Henein's Law, Canada's

Articling?
 
A little bit bedraggling.

Getting off accused rapists whilst promoting yourself on the web--

 

--priceless.

 

--zr

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 







 

In Full Damage-Control Mode, CBC Urges: It’s Not Jian Ghomeshi’s Problem—it’s Yours

One of the most shameful things about the Ghomeshi situation is that the CBC, in full damage-control mode, is trying to pretend the story is not really about one of its pampered and lucubrated longtime employees, but rather that Jian, poor Jian, is just a symptom of a much wider societal crisis.  In other words—no-one at CBC is or was responsible for Ghomeshi—he’s just a guy who represents 10s of thousands across the country today.

All this may be.  #beenraped/neverreported is worthwhile looking at—when would it not be?  But conflating it with Ghomeshi to get CBC off the hook for not dealing with a known predator in its midst for years and years is, if anything, reflective of Ghomeshi himself, who conflated in his Facebook post his healthy kink life with vengeful prudes out to get him.

 To distance itself from Ghomeshi, and to shield its managers and executives from being associated with him, the CBC is now going all-out on radio and TV and every platform to panelize to death the issue of sexual violence and “why women won’t come forward.”   It is citing whopping statistics and fairly hauling people off the streets to sit under the bright lights and furrow their brows and express grim chagrin over how the problem that Ghomeshi merely represents (but isn’t, in and of himself, an especially notable example) just seems so persistent.  Some of the CBC’s expert panelists include talk-show hosts (yes, talk-show hosts) or just everyday journalists.  The CBC thinks that a media “insider” has more knowledge and insight to bring to bear than actual experts—this is yet one more example of self-satisfying hubristic conflation:  have a talk show?  Good.  You must be qualified to discuss the issues around non-reporting of sexual assaults. All this panelization, presumably, is to show that the CBC really, really cares about this terrible issue that, sure, did affect some guy it hired and kept promoting for a long time, but that really affects THE WHOLE COUNTRY much more than just that one guy.

This is craven in the extreme.  If the CBC really wanted to address issues of sexual violence, or non-reporting of assaults, or how the legal and judicial systems prevent abused women from coming forward, then it has tremendous resources at its disposal to do just that.  It could get The Passionate Eye onto it.  It could hire a documentarian/commission a documentary.  It could put together an Ideas series.  If CBC hasn’t done such things already, yet is now treating the Ghomeshi story as simply one troubling little symptom of a massive mud-spectred (I draw on Jian’s Facebook page for that one) national malaise, then it obviously wasn’t doing much at all in the past to fulfill its journalistic mandates.

Canada has a fairly robust history of egregious sex criminals—Paul Bernado, Russell Williams, Luca Magnotta.  How many people in B.C. are more than one or two acquaintances away from a woman who was victimized?  Now, I’m not saying that Ghomeshi killed anyone, but where was the CBC on drawing massive social extrapolations from all these earlier cases?  I don’t think it would be difficult for any sentient person not to look at any of these horrific examples and not instantly come up with ways in which to generalize the problem and suggest that the Bernado’s, say, were just symptoms of a much, much more widespread problem.  Karla Homolka, an abused woman, only “came forward” when she got a deal from the justice system.  Perhaps the easiest thing we do, as human beings, is see one example of something and draw a sweeping generalization from it (the legal system is supposed to be about gathering numerous examples, but that doesn’t seem to be working out so well, either).  The CBC, calculatingly, clearly decided: “we’ve gotta make this Ghomeshi thing go away; we’ve gotta make it look like it’s everyone’s problem, not ours.” 

For shame. 

I can’t speak for Mansbridge or Mesley or Tremonti or whoever at the CBC, but as they all dutifully led their panels about non-reporting, I really kind of felt that their hearts weren’t in it and that they’d been ordered by their bosses to do  this  panel   now!  I just said I could be wrong.  Maybe Mesley wrote all her own questions.  Who knows? But there was no urgency in any of the panelistic/CBC interviewing responses—this was Operation Ghomeshi Coverup in full flight.

This story isn’t about the broader story of violence towards women in society.  It is about Ghomeshi.  As I have already said, any statistics aside, if an average guy serially lured women to his home so as to assault them and secretly videotape them, then that guy would do time.  If he wouldn’t, then perhaps any lawyer or judge or cop or academic or actual offender or, fine, talk-show host, could write in to say just how and why not.  This story is about over 9 women who have now come forward about *1* guy, and to pretend there aren't more is Pollyannaish.  Further, to pretend that this egregious case can simply be blended into some sort of general "violence against women" theme can only militate against ameliorating situations for the general populace.  Ghomeshi won't do time.  But his story, and the way CBC has handled it, will make it seem like "oh, yeah, that violence against women stuff--I hear Ghomeshi was into it; worked for him.  His bosses protected him.  No probs." The Pollyannaish theory ought to be that not 1 case of assault is ok, but the CBC is saying that, since it's at least 9 so far, we might as well call it general and not specific and blame "society" instead of an offender.  In this way, the CBC is working against women coming forward.

And yes, I know, any and everything is just “alleged.”  Nothing is proven.  Just alleged.  Got it.  That’s all it is—alleged.

Very, very, very few people go through life and can look back on it and say that they never experienced any unpleasant sexual or sexually exploitative situations.  But Ghomeshi’s case isn’t everyone’s case—it’s a serial case that was enabled and enabled by the CBC; as the Q executive producer who fielded a harassment complaint from a young female member of Ghomeshi’s “team” aptly said, there was no way to pursue anything against Ghomeshi because Ghomeshi’s show was “a f—-ing juggernaut” (http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/10/30/q-journalist-who-alleges-ghomeshi-threatened-to-hate-f-her-says-she-complained-to-boss-in-2010/).  In other words, Ghomeshi was too big to fire, and that gave him carte blanche with young women and made him untouchable by CBC brass.  He knew it, they knew it, and now he’s trying to say he did nothing wrong, and CBC is trying to say it’s everyone’s problem, not theirs.  For shame.

Take the case of Reva Seth, one of Ghomeshi’s late accusers.  She is, or became, a lawyer.  Not a talk-show host, a lawyer.  You might think that someone such as her, a member in good standing in the legal profession, would have a very clear and active desire to support her profession and try to prevent or prosecute the kinds of behaviours of which Ghomeshi now stands accused, and of which she now accuses him.  But she didn’t.  Ghomeshi was too much of a celebrity, one that CBC carefully groomed and nurtured.  If a female lawyer was unwilling to pursue action against him, then who would?  No, this story isn’t about some general societal problem, though if it makes us think about and confront one, good.  If Reva Seth were assaulted by any old Joe Who, I suspect Joe Who wouldn’t have kept seeing his star rise, as Jian’s did.

