Must be Above Suspicion: Jian, the Media, and the New Equality

By Vandee

Far be it for some clunky, worthless blogger – one who does little more than spew dross in the shady recesses of Blogspot – to assume he’s got all the answers. Truth is, my ignorance in all things proves overwhelming more often than not, but hopefully my desire to improve outweighs this. Please comment, criticize, deride as needed, or I’ll never learn.

Sufficiently self-deprecated, I’ll move on to the issue at hand:

Jian Ghomeshi – perennial queen of the Canadian indie homecoming dance – began the week with a Facebook artillery barrage aimed at himself. Long hours that I spent alternatively agreeing and disagreeing with the cohort-famous CBC Radio host while listening to his show “Q” did not prepare me for the 1,000 word Facebook post that was forwarded to me on Sunday.

Jian explained, with some level of detail, the atmosphere that currently surrounds him, and the nominal reasons for his dismissal from the CBC. He admits to being a BDSM aficionado, being non-monogamous, and continually stresses being above board when it comes to consent. He is not yet a criminal, and no charges have been laid against him. The rumor mill spins, but nothing especially damning has yet been substantiated.

Frankly, Jian’s account reads more like a Savage Love submission than something akin to the recent NFL scandals. His tone, and I suspect his aim, is to construct a defense perimeter around himself, as if checking the right boxes secures his position.

Jian’s (presumed) inner monologue:

“I’ve got consent from every woman I’ve been with, I engage in “alternative” sexual practices that no one has the right to criticize, and I’ve been fired on shaky grounds when no charges have been laid against me. Come at me, bro!”

Pretty good defensive walls – certainly, here is a man who knows how to tick the requisite boxes needed to pacify the Left.

My only response must then be: let’s wait till all of the facts come out. Most importantly – let’s get stories from the women. After all, who is Ghomeshi preemptively defending himself against? The CBC for sure, the pundits and bloggers no doubt, but ultimately, his fortifications must withstand a barrage from the women he has been seeing.

So, perhaps misguidedly, I took to Reddit:

Embedded in the Ghomeshi thread was the now well-trod link to an XOJane article. In this piece from 2013, a woman describes a date with a pseudonymmed Ghomeshi. Though she does not suggest that Ghomeshi engaged in illicit, illegal, or explicit sexually aggressive behavior, he comes off… well, I would describe the outlined behavior as douchy and presumptive.

Now, much as we’d like to see douchy, presumptive behaviour eliminated from the dating scene, the sad reality is that if this type of thing were grounds for dismissal from one’s employer, there’d be a lot of dudes out of work. The first question: if the XOJane account is accurate, can we describe Ghomeshi as a criminal or a serious liability to the CBC?

Taking a step back:

I had heard through various internet rumor mills, as well as some friends tied into the arts/media scene in insular Toronto, that Ghomeshi has a reputation as a philanderer. To be clear, I do not mean this as a negative slant against the guy, I’m merely saying that buddy has a reputation. Second question: does Ghomeshi’s seemingly long-standing reputation as a philanderer include descriptors like “douchy” or “presumptive”? If so, what must it be like to be a female staffer at CBC’s offices in Toronto, potentially subject to this behavior, and knowing that buddy has been the golden boy of Canadian radio for some time?

Now today:

I read that multiple women had, before Ghomeshi’s termination, gone to the Toronto Star with stories relating unwanted behavior of a sexual nature. One, rather extreme, example comes from a woman who claims “…she visited Ghomeshi at his Toronto home and alleges as soon as she walked into his house he suddenly struck her hard with his open hand, then continued to hit her and choked her.’ Another said: ‘He attacked me. Choked me. Hit me like I didn’t know men hit women. I submitted.” (http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/what-jian-ghomeshis-accusers-were-afraid-of/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0) .

Shit just got real.

I was shocked to read in the Vancouver Sun today, an opinion piece that discredits the claims of these women on the grounds of “why didn’t they go to the police?” Does this logic hold? I always assumed that confusion and stigma associated with being a victim – especially the victim of a beloved media personality – precludes one from the expectation of following the prescribed channels of justice. Basically, when a woman is victimized, any course of action seems justified (in this terrible blogger’s opinion).

