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The ever-incredibly depressing Jian Ghomeshi treedux

 Well, once more into the breach.  There was 2011, there was 2012, and now there is 2013.  It is as if I just have not become accustomed enough to swear words.

 Well, the deal with this blog is that I let people respond in whatever way they want, and I mostly won’t answer back.  I mean, anyone who responds to this blog, at least as it is so far, is more or less just passing through, and that person would never check to see if I’d written anything in response, anyway (so what is the point of responding even if I wanted to?—that’s web 3.0, if you like).

I give some consideration to my posts, and when I post them, I regard them as done—as done as I can make them.  (I have edited or taken up or down one or two posts, and I endeavour to update.) Therefore, if someone wishes to respond, then s/he can fire away, and I won’t do any cheap Sun-style (or, of course, Jian-style editorializing and snip back at people who themselves can’t really fight back—after all, I could delete the posts. . .obviously I’m a lot more honourable than Jian in this regard, in that I do not use an unassailable platform to get back at people who have disagreed with me). 

 One could respond to something I’ve written in my posts.  After all, I have said some things that are positive.  On the negative side, I feel I could have gone much further—gone all Rick Mercer, for example, on Jian.  But I did not.  And I also said that, after two posts, I’d pretty much said my piece, and that was a year and more ago and I have held my word (anyone notice when they were writing?).  If I think I’ve got something really more burning to add, then maybe I will, but right now I don’t see it.  I said I was done, and I meant it.  I’ve pretty much packed it in on Jian, because his twee egotism and wading-pool depth have driven me away from a time and a station that I’d otherwise probably frequent.  I love those days when he ends at 11.30 and something else substantive comes on and I hear it.  I just don’t remember when they are.  (Tuesday?  Thursday?)

Now, to repeat, with my posts, I do update or edit sometimes, even remove.  But I don’t snip back at people I know I can cut off (like Jian with his listener letters).  If you want to say something, you’re free as a bird in that regard and, as you can see, I won’t retort back in a jejeune, Sun, Jian kind of way.  Notably, one thing I have studiously avoided is foul-mouthed language.  You sure don’t post posts like I did eons ago with the expectation that you’ll draw a fan base, but, of course, as the responses show, many did write in to support or extend my comments, one even noting what anyone can note, that Jian’s fans, unlike me, show a tendency to be strikingly foul-mouthed and monosyllabic.  Whatever, it’s the web.  You see something you don’t like, you launch a few swear words and feel like you’re one big tough human.  Sad.  You’d never see it from me, but it is what it is.

 I don’t know—maybe this is a new thread—why are Jian’s fans so foul mouthed and incapable of writing words in English that aren’t four letters?  Does this say something about the nature of the show and its content, its fans, its host. . . ?  Is there something about Jian’s show that *encourages* stunted as opposed to studied responses, profane as opposed to profound ones?  It could be.  It is the Oprah of the morning, after all.  My two ancient posts probably didn’t imagine Jian fans deliberating carefully over responses, but they certainly also did not imagine a handful of swear words—I mean, if that was what was envisioned, then I could have pulled that off myself, all by lonesome, on twitter, or twit, with just 4 or 5 words totaling less than 20 letters.

 I did write two posts about the Jian Ghomeshi show, one over a year ago, one nearly a year ago; I’m astonished people are still reading them.  I guess it goes in cycles—one person doesn’t like it and sends it to his/her friends, I get a few more comments, etc.  What I’m really struck by is just how many positive comments I got and how they were more thoughtful and extended than the fired-off expletives I got from the fans.  I almost would have expected the reverse—that people who agreed with me would say “you’re right,” and that those who disagreed with me would say: “you’re wrong, you’re an idiot, and here’s why and why and why.”  But it didn’t happen.

Anyway, I’ve kept silent, let others fire away for more than a year now.  I let others say whatever they wanted to say, and I never took down a post or prevented anyone from speaking.  But since there is still the occasional response, I’ll respond to what seem to me to be the most common criticisms.

--You’re jealous of/you sure seem to know a lot about Jian’s show.