An awful lot of CBC people must have held their noses around Jian, and one understands that the public broadcaster was desperate to have a popular show of any kind, even if that never really was its chief mandate.  But an awful lot of people at CBC have an awful lot to answer for, and as a supporter of public broadcasting, I am disgusted and ashamed by CBC’s attempts to pretend the Ghomeshi story was a national societal one, and not one that involved one of its most attentively preened employees.

Or, put another way, if the CBC really wants to get to the bottom of why women don’t report assaults, then the first place it could start interviewing would be in its own boardrooms and executive suites.  Then it could “Go Public” or “Go (and talk to the) Public” and do the kind of journalism for which it has historically been honoured.

--zr

(Please read or scroll to the bottom to see the actual record of this thread.)

50 Shades of Jian Ghomeshi: Parsing Jian’s Infinite Self-Regard

 (The first five paragraphs are basically about this blog and the provenance of this post/blog, so scroll right down to the sixth paragraph if you don’t really care to read about me and so on but rather about Jian’s self defense.  Jian’s words, naturally, are in BOLD.)

 Well, today Jian seems to have made me do something I said I’d never do again, write a post about his show.  Or used-to-be show, I guess.  I wrote a post about Q in late 2011, and then another in 2012.  At that time, I said I was done with commenting on the show, and I was, except that, eventually, in late 2013, I did write a post in which I responded to a few of the most common criticisms I received over my two posts.  If you look at my blog, you see that, essentially, I just let people comment and generally don’t answer back.  If people want to say something, they can, and unless the content is outright unacceptable (e.g. “lemon meringue causes blindness”), I let it stand, expletives and all.  I think I’ve only ever deleted one comment, after a pause and for a reason similar to that suggested by the example just given above.

I probably wrote that 2013 response because, yes, my posts about Q surely caused more clicks to my blog than anything else I’ve ever written.  I guess Jian is about the only “celebrity” I’ve ever written about, and I guess if I wanted more clicks, I’d surely write about a few more.  Something that surprised me about the responses I got was just how many I got that agreed with me.  I mean, when I google, I’m generally googling for something or someone that I *like*.  Maybe I’m weird that way.  I’ve sure never googled “Rush Limbaugh,” say, or even “Jian Ghomeshi.” Further, when you want to comment, I don’t think you always want to comment when you see something you agree with; rather, you jump in to comment on something you’re against or want to talk back to.   Therefore, I’m struck that so many people wrote in to *support* what I was saying—or, perhaps, as time went on, and more accurately, to posts others, not me, had made and that I had not moderated or responded to.  However one looks at it, it is heartening to see that, yes, so many people do care so passionately about the CBC.

When my dad told me on Sunday afternoon that Jian had been shown the door, I must say I was very surprised.  I was so surprised that I did something I’ve never done before, visit Jian’s Facebook page--to see his self-defense, like the one he mounted each day on his show when he read letters and got back at people who criticized him (but who couldn’t, obviously, respond in turn themselves.  And no, no, I have not ever written in to or phoned into his show).   Even such a tiny nano-instant of my visiting his Facebook page (or clearly this post itself), constitute micro-indications that Jian’s fame and fortune will only grow as a result of his firing.  I doubt he would have posted his “I’m not guilty” plea if he didn’t intuitively grasp as much.

In my two critical posts, I gestured towards issues of Jian’s sexuality, but if you read the posts, I think you’ll see that I didn’t make a big deal of it (whatever you think, you’re free to comment and I won’t take down negative or attacking posts, as is the custom of this blog).  Public figures must deal with private issues, such as those involving sexuality, in a way that most of us don’t have to.  I don’t say “ways,” because that would be to suggest that every single person, regardless of celebrity, does not have to address issues of sexuality.  Maybe I’m just thinking back to Rick Mercer’s comments on how public figures have an obligation to be candid about their orientations (e.g. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/10/27/rick_mercer_comes_out_again_after_his_rant_goes_viral.html).  I did not, or do not feel that I made a big deal of Jian’s sexuality, because I very much do agree with him, that private sexual lives, even in the cases of celebrities, should be, essentially, private.  Everyone is entitled (or condemned) to that.  But you can’t also say that Jian hasn’t made sexuality a big topic of his show.  I’m not saying that he shouldn’t have; I am simply saying that, if I talk about macrame all the time, then I can expect others to talk about macrame in relation to me, and I’m a hypocrite if I suddenly become outraged by the association.

At all events, true to his self-regard, Jian opted to declare his sense of injustice in the most public way he possibly could, so let’s look at it.  I thought I’d only reflect on a few things, but on reading his statement, I don’t see how anyone—who wasn’t even involved in his private life—could fail to want to discuss much of it, even interlinearly.

Jian states (BTW, where was one of Jian’s many “teams,” the legal one, on this??):

 Dear everyone,

I am writing today because I want you to be the first to know some news.

This has been the hardest time of my life. I am reeling from the loss of my father.

(This is a very unfortunate collision of events.  I feel for Ghomeshi’s family, and I am truly happy to think that his father went to his rest thinking only that his son was a successful media personality.) I am in deep personal pain and worried about my mom. And now my world has been rocked by so much more.

Today, I was fired from the CBC.

For almost 8 years I have been the host of a show I co-created on CBC called Q. (“I co-created”—well, it’s nice to know he had a hand in his own show.  I suppose he didn’t “co-create” Play.) It has been my pride and joy. My fantastic team on Q are super-talented and have helped build something beautiful.

I have always operated on the principle of doing my best to maintain a dignity and a commitment to openness and truth, both on and off the air.  (Uh, no, my friend, or you wouldn’t be here right now.  In today’s world, it isn’t even six degrees of separation; it’s more like three.  I’ve never met Jian in person, and as I think I said in an earlier post, I’d probably enjoy meeting and talking with him.  But his celebrity enabled him; it made him bask and act as if he were untouchable.  I heard his earlier band's songs. I have a friend—yes, a young-ish novelist who lives near Toronto who freely noted Jian’s sparrowlike qualities when we were talking one night.  I doubt that she has anything but the remotest regard for this chapter in Jian’s life, but she did note his advances.  Or there’s the friend of mine who noted Jian basking on a visit to my fair city at a very popular bar with a couple of young women with whom, it’s probably quite safe to say, he was not on a last-name basis.  They may have shared many things, that threesome, beyond their cab, but again, it is not too much to doubt that a “mutual” plane ride back to Toronto was one of them.