So now I wait, reserving final judgement until all the facts come out; that said, I can foresee two outcomes:

One: the choking incident is substantiated. Even if this was a consensual act of BDSM (which it does not appear to be from the woman’s statement), a genuinely shaken/affected woman is enough to retroactively cancel the consent. I.e. if she feels she’s been abused, consent no longer functions as the Holy Grail litmus test for what is acceptable.

Two: all of the accusations are proven false – Ghomeshi has been the victim of a stodgy and unforgiving CBC, as well as a conspiracy of exes who desire revenge and notoriety. I hesitate to even write this as a possibility, since it would imply that the women coming forward are anything less than victims, which I feel is a right I do not have.

If scenario two unfolds, could the CBC still justify Jian’s termination? Buddy has a reputation as a philanderer and “douche”, and has a string of exes willing to cite the guy’s sexual history. They may not be victims (if scenario two proves true), but they are pissed off enough to plot revenge against the guy. If I’m an employer, and one of the most prominent faces of my company has a growing reputation as a philandering douche who plays fast and loose with his partners’ emotions, and even engages in this type of activity with members of my staff, firing the guy seems like a no-brainer.

Again, all of this is easy to say from the VanProver pulpit, but I think I’m getting close to the crux of the broader issue:

Many Ghomeshi fans have been quick to rush to his defence. Many are of the lefty set. Many, I’m sure, have marched in a feminist parade or some equivalent. False accusations are a real thing, so I won’t lash out at folks for supporting their boy, but if the claims against Ghomeshi are substantiated, everyone who rushed to unilateral defense of the guy will have some answering to do.

The New Equality demands a lot – especially for white alpha males like me who won the genetic and socioeconomic lottery at birth (not that Ghomeshi necessarily fits that mould). It seems to me that when a woman has been victimized – or rather, when a woman claims injustice – the accused is guilty until proven innocent. This is way it has to be: to counteract centuries of unapologetic male dominance and victim-blaming. We have to treat every accusation as a serious concern, worthy of thorough dissection. Rushing to the defense of the accused abuser could prove, in the end, to have been tragically misplaced. The closest thing one can come to “supporting” the accused would be to say something to the extent of “I’ll reserve judgement until the facts come out”. Maybe someday, decades from now, we’ll have developed the social protocol needed to treat these situations objectively, but for now, we must only rush to the support of the perceived victim.

Finally:

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m expecting too much from people, and from myself, but it seems to me that the best way to deal accusations like those facing Ghomeshi is not to tick “consent boxes” as a means to build a defense, but rather to hop right on the cross as fast as possible. This would have the accused making statements that sound roughly like this:

“I apologize in advance – it was never my intention to harm anyone in any way. I believe I acted with everyone’s best interest in mind, but I admit I am limited by my own experience. Please investigate every accusation that has been laid against me so we might get to the truth of the matter, because justice means more to me than my reputation, my job, or 50 million dollars-worth of taxpayer money.”

journalism, art, and the public. my two cents.

By S. Brennan

since i inadvertently joined what has been a very interesting and fruitful discussion on the place of public broadcasting in canada, it has got me thinking, not only about my previous statements about what is ‘uniquely canadian’ (despite the fact that the cbc on my xbmc media player has such a subcategory), but also about the role of journalism on  the whole in a ‘democratized’ environment. this won’t be concise, and it won’t be conclusive…but here we go:

i was breast fed on state sponsored radio, i am not going to try to hide my affinity for the work of the cbc, or my political persuasion, nor am i going to try to make you believe that the cbc is an irreplaceable asset that we as canadians could not do without. but first…should journalism be democratic?

i had the point raised that because the cbc uses primarily public funds that it has an obligation to reflect the opinions, or desires of the masses (among other questions about exactly who is responsible for programming to the masses, which i won’t get into here). i don’t necessarily think this is true, and furthermore i think this would be an awful idea, if put into practice.

literally ‘democratizing’ the news was briefly practiced by cnn, in which viewers were encouraged to ‘vote’ on a short list of news stories to be further explored, the results were at least a little disheartening. for me, keyboard cat and antoine dodson don’t exactly quality as cutting edge journalism. look no further than reddit, or any of the news subreddits to quality the argument that crowd sourcing the news can (and possibly often) leads to empirically poor or misinformed choices.

