous  drive and will that got herself and Scott to the top is applied here. There's a need to win at all costs and this PR scheme is the playing field.  I think when I started this blog they didn't know what the blog knew or what additional information it would produce (like receipts) so they battened down the hatches. Then after awhile I think they saw the blog as just another outlet that brings them attention and validates their claim that they are besieged by their fans,

I mentioned that in the 2011-2012 season, when they were competing Funny Face, Scott and Tessa popped up with a skype out of nowhere, relating  their intention to walk around Paris experiencing/visiting Funny Face related locations. And maybe even take pictures, they smiled. I saw this and was like - incoming - this is a set up, here comes Jessica. They want butts in the seats.  I made a post, embedded the skype video and just said, heads up. Nobody alerted me to the game plan, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist.

After that post - no photos. Not of Scott and Tessa's hinted-at Funny Face day, not of Jessica/Scott. But a year or two later, here comes an image of Scott and Jessica with JESSICA attired (vertical stripes for God sake. I don't know why they held back on a beret) and posing a la Funny Face from back during the French Grand Prix showed up on the internet. Somebody else was taking the picture of Scott taking her picture. Now why would they do that? Funny Face was history. IMO it's because the blog called them out correctly during the set up, and they didn't want to show their ass, so they held off. But by GOD they were going to get their pictures out just for spite, even though they'd done a million other stings in the interim. That was just a you can't tell me what to do move.

Poor Jessica. The blog really dragged her back then.
Also, was the I.M. Pei Louvre Pyramid in
the  movie Funny Face? I don't recall.
Also, the angle of his phone.

Ryan Pyette is a London Free press reporter who has covered VM for eons. He  sometimes tries to treat them at arms' length and other times wades right in and is a straight up surrogate for their PR messaging. He did a piece on them that was ostensibly about their career or something but also made numerous references to Tessa's early friendship with the London junior boys hockey team. There was no rationale for this piece at all. And what was with the junior boys hockey team threaded throughout? Conspicuously repeating that Tessa, conspicuously not Scott and Tessa, had been friends with the team back then, but failing to explain why this had any relevance in the piece he'd just written. 

Again the blog was like - they are seeding the fans for a drop that Tessa had a London junior hockey player boyfriend, to mask the fact that even as a teen-ager Scott had always been her boyfriend (her only boyfriend). After I pointed this out, there was no follow up for years about the London Junior hockey team - it was just some weird random one-off from Pyette.

UNTIL a year or so ago suddenly Pyette does an article about Tessa's hockey player boyfriend when she was seventeen. They refuse to back off any of their bullshit. This was him finally putting out the story that had been intended for much earlier. Waste not, want not. I'm not trying to MAKE them back off- nothing can stop that compulsion. I'm just pointing it out, which I'm certainly entitled to do. But they don't want me to be "right" when it's pointed out, so they hold off. But then come back with it later cause nobody is the boss of them.

ETA the team in question is the London Knights.

Also, what's attracting the glances from the trio crossing the plaza and the woman in the background is the professional camera set up behind Scott. Not Scott and Jessica.

From the comments section (first set)

This can basically be skipped, but I wrote nearly two posts worth of comments in several post sections below and will just make them an actual post by compiling them here and probably a couple of other posts as there's a lot. At times obviously I'm answering somebody, but I think the question can be inferred from what I'm saying. I'm also going to clean up the typo and sentence construction mess.

Thanks for the question. When I first mentioned it, I think cancel culture. But now that you bring it up I believe in their circles too. My feeling isn't based on specific stuff I can identify. Right now it feel more like the "thin slicing" Malcolm Gladwell discusses in his book "Blink"  - how the subconscious processes info much faster than the conscious mind, producing a feeling, such as "We've got to get out of here!" My feeling has to do with cancel culture, the impact COVID has had on figure skating and the careers of skaters, and wondering about just how sick many people have become over how Scott and Tessa played this. The righteous streak particularly from Tessa is not a good look, but I also think she insulates herself from info she doesn't like, so she's behind the times. Based on a few things, I believe Scott has definitely seen this blog, and Skate Canada used to have its ISP parked here 24/7. But Tessa I think prefers to "curate" (influencer word) her information. In the past, if they'd have come clean, they had an in-place CYA with everyone in media and fellow celebrities on board. For years their PR teams had hammered home that legions of fans across the world were obsessed with them, had a boundary breaching fixation on them, and obviously they needed to "protect" themselves and their family and friends by erecting a zone of privacy. The blame would have landed on intrusive fans and the "delicate balance" VM needed to maintain between keeping up that wall and showing appreciation to their fans as elite figure skaters/touring professionals/brand ambassadors. Tessa spoke to this right as they were prepping their fan fictionalized reality show, which tells the mentality. 