I don’t begrudge Jian anything about his sex life—you do what you want to do.  But there is no question that his public, taxpayer-supported profile enabled his sex life.  If Jian were the exact same guy with the exact same looks but he was waitering while he worked on the Great Canadian Novel, I’m sorry, but he would not have been able to lasso girls half his age and tie ‘em up back at the ranch.  His “celebrity” gave him opportunities, and, rather than being grateful for them, he flaunted himself.  I remember when I was in a hiring situation for a large public institution.  I looked at the applicants, and one, very out, looked like easily the best one.  But only a couple of clicks on the internet brought him up to me, clubbing in his leather n’ studs man lingerie.  I didn’t care about the guy’s private life, but he applied to work at a large public institution, where he’d be paid by the public, and would come into contact with countless people, many of whom might not share his sense of “off-air dignity,” as Jian puts it.  I guess you might say I’m a prude or a homophobe or a discriminator, but I think of it the other way around—I think he was guilty of very poor and self-indulgent judgment.  This isn’t a case of a double standard for gays vs. straights holding hands in public; this is a case of just not thinking about the consequences of your actions—or, thinking that you are above them. 

Jian’s self-admitted BDSM relationships with girls half his age are troubling to me.  His celebrity did enable him, and he’s as smart as he looks if he didn’t think his “private” indulgences, generated by his public profile, wouldn’t come back to bite him.  He used the CBC and Canadian taxpayers to fund his “private” life, and he seems oblivious to as much.  Maybe he should join a band on the folk circuit and then see how much outrage (“pain,” “shock”) he could generate about his “jilted” ex-girlfriends.

 Not many people reading this post would say that they had never been in a position of sexual dominance—physical, financial, maturity-wise, whatever—many are daily.  I’m willing to buy Jian’s argument that his hookups knew what they were doing, but for him to pretend that there wasn’t a power imbalance based on his celebrity, and that he’s being unfairly maligned *because* he’s a celebrity just won’t wash.  In his public pronouncements, he seems to conflate “desire” and “morality,” and that’s a conflation most people, even celebrities—and contrary to cliché—just don’t make.)

I have conducted major interviews, supported Canadian talent, and spoken out loudly in my audio essays about ideas, issues, and my love for this country.

(Yes, the vaunted “feature chats,” which Jian so self-lovingly and really rather embarrassingly always touted.  The fact is, most of his guests are on standard press junkets, and if you want to know what his “major interviewees” have to say, just watch a show from New York or Boston or Chicago, or read a magazine, a couple days earlier.  It is a mark of Jian’s signature self-regard that he actually thinks that celebrities seek him out and wouldn’t talk to anyone if it weren’t him.  As for “supported Canadian talent,” mostly I’d be willing to buy this, but since Jian put it out there, I have to reflect and honestly say that he was much more craven and fame-seeking when it came to foreign guests, not Canadian ones.  I don’t know.  I’d have to hear the show.

  All of that is available for anyone to hear or watch (table of “feature chats” by nationality, anyone?). I have known, of course, that not everyone always agrees with my opinions or my style, but I've never been anything but honest. I have doggedly defended the CBC and embraced public broadcasting. This is a brand I’ve been honoured to help grow.  (Again, I haven’t got much of a problem with this, but Jian had to imply that he was the one who revived a dead organization—one that has only been around for about, oh, twice as long as he has.)

All this has now changed.

Today I was fired from the company where I've been working for almost 14 years – stripped from my show, barred from the building and separated from my colleagues. I was given the choice to walk away quietly and to publicly suggest that this was my decision. But I am not going to do that. Because that would be untrue. Because I’ve been fired. And because I've done nothing wrong.  (Not “sure, I’ve made a few mistakes,” but “I’ve done NOTHING wrong.”)

I’ve been fired from the CBC because of the risk of my private sex life being made public as a result of a campaign of false allegations pursued by a jilted ex girlfriend and a freelance writer. (If this is really true, then I do feel bad for him; it can happen to anyone, and, yes, celebrities or people in positions of power and authority can be especially vulnerable.  Still, little malignity is entirely motiveless.  If his tormentors are self-interested, venal people, that should come out, as he says it will.  I could be wrong, but I have a funny feeling he has more legal representation than they do.)

As friends and family of mine, you are owed the truth.

I have commenced legal proceedings against the CBC, what’s important to me is that you know what happened and why.

Forgive me if what follows may be shocking to some.

I have always been interested in a variety of activities in the bedroom but I only participate in sexual practices that are mutually agreed upon, consensual, and exciting for both partners.  (Jian’s use of absolute language is again striking here.  Who has ever always and only participated in sexual acts that are consensual and “exciting” for everyone?  This only reveals a stunted, selfish, and dangerously self-exculpatory attitude towards sexual relationships.)

About two years ago I started seeing a woman in her late 20s. Our relationship was affectionate, casual and passionate. We saw each other on and off over the period of a year and began engaging in adventurous forms of sex that included role-play, dominance and submission. We discussed our interests at length before engaging in rough sex (forms of BDSM). We talked about using safe words and regularly checked in with each other about our comfort levels.

(I think if you asked Jian if he was one mean wordsmith, a man of infinite sensitivity to language and adroitness with its deployment, you know, despite the grammatical infelicities of his own post, what he would say.  Ok, now put yourself in Jian’s position.  He says “we talked about using safe words.”  Now I defy you, I absolutely defy you, to put yourself in Jian’s shoes and, if what he says about himself is not true, not write “we used safe words.”  “Talked about safe words?”  What can that mean, when the first thing that would come to anyone’s mind, especially an accused’s, would be “used”?  Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but I ask you again, if you were Jian and feeling as unjustly wronged as he says he feels, wouldn’t you automatically write “we used safe words,” instead of “we talked about using safe words”?  Again, where is his legal team on this one?  This is like saying “I told her one day I’d rock her world, and then another day I hit her with a rock and she got mad—what a ^&%&^%!”)

 She encouraged our role-play and often was the initiator. We joked about our relations being like a mild form of Fifty Shades of Grey or a story from Lynn Coady's Giller-Prize winning book last year.