journalism, as i understand it, exists to keep you informed, or inform you of events of opinions you may not be aware of, or even interested in. i like the idea that the cbc attempts to exist in an environment where other countries would prefer to have two or three outlets exploring their predetermined perspective leaving us worse informed than before. journalism is massively competitive, and maybe it should be…but i think leaving one horse out of the race for funds, not interested in maximizing profit at the expense of well executed journalism is absolutely critical (as the distinction has been made with programs like doc zone and dispatches (r.i.p) and while i do feel this way, i also feel that in the age of personal rss feeds making this argument has become increasingly difficult.

what is uniquely canadian?

the point was raised that some of the cbc programming isn’t great. fact. some of fox or abc’s programming isn’t great…and its true that many of the programs on the cbc would be short lived if they existed on another network. i personally love, and revel in the poorly made cbc programs, i love the fact that we try, and let others try to work and explore what this country means to them. furthermore, art in canada needs to be, and is protected. the mere existence of the crtc speaks to this. imagine if only commercially successful art was created, in all mediums. we as a country, and as a society would be undoubtable worse off. think more nickelback and justin beiber and less of your grant supported starving artist, be they visual, musical, or otherwise.

the obvious counter argument is amanda palmers ted talk, in which she embraces the age of kickstarter and indiegogo changing the equation of how our passions and interests are realized. personally, i don’t see why we can’t have both.

save the cbc. let’s keep canada connected.

/endrant.

pps. on don cherry.

while not necessarily related i feel steven soderbergh address on the state of cinema reflects many of the sentiments i feel towards the cbc…take the money you would spent on a massive tent pole (don cherry), and spread it around, giving more canadians more access to more media that better reflects our increasingly diverse population. people revere don cherry like he is some sort of saint. i am not a sports journalist, barely a sports fan, but just as i was raised on the cbc, i was too raised on rock’em sock’em videos, in which don cherry personally profited off of the brain and bodily damage of hockey players, and is embarrassingly slow at embracing the societal impacts of the ‘sock’em’ empire on the next generation of nhl players. he brings in a fair amount of money from the cbc, but he isn’t immortal, and often i feel like he should have a censor, or muzzle, not poor ron mcclean sitting next to him. (i am ready for the hate comments from cherrys disciples).

What would Jean Béliveau say?

By Dano

• What do you feel defines “uniquely home-grown canadian content”? I just genuinely wonder about that. If the CBC is meant to be a reflection of Canadian culture I guess I would believe we need to further democratize it. And in this case, ceding partial control to the government in power seems like a step in the wrong direction. My point here I guess is that the CBC has the potential to be an invaluable resource, but is not perfect. Maybe we all need to take a more active role simply because it has such a unique power to define our country. At the end of the day who really gets to decide what programming is on the CBC? Journalism free from government influence still is problematized by the familiar divisions like class. How much does a journalism degree cost? Are those who can afford them the only one who get to decide what goes on the CBC?

   
• SECONDLY. I am certainly not apologizing for the bad things Don Cherry has said about French-Canadians, Russians, women, take your pick. BUT, Hockey is part of Canada. something like 80% of the country watched the gold medal hockey game. And Don Cherry is hockey. SO instead of simply calling for the rolling head of an individual we need to look at how the game is shaped by our country and how we teach, watch, and talk about it. I love hockey so much. Shinny on Emerald Lake behind my house in Whistler this past year was some of the most fun I have ever had. Yet the game is ill and need of reform. Most glaringly, violence in hockey makes me really sad and confused. I don’t know how to fix this one either. But there are numerous points of power that need to change. Reckless violence in the NHL needs to be eliminated, for good (lookin’ at you Raffi Torres, Aaron Rome, Brad Marchad, Matt Cooke, the list goes on), young kids starting out need to be taught that life-long injury to an opponent is not worth winning the game, and the rules/equipment/refereeing needs to reflect a genuine desire to change for the better. The CBC could easily play an active role in this, and if that means Don Cherry has to go, so be it. But really, we still buy the tickets, contribute to ratings, congratulate our children on scoring or wins despite dirty play. Far better for us to look inward. I see hockey as a reflection of Canada that I feel has lost its way.