 * 

Cont'd: Now the mainstream media lacks ability to control the narrative. I agree with you that there is a trend to denounce what is immoral. VM observers can't be bullied into compliance with: "They had to protect themselves from stalker fans!" or other tactics that project responsibility externally. And I do think there is a chance a public figure will spill too. When that happens, others will come in to verify and amplify. For those who are newer to this couple and think this is all some massive secret they have to maintain in their real lives, I'd refer to their rift story from their book "From childhood dream to gold". or whatever it was called. Published 2010...? The story went that when Tessa was operated on and recovering from chronic exertional compartment syndrome, she and Scott failed to keep in touch while she was recovering in London and he was training in Detroit, and they didn't speak for months. Or see each other. So that when she returned to the ice, the vibe between them stayed off and was not righted again until close to the Olympics. While claiming they were awkwardly estranged in the run-up to Vancouver, the reality is they got married directly after the first Grand Prix (TEB) in fall 2009. Every skater knew, every skating reporter knew or got up to speed in due course, and certainly Skate Canada knew. And many fans knew. Nobody came forward and contradicted this rift thing. 

That Scott and Tessa were often together after her surgery was in the public record. Their appearance in the broadcast booth at Skate America interviewed by Kurt Browning about Tessa's progress. Numerous joint appearances in London. Marianne Strong doing color commentary on a skating competition (the French couple who were using the same music from Pink Floyd as VM), discussing how Scott and Tessa spent her recovery in her apartment practicing facial expressions and everything they could to be prepped when she was ready to return to training (they were living together in London, obviously). The blog covered it, produced the youtubes, the articles, the interviews. Everybody just carried on pretending there had been a rift. To this day fans still talk about the "rift" and Scott and Tessa's tendency to not communicate, so there is willful self-deception here, which does not excuse VM. 

VM lie.They lie unnecessarily. I think what they're doing has now intersected with the wrong moment in the culture, the Mascarin thing was a blunder, and I think the tendency to find bros for Tessa to "date" is also short-sighted. I don't have a timeline (obviously), but I don't think it's going to be pretty when it does come out. For me, personally, I also think the several interviews Tessa has given where the article's slant is her fame is 100% organic and obsession with her has been tidal waving over them and you can see the strain on her face doesn't particularly sit well on a woman who signed onto the W network's "Tessa and Scott" that aired just weeks before Sochi. 

 * 

 That's what I think, and I also think their "bullshit" in general that may have been flagged as unimportant before (it's only fans and fans are sort of infantile, wrongly entitled and trigger happy) is getting a second look and people might be thinking there's actually a real issue here. Fans are like worms to most of the media (the media is very thin-skinned on any pushback from the likes of fans). With the Moir family overall - their style and demeanor when it comes to fans speaks for itself. 

Figure skating fans are a self-selecting group of women, the core of which is middle-aged. That demo has been bullied and shamed for years in general, and IMO that attitude has been internalized and makes that demographic sensitive, and prone to self-policing. Then there's the other skating demo which might skew to international, younger shippers who talk to each other and love to share theories. Because of gender bias and honestly class bias, the ham handed manipulation of fans may have been viewed as just what fans were asking for. I don't think that flies with how culture is currently trending. People are taking a second look at punching bag female-centered demographics, people are taking a second look at "You act that way so I was entitled to exploit it." and as you say, people have the time now. 

 * 

There's a cultural status gap and VM milk the hell out of it. The status gap lies in fans living vicariously through Virtue and Moir and projecting their romantic wish fulfillment upon them (or so goes the spin) so the label is they're sex starved females, they're living in a fantasy world, they prefer their fantasy world to reality, it's all very sympathetic yet for the real world Tessa and Scott, who are very busy, very famous, have money, are very important and connected, this interest in them from needy fans is a burden even as they appreciate and empathize. Or so goes the media slant (Promoted and disseminated by VM's pr.) Aren't they patient! Isn't it a lot! 

 VM are kneading and working and stirring this crap up seventeen ways from Sunday and have done so since time. Every shot at their fan base was free because their fan base is at the bottom of the status totem pole. I have never seen any other fan group self-recriminate the way skating fans beat themselves up when Virtue and Moir set them up and then detonate their hopes to hell.

At this point I want Scott to enact a marriage to Jackie Mascarin the way he enacted vacations with Jessica Dube, Kaitlyn Lawes and Cassandra Hilborn. DO it dude. If Ilderton won't throw open the doors of the community center, if your family clout won't get anyone to sign off on that photo shoot (although I feel a photo shoot has already been done and everybody is just waiting for the timing), get married on "the farm". Get married in Florida. Get those pictures. Make Jackie wear an appropriate second wedding dress with a doily looking veil. Get Morgan Reilly and his newly revived public profile to pose with Tessa on the sun parched field. Do it. Lay down your cards.

TBC next post