(He doesn’t remember the name of the book?  Well, he remembered Coady’s name, and this micro-instance again, for me, demonstrates Jian’s soaring self-regard.  In his self-regard, he probably just thinks he’s once again drawing attention to himself as a great supporter of the Canadian arts and some so-so author who will be glad to be mentioned alongside him.  Yet he chose, knowingly, no matter how fast he dashed off his Facebook statement, to draw Coady into his private affairs.  Maybe Coady is his BFF; maybe she loves and supports him still and can never think ill of him.  She is probably at least secretly pleased to be mentioned in his bondage post because she can only sell more books as a result—“hey, here’s that author Ghomeshi talked about—it’s like 50 Shades of Gray!”).  Whatever Coady thinks, though, I once again ask you to put yourself in Ghomeshi’s shoes; if you were in his situation, would you name-drop and draw in others?  He says his private life is his own; ok.  So if his problems are his and his accusers’ and theirs alone, then making reference to the public art of others as if to justify his private behaviours constitutes narcissism in the extreme.

 I don’t wish to get into any more detail because it is truly not anyone's business what two consenting adults do. I have never discussed my private life before. Sexual preferences are a human right.

(Sure, I’ll buy that sexual preferences are a human right, but we’re talking about sexual activities, and those aren’t.  Once again, Jian seems to be conflating his desires and practices with the petticoated morality he scorns and ascribes to others.)

Despite a strong connection between us it became clear to me that our on-and-off dating was unlikely to grow into a larger relationship and I ended things in the beginning of this year. She was upset by this and sent me messages indicating her disappointment that I would not commit to more, and her anger that I was seeing others.

After this, in the early spring there began a campaign of harassment, vengeance and demonization against me that would lead to months of anxiety.  (If what Jian says is true, I agree that this is awful.  “Campaign” makes it sounds as if the whole world knew, which it obviously didn’t, but whatever.)

It came to light that a woman had begun anonymously reaching out to people that I had dated (via Facebook people I’d dated via Facebook?  Jian, you gotta quit dating so many people via Facebook ;). Just another example of this great literary avatar kind of, just, like, not paying attention to what he was writing) to tell them she had been a victim of abusive relations with me. In other words, someone was reframing what had been an ongoing consensual relationship as something nefarious. I learned – through one of my friends who got in contact with this person – that someone had rifled through my phone on one occasion and taken down the names of any woman I had seemed to have been dating in recent years. This person had begun methodically contacting them to try to build a story against me. Increasingly, female friends and ex-girlfriends of mine told me about these attempts to smear me.

Someone also began colluding with a freelance writer who was known not to be a fan of mine and, together, they set out to try to find corroborators to build a case to defame me. She found some sympathetic ears by painting herself as a victim and turned this into a campaign. The writer boldly started contacting my friends, acquaintances and even work colleagues – all of whom came to me to tell me this was happening and all of whom recognized it as a trumped up way to attack me and undermine my reputation. Everyone contacted would ask the same question, if I had engaged in non-consensual behavior why was the place to address this the media?

(All, all, everyone, campaign—again the extreme language.  Why was the media the place to address it?  Uh, duh, maybe because, like, uh, duh, you’re in the media, AND MUCH OF YOUR ENTIRE SHOW is based on precisely such ‘content’?  And why did you, duh, choose to address this ON SOCIAL MEDIA?)

The writer tried to peddle the story and, at one point, a major Canadian media publication did due diligence but never printed a story. One assumes (if they “assumed,” then how do you know they did “due diligence”?) they recognized these attempts to recast my sexual behaviour were fabrications. Still, the spectre of mud being flung onto the Internet where online outrage can demonize someone before facts can refute false allegations has been what I've had to live with.  (It’s true that the internet is a nasty place—look at the swearing comments I’ve gotten from Jian’s supporters—but that’s one more reason, as a publicly-paid person, to be extra-vigilant about your public and private behaviour.  Besides, as Jian would know if he’d hosted a radio show lately, the balance has been tipping against the internet trolls for a long time; if I get 20 hits on this blog post, 18 will be from Jian’s lawyers. Think I’m imagining things?  Read Jian, below, about “piling on.”

Oh and, Jian, if you call your next book Spectre of Mud, I promise to pre-order.

And this leads us to today and this moment. I’ve lived with the threat that this stuff would be thrown out there to defame me. And I would sue. But it would do the reputational damage to me it was intended to do (the ex has even tried to contact me to say that she now wishes to refute any of these categorically untrue allegations (then get her to call the CBC and get your job back). But with me bringing it to light, in the coming days you will prospectively hear about how I engage in all kinds of unsavoury aggressive acts in the bedroom. And the implication may be made that this happens non-consensually. And that will be a lie. But it will be salacious gossip (the gossip monger, mongered?) in a world driven by a hunger for "scandal". And there will be those who choose to believe it and to hate me or to laugh at me. And there will be an attempt to pile on. And there will be the claim that there are a few women involved (those who colluded with my ex) in an attempt to show a "pattern of behaviour". And it will be based in lies but damage will be done. But I am telling you this story in the hopes that the truth will, finally, conquer all.   (Jeesh Jian, if you are already envisioning and speaking of “pattern of behaviour” accusations, I think you’re cooked.  Just sayin.’)

I have been open with the CBC about this since these categorically untrue allegations ramped up. I have never believed it was anyone's business what I do in my private affairs but I wanted my bosses to be aware that this attempt to smear me was out there. CBC has been part of the team of friends and lawyers assembled to deal with this for months. On Thursday I voluntarily showed evidence (you taped every session?!  Studio QRSTUV?) that everything I have done has been consensual. I did this in good faith and because I know, as I have always known, that I have nothing to hide. This when the CBC decided to fire me.

(Yes, so, as you state, it was a cumulative thing.  The CBC just finally decided, after all the TV shows and radio spots, the boutique studio and massive staff, the concert junkets, and so forth, that, no, they just couldn’t back you anymore.  You’re into taxpayers for millions and millions of dollars, with an employer who has given you opportunities almost nobody would ever get, and yet you want to bankrupt them by suing for 50-55 million.  Maybe call your next show “Chutzpah,” Jian.)

CBC execs confirmed that the information provided showed that there was consent. In fact, they later said to me and my team that there is no question in their minds that there has always been consent. They said they’re not concerned about the legal side. But then they said that this type of sexual behavior was unbecoming of a prominent host on the CBC. They said that I was being dismissed for "the risk of the perception that may come from a story that could come out." To recap, I am being fired in my prime from the show I love and built and threw myself into for years because of what I do in my private life.