Uh, duh, people, the first post was written in _September 2011_--in webtime, that’s like when dinosaurs roamed the plains.  The other post was written at the beginning of March, 2012.  I said it in my last post that I would be done with the issue, and I have been.  I have not said anything more.  And, yes, I have not listened to the show.  A lot of time has passed since I wrote my posts.  I imagine some things on the show have changed—how could they not have?  But no, I do not listen to Jian.  Anyone who says otherwise obviously didn’t look at the date of my posts or the content of them; rather, they chose to *pretend* that I still did in order that they could offer a few swear words.  Killer technique, dudes.  But since you imprecate, I’ll tell you about the last time I can really remember hearing Jian.  This would have been about in late Oct./early Nov. 2012, I’m guessing, and I was coming home late and stopping at a favourite store; Jian was interviewing a guy who I think did a bio on Gary Bettman.  I kind of listened as I focused on the road (it still happens sometimes) and I more or less was diverted.  It was a lock-step, paint-by-numbers, this-is-how-to-do-the-foxtrot with a cardboard cutout on the floor your staff of 50 has made for you, and Jian wasn’t really into it, but, whatever, it was there and I was diverted and had no complaints.  Then, THEN, there was the giant sucking and blowing interview with David Byrne, so famous for being famous for so many thousands of years that even his impossible to find hits have become impossible to find hits.  Anyone see him on Colbert, regaling the audience with how they had to use horns or something with this girl who just happened along because nothing else worked for their computer exchanges, and how they’d send each other garbled computer files and sometimes get it wrong but. . .IT STILL WORKED!!!?  Well, that is Byrne in a nutshell, and it takes Jian to love that.  Oh, to be a dilettante.  Yes, yes, I’m really—no I mean really—envious of that.

--You’re homophobic/racist.

When you can look around the whole blog, and of course, duh, just look at the two old posts on Ghomeshi, and see pro-Kurt comments, and the like, then you’re just being really, really stupid.  But the point for many responders is to be just that—to respond to one thing they don’t like and be done with it.  Fine.  Next up?  Race.  Well, fine, but look around the blog, and you will find charges like that equally untenable and comical.  And to pretend that public and private organs have not explicitly and overtly emphasized a particular target area, and publicly declared freezes on others, is to let yourself in on a world of hurt, legally speaking.  Do such measures necessarily militate against a meritocracy?  I doubt it.  But should you fear the debate? 

--Jian brings in the young demographic!!

This is the oldest shibboleth in the world.  It is so beyond tired I can’t even believe it’s coming up again, but come up again it will, and it will, routinely, in the Glib n’ Stale, say, every few months.  Ok, I’m game.  Kids love Jian (??), so now CBC is just the hottest thing in the land!!!  And it’s all b/c of Jian.

Yeah, sure.  No, yeah, suurrrre.  Show us the stats, then.  Jian DOES NOT bring in younger audiences.  Jian is a middle-aged man with middle-aged interests.  All he can do or has ever done was appeal to a different kind of middle-aged listener.  Ever listened to one of his “essays”?  You may say: “but it’s pablum, kids eat that!!  No, kids hate it; it’s just a different kind of senior who appreciates pablum.  I’m really reluctant to bring something that’s just personal and anecdotal into this blog and about CBC, but I can tell you that the trajectory I’ve traced, and one that just about any other CBC listener I can think of has traced, is that their listenership and loyalty to the CBC has just gone down and down and down as the days have gone by.  No, their kids aren’t listening to Jian.  They’re finding hipper things their parents are sometimes also into.  Hey, I like it—ultimately I support CBC, so if there’s lots of you out there who love Jian (like the 66-year-old who hates me lately said), then good.  But if CBC wants a “younger demographic,” then it should try hiring a “younger host.”  It happens.  All around the world, it happens.  Give it a try.  I’d probably listen to him or her.  Give me younger anyday.

--zr
{{4 years, 4 posts on this blog.

(I don't blame you for getting bored, but I've as much a right and a responsibility as anyone to be held to complete account for what I have written.)

The first post, the one that EVERYONE read:
The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q -- 17/09/2011

The next and final post, that a few read.
The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q -- redux 02/03/2012

3rd post (that a few more read):
My decision to at last address some of the so many comments I got about my *2* Ghomeshi posts (my antique internet attitude has always been that you can respond and say whatever you want to say, and I won't editorialize.  However, after many comments, I decided to take up a few of the most common ones).
The ever-incredibly depressing Jian Ghomeshi treedux -- 11/02/2013

The recent post, that a few have read, now that he's really famous (and a post that's already starting to look really antique, like the once-powerful "Copps-May-Shelaghlah Swoonferit Theory of General Sexual Moral Infallibility"):
50 Shades of Jian Ghomeshi: Parsing Jian’s Infinite Self-Regard -- 28/10/2014}}