(“In my prime,” “the show I built”—he carefully doesn’t mention his other failures—once again, Jian’s incredible self-regard.  But more important is this question of “consent,” that Jian hangs everything on.  This is where his lawyers will be working overtime.  There is, in law, a difference between consent and knowingly doing something that is wrong according to generally acceptable social standards—that is what law and precedent are about.  If my friend says: “My girlfriend just broke up with me.  I want to die.  There’s no point in living.  Here’s a gun.  Kill me, please,” do I kill him?  I don’t care if Jian got “consent” six ways to Sunday; ultimately, the CBC, which had pumped so many millions into him, finally just said, “look, we can’t support this any more.”  It must have been a bitter, bitter decision at CBC, given all they’d invested in him.  What the straw that broke the camel’s back was we may never know.  My guess is that it was internal, since, despite Jian’s talk of all his outside attackers, we’ve never really had much “evidence” of that, yet anyway, whatever Jian says.

 Let me be the first to say that my tastes in the bedroom may not be palatable to some folks. They may be strange, enticing, weird, normal, or outright offensive to others. We all have our secret life. But that is my private life. That is my personal life. And no one, and certainly no employer, should have dominion over what people do consensually in their private life.  (Agreed, but as in the anecdotes I’ve cited, and as in Jian’s own post we’re reading here, he seems not to realize how the public blends into the private and vice-versa.  He seems to want to have one set of rules for himself, and another set for others.  It is remarkable that he would “chat” with featured artists almost every day and not realize something as basic and fundamental as the fact that “private” and “public” lives are not categorically divisible.

And so, with no formal allegations, no formal complaints, no complaints, not one, to the HR department at the CBC (they told us they’d done a thorough check and were satisfied), and no charges, I have lost my job based on a campaign of vengeance. Two weeks after the death of my beautiful father I have been fired from the CBC because of what I do in my private life.

I have loved the CBC (I’ll buy that, but now you’d like to bankrupt it, to the tune of 50-55 million.  I’m sure you’re a valuable guy, Jian, but the damages you seek certainly say something about your sense of yourself and your ultimate commitment to an institution you say you supported.  Say you won your lawsuit; would you be thrilled to think of all your "super" colleagues being out of work?  What kind of party would you throw for them?  Wait a minute.  Got it.  And say you do get that big job in London or NY or LA, who wants to hire someone who will sue them for 50 mill if they raise eyebrows over the things they hear, and keep hearing, as you so readily detail?  It’ll be in the contract, Jian). The Q team are the best group of people in the land. My colleagues and producers and on-air talent at the CBC are unparalleled in being some of the best in the business. I have always tried to be a good soldier and do a good job for my country (as others have noted, probably not a good idea to compare yourself to a soldier, especially now—once again, it’s your incredible self-regard—but I do get that you’re using clichés and are dashing something off in a state of significant emotional upset). I am still in shock. But I am telling this story to you so the truth is heard. And to bring an end to the nightmare.

--Well, although I wrote two posts critical of (and also a bit positive about) him, I feel no special sense of schadenfreude over his dismissal.  As I said in my posts, I certainly support a show like his.  I do feel for his family, and I am glad that his father didn’t have to start confronting his son in different lights.  But as his self-serving post showed (and as my nano-gesture of visiting his Facebook page for the first time indicates), Jian knows that this is one step on a steady upward climb.  Can you imagine the “team” of lawyers currently negotiating his most recent book deal?  There’s going to be a need for fresh shirts and razors and takeout on that one.  In the 5000 channel universe, and the bazillion-station FM radiosphere, Jian’s stated recent griefs have no doubt been transformed into salivating glowing-eyed decisions over latest opportunities.

This post is basically just about responding to Jian’s statement, but I should have some kind of greater theme in mind, and fairly obviously that would be about how, now more than ever, real or perceived indiscretion leads only to greater fame and emolument.  Jian is aggrieved now, but he knows, and we all know, that whoever his “jilted” ex’s are, and whoever this “freelance writer” is, it’s not them who will be living on easy street as a result of any “scandal” involving him.  If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d have no trouble saying that Jian brought this upon himself purposely, just so he could get out of Toronto and get back to London, or on to NY or LA, where he wasn’t just on chump Canadians’ dimes.

 I guess that’s for another post.  A recent poster to this blog wrote to Jian that his "15 minutes of fame were up."  Oh, I don't think so. In the meantime, and surely if it’s Jian’s way, this is very definitely to be continued. . .

 --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}}

 

 

(Please read or scroll to the bottom to see the actual record of this thread!)

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}}

 

The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q -- redux

Uuuuuhhhhh, people (now I'm chanelling Jian) -- I wrote one post on this blog, and then a followup; you can read both. Inasmuch as many people offered their colourful responses, Jian's handlers will look like Gordon Pinsent's croquet partners by the time they stop reading this. Told you once--check the date--in 2011--that I was all hacked off about the Ghomeshi show; told you twice in a brief aside--in 2012--that I was still upset but had said all I had to say; and I kept to my word; only in 2013 did I feel obligated by comments both positive and negative to come back on and reflect on comments I'd already made. What is it that people don't get? http://zorgreport.blogspot.ca/2013/02/the-ever-incredibly-depressingjian.html

(Please read or scroll to the bottom to see the actual record of this thread!)

The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi redux

Well, I already wrote another post.  This one I jotted and set aside.  But anyway. Jian is interviewing Eugene Levy, and throughout the whole “chat,” Jian is sucking and blowing and wheedling and whinging and desperately trying to out-Oprah Oprah, and he’s doing it with an intelligent person!!.  I mean, Levy must have slipped on his way out.  Towards the end, though, Jian built to his climax (I am sure it is available on cbc.ca/q, I’m sure), and he suckingly, blowingly, wheedlingly, desperately asked Eugene Levy if he felt that he, Levy, just hadn’t been recognized enough.  I mean, this is so totally beyond bizarre.  You’re talking to a guy who’s Order of Canada, writer, comedian, Academy Award nominee, actor, done his whole career completely on his own terms, and Jian, sucking and wheedling, is saying “d’you, djew, dju, djeeoo ever feel you didn’t get enough recognition?”  I mean, Christ.  This is so impalpable as to require a palimpsest.  What, in the world, was Eugene Levy supposed to say?  “Oh yeah, I always figured I should have been Gary Cooper, or Eastwood or Stallone.”  I mean, think about it.  You’re speaking with someone who has completely achieved his own success according to his own terms in pretty well every dimension of the industry, and, sucking and wheedlingly, you wonder if he thinks he didn’t get enough recognition?  I swear, I would have killed to be there to see Levy’s creepy crawly eyebrows for that one.  Again, pure Jian thinking only of himself, totally incapable of imagining the lives of others.

Probably about the next day or whatever, Jian had his massive FEATURE CHAT with Coldplay.  Anyway.  I’m dating myself now.  I do remember the first hit of Coldplay, that poxy guy trudging along the shore at dusk (maybe dawn) in a trenchcoat saying “it was all . . .yellow.”  Such poetry.  And that man just never ran out of beach.

If you weren’t there for it, I’ll remind you.  It went:

“It was all. . .

. . .yellow.”

Genius.

At the time I do remember thinking (hoo no, you are NOT going to get me to think what Jian was thinking), well, here’s a one-hit wonder.  Shows what I know. 

Anyway so I did hear some of Jian’s “feature chat” with Coldplay, and the astounding thing about it all was that, over the course of what surely must have been nearly an hour, there wasn’t one. . .single. . .thing. . .that had anything to do with anything.  Nothing about the songs, where they came from, the trajectory of their career(s) and the stops along the way, what they thought they were doing as pop artists—nothing.  Families, the industry, producers, travel, evolution of pop forms, crowds and places. . . .  Poof!  Nothing.  Just Jian sucking and wheedling and wondering, “oh, jeeeee, is it so haaaaard to be a popstar??” “Oh, jeeee, it must be so tough, when people say, like, you’re, like, so, like, like, famous.”  “Jeee.”   Linehan was sooooo deep.

Actually my tv was on the other day and CBC, relentlessly pressing the Persian, had Jian on the tv, and I was pleased to see him looking doughy and greasy and fat like a roadie for a Mexican blues band I’d see on the way out of town in an Econoline at Denny’s at 3 a.m..  He did not look like the mo-delle he’s always pitched as, and I kind of liked him for that.  He looked like an actual working man.  I do think Jian works hard.  He just isn’t very smart, and never learned to think of others during his upbringing.  Give me Jian at 2 in the afternoon, and he’s my eeezzylistenin’ compadre.  10 a.m. is too early for Oprah, anywhere in the world.  That’s “Price is Right” time.

It is just a tremendous pity that Jian can never escape himself, or think.  One of Jian’s signature phrases is: “I’m curious about. . .”.  And then he just says, “what it’s like to be so famous.”  Uh, no, Jian—that is not curiosity.  That is just shallow as a wading pool.  Being curious about your grade 7 pimply desires just doesn’t count as curious, but to know that, you’d have to have been exposed to thought, to be able to think of others not yourself.

Anyway, Jian will never be able to stop batting his lashes at himself; he just is what he is, and I won’t flog him anymore.  He does belong in the dreamy enclosed dusky afternoon of general hospitals and gossipy mean girls he can redeem with a wand.

Jian makes Brian Linehan look like Christopher Hitchens.  And with his hushy-gushy "I'm Leif Garrett and so can you!!" attitude, Jian bombs arts back to the margins they’ve always tried to escape from.  Jian’s frothy sucking and blowing insists upon the continued marginalization of the arts.  In Jian’s self-cradled mind, he probably feels he is doing the opposite.  Good for him.  The effects of his Coldplay “chat” are no doubt even still reverberating around the universe.  Late at night, Jian must think: “man, I really nailed that Coldplay chat.”  To what effect?  So Tories could tee off on it?  So people concerned about the arts could be perplexed?  Yes, Jian, you sucked and blowed with Coldplay, but what, other than personal satisfaction, did you achieve?  We sure didn't learn anything about Coldplay.  I'd read TeenBeat for that.

You can see, just by the dates of my posts, that I have tried _not_ to comment.  And I’ll keep trying not to comment.  If I comment again, maybe it’ll be a mockup interview (sorry, sorry, “chat”)—but really I’ll try to stay away.  You can see by the dates of my posts that I really have tuned out.

I really have been able to turn off Jian lately, and that's good, but it is hard to turn off a station you would like to tune to.

Ok, it’s Jian Ghomeshi interviewing Atom Egoyan.

JG:  Huh-eye.

AE: Hi

JG:  So let me see, you’ve been so famous, for so loooooong.

AE: Well. Probably not here, but….

JG:  I mean, you go around the world, and there’s all these people, and you’re like, so famous!!!

AE: Well, maybe it’s different, but. . . .

JG: It’s gotta be so haaaaaaarrrrrddd!  I mean, you’re so famous, and, it’s like, how can you, like, eat in a restaurant, and, it’s like, I’d find that so, like, haaaaarrrrd.

AE: Well, we lead a pretty normal—

JG: --but that’s just it, it’s gotta be so haaaaaarrrrrddd.

AE:  Well, we. . . .

JG: Haaaaarrrd.  But it’s like you say, it’s gotta be so haaaaarrrrrrdd.

AE: Sure, but you, . . .

JG: Find it so haaaaaaarrrrrrd.  I know.  I know.  It’s haaaaaarrrrrrrrd.  Oh man it’s haaaaaaaaaaaard.  I don’t know how you do it.  You must find it. . .

AE: We …

JG: so .haaaaaaaaaarrrrrrd.  Yeah.

Hey wait, Ato, Ato, listen, we’re going to have a feature chat with Scott Baio next Thursday, then we’ve got a world exclusive with Dolly Parton—she’s never been interviewed before in Canada—and Ron Popiel’s coming in, and—look out—we’ve got Suzanne Sommers back again to talk about all the amazing contributions she’s been making to the arts since we talked to her a few weeks ago.  She’ll have lots to say, for sure.  This is going to be the first time in Canada in three weeks Suzanne Sommers has done a feature chat with anyone!!  And then we’re gonna be in Gander for a feature chat with Vic Tayback, with special guests Codmen, and if you want to get tickets, you’ve got to get to our site by Thursday.  Uh, uuhhhh.

And now we get back to out feature chat with Atom Egoyan; hang on, Eggie, we’ve got Dorkbird live in studio today, singing her “I don’t know about art but I heard it on the subway” song!

JG:  Man.  That was great.  Nice stuff.  Dorkbird!!  Live on feature CBC world exclusive.

You'll be back in a minute.

 

JG: you were saying when you took off your glasses—why don’t you do that more often, man, it’s sexee!!  You’re like, so famous, and, I bet, damn those glasses—who’d you get them from anyway?

AE: Probably worn. . .

JG: My guy too!!  I saw this guy and he was like, no, you gotta have it!  Man.

AE: Mm.

JG: Movies—it’s like, you get famous with that, all the time, right?

AE: Well, I, uh. . .

JG: an it’s like so, so, cool to be famous, but what I bet a lot of people don’t realize is that, is that, it’s, like, so hard, to be famous.  Right?

AE: Well, not famous.

JG: That’s what I meeeeeaaaaan.  It’s sooo haaaaaarrrrrddd!  You know, you know, I’m curious.  I’m curious.  I’m just curious.  Curious about just just, just what it means to be so. . .famous?  What is that like, I mean, to be so so famous, like, I mean. . . .  Aw, man.

AE: Well,   

Always pullin’ for Jian, but despairing largely. Always pullin,’ yankin’ in a 3-foot depth.

--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}}
 

The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q

found here: http://www.cbc.ca/q/

(Please read or scroll to the bottom to see the actual record of this thread!)
 

There’s this black hole in my day, every day, when lushy gushy breathy Jian comes on at 10 a.m.  I just haven’t been bothered to find other radio sources to go to, but every day I tell myself I must.  I sometimes even find myself listening to evangelists, for at least they have a kind of passion that goes out from themselves. 

Jian is the gay Persian CBC has been trying to work with forEVER.  For a while there he read letters, I think, for the charmed aging Shelagh Rogers.  Then there was his stillborn tv show.  But hey, when you’ve got a guy who is gay and not very white _and_ Persian, you just can’t give this kind of opportunity up.  Regardless of how incompetent, a guy like this is a checkoff goldmine.  It’s like in sports, when there’s this can’t-miss guy—the big defenceman who can (learn to) skate, the presumptive five-tool infielder, and so on—no amount of truth can trump your belief.

 

Any show with a Brian Connelly intro can’t be bad, right?  You wouldn’t think so, but even Brian’s theme is totally mailed-in.  He twanged that one hung-over in his pyjamas on a Sunday morning, aged 19.

Jian likes to begin with a very twee, fey spoken intro.  Comically, he refers to it as an “essay.”  This is a collection of a few hundred words about something he has decided to support that day, like, oh, say, Rue McLanahan, and it is full of precocious rhymes, like limes and mimes and what cool times!!!  He always makes sure to let us know that his last word does, too, rhyme with “Q”!!  Oh neat!!  It’s so neat how he does that, every time!  Every time I hear it, all I can think is how Liberace still at least played a piano, even with all those things on his fingers.

Roughly in the middle of his show, Jian usually reads a bit of listener mail or tweets or whatever.  Revealing his hostile self-obsessed stripe, though, Jian almost invariably uses this segment to get back at anyone who has said anything critical about the show.  So he reads a tweet or something that came to his website or whatever and then responds back to it—to someone who, obviously, cannot themselves respond in kind.  Thus does Jian become King of his little dictatorship.  Maybe he reads them in a little Ahmadinejad safari suit. 

The show does have its devices.  For instance, a remarkable portion of every show is taken up by Jian talking about what is going to be coming up on the show sometime in the near future.  Not necessarily any idea when.  And this as guests are actually sitting there.  It is beyond bizarre.  It is as if Johnny Carson were to say, “well, look, Dino, I’m talking to you now, but I’ve got Warren Beatty on tomorrow.”  It is thoroughly bizarre, but I guess Jian is in some way justifying his massive (and oh yes, we do mean massive) taxpayer-funded staff.  Bizarre.  One can only think it does go back to self-obsession somehow, because it is just so bizarre.  Then there’s the “feature chats.”  This is Jian’s favourite phrase, despite the fact that it is a comical oxymoron, like “gourmet burger.”  A “chat,” if Jian looked it up, would be a bit of an informal gossip, somewhere beneath, in seriousness, oh, say, a “conversation” or an “interview.”  But it’s a “feature”!!  A “feature” chat!  I don’t know how Jian managed to make Ben Mulroney look deep, but breathy gushy Jian has.  Jian is hosting a popular culture show, but he wants to make it sound notable, so it’s a “feature.”  I must admit, I never tune in unless it’s a “feature” chat.  All those other chats—they just don’t feature.

Then of course there’s Jian’s worldwide exclusives that he is always rather pathetically anxious to tell us about.  (Yes, if I’d failed and then been offered the public teat as often as Jian, well, I’d be insecure, too, but still, one of the best ways to overcome insecurity is to not act so obviously insecure.) Well, you know, when there’s one broadcaster with pretty much guaranteed national penetration, and most of the civilized (and non-civilized, if you care to look into it) world itself emanates from countries where national “public” broadcasters are standard, well, uh, duh, then of course you’d talk to the CBC.  Who the hell else would you talk to?  The Corus affiliate in Brandon?  

One of Jian’s greatest triumphs was getting to talk to Van Morrison when Morrison was in Canada to play a couple of concerts in places like Montreal and Toronto (where Jian’s show comes from—again, duh, who the hell else would Morrison talk to?).  Probably all the world knows a little bit about Morrison, and most of what the world probably knows is just that he’s a very independent guy who does his own thing and runs his own show and crafts memorable pop tunes and other music besides.  During Jian’s interview (sorry, “feature chat”) with Morrison, Morrison said he was still pissed off about the _Last Waltz_ movie; clearly, he felt he’d been stiffed by it.  Wheedling, cringing, desperately unctuously hyperventilating, Jian kept wondering why Morrison “was so sad.”  It was so painful to hear.  An intelligent veteran of the music business, with countless song credits to his name, being tearily honeyed and cloyed by a hushy-gushy boy who only wanted to know why Morrison was so sad.  You see, this is what depresses me about Jian Ghomeshi.  He is just so incredibly stupid and so incredibly self-obsessed that he can’t manage an interview and ask the kinds of questions that would be on the tip of any sentient less arrogant person’s tongue.  To hear Jian “chat” with Morrison (the very idea of a celebrity “chat” with Morrison kind of does just show how tuned out Jian is in the first place) was to be baffled beyond belief to think that Jian himself would say that he once strummed a guitar in public.  Jian was clearly never brought up to, nor has he ever been able to imagine someone other than himself, and this is what makes him so fundamentally incapable of speaking with other people who are not him.

A great one recently was the interview with Tim Robbins, a bright multi-talented guy.  Whinging and wheedling, gossip Jian desperately sought to know whether or not Tim's new album was really about his breakup with celeb Susan Sarandon.  What a train wreck.  I mean, you've got an intelligent guy in front of you, and all Jian could do was wonder why Tim had not used lots of production on his album.  As Tim Robbins, you've got to be sitting there, thinking, I can't believe I'm sitting here listening to this oily lisping twit wheedling about whether or not I've decided to write an album about my wife.  It's just so embarassing and skin-deep, but that's what Jian does.  You can run over the checklist--Robbins, like his wife, have done all kinds of things that have distinguished them from run-of-the-mill stars, but here's wheedling sucking Jian desperately wanting to know if Tim is "sad" about Susan.  It took a staff of 16 to get Jian to ask that??
 

Or then there was the famous Billy Bob Thornton interview.  I actually heard this one in the shower.  The story goes that Billy Bob’s handlers told Jian’s monster staff that the focus had to be on the band he was touring with, and the focus wasn’t supposed to be on Billy Bob’s movie career.  That seems fair enough to me.  I mean, after all, Thornton was touring with his band and the whole band showed up early in the morning at studio Queer with its maroon bordello atmosphere and they were ready to play.  The CBC and Canadian media, though, went all out to vilify Thornton, insisting that no, they hadn’t been told not to ask about his movies.  I could tell when simpering Jian tried to urge Thornton into a discussion of his movies that something was wrong.  And, well, yes, there was.  Anyway, to me it made sense that, if Thornton was playing there that night or the next night or whatever, and had his band of guys sitting there, he’d want the focus to be on his band.  In the end, his band did do a nice standard instrumental number that I liked.  Laughably, later, tough Canadian media renegades like posh-boy Russell Smith (novel not doin’ so good?  Write about pocket-poofs your hand can't extract) hailed Jian as _one_ _tough_ interviewer_ (sorry, _chatterer_).  Then the CBC came out, big time, and said that Thornton was a lout who showed up early in the morning and demanded a specific brand of American horsepiss beer for his band.  The CBC pleaded that liquor stores were not open then, in this fine pure land of ours.  All of this may be.  I don’t know jack about Billy Bob Thornton.  I know he got famous for something called _Sling Blade_.  I know he went out with a pretty actress, but I don’t think it was Julia Roberts, who momentarily married (right?) Lyle Lovett.  I know he’s bald (ing).  It is just a basic article of fact that musicians, like brokers and scotch, will typically drink before or during or after they perform.  That just is as it is.   Virtually every media organization on the planet is well stocked with alcohol and clothes and makeup and virtually anything else that may be necessary in order to ensure that a planned media engagement goes off well; to do otherwise would be just stupid.  So for the CBC to claim that they could not find any beer early in the morning (one of Jian’s staff could have run across the street to his flat to get some) is just pathetically stupid and lying.  Clearly, there was some hate on here in the first place, and Thornton was clearly uncomfortable at being unable to drink in some gauzy purple bathhouse at 8 a.m., but, well, I thought Jian’s wheedling inquiries about utterly insignificant gossip issues (he wasn’t asking Thornton about 9/11, or who he was supporting for the presidency, or what he thought about health care, for crying out loud) were pathetic.  Again, tone-deaf, self-regarding, and insensitive (owing to his extreme sensitivity to himself), Jian could not grasp that Thornton had a band with him, that was on tour, supporting an album, and that was the idea for why they were all there.  It was about the band, and Jian, thinking only of himself, just could not wrap his head around that.

I guess it just goes to the point.  With a trail of failed shows behind him, countless hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money used (in the millions now), Jian likes to just flash his lashes; but it just isn’t good enough.  He just isn’t very bright, and he’s just not that into all his guests.  He’s much, much more about himself, and that’s why paying for him and his massive staff is so depressing.  Take another gay CBC fixture, Bill Richardson.  Some time ago, when CBC afternoons were deadly dreadful, along came Bill, and he was really good.  He had an ability to come out of himself that Jian, Jian, just can’t find itself within him to do.

What really depresses me about Jian’s show is that he’s not very bright and he’s breathy and pompous and unctuous.  It also depresses me beyond belief that this guy gives so much ammunition to the foes of public broadcasting.  Here is a guy who (only) announces a staff of 16 (and obviously many more put into it and are paid) for a 2-hour (often 1 ½ -hr) show five days a week.  And what does he do?  A kind of Oprah-Ellen on the radio show.  Good lord.  I am constantly exasperated by private broadcasters who rake in the dough on car ads and whose entire operations consist only of a phone and whatever guy is on air, and who cut up public broadcasters while piping in stale used American content.  But 16+ staffers + the host to host a gossip “feature chat” show for about 8-9 hours a week???  Good lord, good lord, good lord.  This, so I can hear from Jane Fonda and Carrie Fisher??

Alright.  I’ve said enough critical.  Jian does do the TMZ news stuff.  That’s kind of funny.  Sorry, I haven’t said enough critical.  It is ludicrous that we are paying for this.  Again, Jian and his tiny constituency just aren’t enough to justify these massive expenses.

Let me try to be positive.  I’m not saying Jian is lazy.  This is a guy who’s had a 100 chances, and he probably knows it, somewhere deep down.  He _does_ google the people he interviews, or reads the google printouts his massive staff prepares for him (it must be such a bizarre thing to see “Q” getting ready to take its show on the road—a full 40 ft boardroom with a dozen or more people eagerly hunched around talking about “what will we ask Carrie Fisher?????”)  There are panels on the show—he addresses sports, but uses plagiarist Bruce Dowbiggin and platitudinous Stephen Brunt—maybe one of his massive staff could find another voice somewhere.  Still, though, good for Jian for addressing this nevertheless large part of the arts/culture spectrum that CBC and others have been being more or less forced in late years to drag into the political/military spectrum where, in democracies, it just really doesn’t belong.  It’s on the edge, and that’s where Jian puts it, and good for Q for representing it.  Q does address topical issues like, I don’t know, being fat, or something.  Ok.  I definitely support an arts show of some kind.  Spending millions on an Oprah show?  No.  I just feel so weird for the musicians as they sit there and Jian talks (again and again and again and again and again) about all the other guests he’s going to have on, sometime, in coming weeks.  Weird.

I like Elvira Kurt, the gay depressive comedian he has on regularly.  As a result of hearing her on Queer (I had heard her before), I did go to her website months ago, where I think she sells self-help books, or something.  It’s funny to hear her, because of course she and Jian actually don’t have much rapport on the air at all.  She is way too smart and fast for him, and he is the primadonna anyway, so there’s an amusing tension between a sharp smart person and one trying to act like one.  Jian, and Elvira, know he's the cute one, but she's the smart one, and the results are amusing.

I support Q (oh boy, through taxes, do I ever), but I just wish the host could be a little smarter, a little less self-absorbed. 

Alright then.  Enough for now.  This is a very depressing show that I almost always have to dial away from, despite being a member of the very most obvious constituency that the show could ever target.  I guess that’s the point.  Let’s go with Donnie and Marie, a couple of Jian’s “feature chat” heroes.  I guess I’m just a little bit interview, and Jian is a little bit gossip.  I’m a little bit open, and Jian’s just a little bit Oprah.

I know--put Jian on in the afternoon.  I know it seems like a crazy carousel to find Jian, with all his pc indicators, yet another home, but 2-4, surely, that, if anywhere, is where he belongs.

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}}