Pledge Drive for Ghomeshi – Tories, CBC, and Don Cherry

By Vandee

I’ll open with: please comment!  I want to know more about this issue, and learn what others have to say…

When I was in high school, I read Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men, and learned a lot about partisan politics from Michigan’s favorite unkempt whistle blower.  He has a chapter that outlines a list of offenses committed by top members of the Bush administration across their political careers (this being pre-9/11).  He’ll list a string of scandals, corruption accusations, and war profiteering, and without taking a breath, add all the times that each Bush appointee voted against Pro-Choice legislation.  By strict definitions, I’m quite Pro-Choice – I don’t believe the government has a right to tell a woman what she can do with her body, and ultimately defer to doctors (rather than religious leaders, or politicians) on health issues.  That being said, there’s nothing corrupt about taking a Pro-Life stance.

Pointing out corruption is a means of objectively proving to people of any political leaning that a politician is bad at their job.  I don’t believe that anyone can lump a legitimate political position in with a corruption accusation, and expect it to be rhetorically sound.  Being Pro-Life is just what Republicans do – engage them in debate, show them facts to convince them of your point of view, but don’t accuse them of being corrupt just because they see fetuses in a different light than you do.

This is the crux of partisan politics – the inability to differentiate between corrupt practices, and the expression of a political view that’s different from yours.

Enter Stephen Harper v. the CBC.

I wake up one day, and the internet-o-sphere has exploded because Harper is looking to cut CBC funding.  Holy shit, stop the presses, a Tory wants to cut spending.  Cutting spending is what Tories do – hell, that’s why 40% of the 60% of Canadians who turned out to vote in 2011 voted the Tories in.

I read some more, and it looks like changes to the CBC don’t stop at spending cuts.  The following is a quote from the CBC, so recognize the bias:

“The new changes would allow the government to directly interfere in the day to day running of the Corporation. At the heart is a plan for direct interference in collective bargaining between the CBC and its employees. The legislation even goes so far as to place a member of the Treasury Board at the bargaining table. CBC’s government appointed Board of Directors would now have to seek government approval to reach any agreement with CBC employees.

The legislation tabled yesterday effectively eliminates the arms-length relationship with government that’s at the heart of public broadcasting.

“This is an outrageous and unnecessary violation of the principle of public broadcasting. It undermines nearly 80 years of public broadcasting in Canada and around the world by meddling with the essential arms-length relationship between the CBC and the government of the day. The change is disturbing as it has all the markings of an attempt to turn the CBC into a state broadcaster,” said Carmel Smyth, National president of the Canadian Media Guild (CMG), the largest union that represents CBC workers.”

I have enough Tory friends to know they’d say something like, “it’s all about controlling the amount of taxpayer money that goes into the public broadcaster – we need to ensure belts are kept tight.”

Conversely, my lefty friends are probably saying, “this is step one on the path to state-sanctioned propaganda – Harper is looking to control the media in this country.”

Unsurprisingly, I’ma assume a middle position.  Controlling spending is important for any government, but is taking the hatchet to the CBC highest on the priority list?  Plus, they’re a media outlet with a long-standing beef against the Tories – understandable, given the fact that Tories generally want to hatchet their budget.  So I guess it makes sense that these parties would be at each others throats: one looking to keep its funding and freedom, and the other assuming the divine mandate of saving Canadian taxpayers money at every opportunity.  I don’t think Harper has a grand propaganda scheme (he’s too much of a reactionary lame duck to have anything like that up his sleeve), he just has zero sympathy for the CBC and likes doing things that make the government’s bottom line look better.

That doesn’t make him an evil mastermind, it makes him a Tory.

As for the CBC, I’m wondering how much of the sympathy it has gotten from the Left is on principle, and how much is genuine interest in CBC programming.  I’m a huge CBC Radio fan, and don’t want to see my favorite programs cut from the air, but to a hatchet man Tory, I can see why it looks like an ideal target.  The only statistic I could find after a quick search: CBC receives 1 Billion dollars annually in government revenue (taken from Wikipedia).  That’s no small chunk of change.

For every hipster I see on the bus with a CBC messenger bag, I’m wondering if he/she/zhe watches Heartland or Being Erica or Mr. D.  Do they listen to Tapestry on Radio 1?  Likely they’re Radio 3 fans of Ghomeshi subscribers.  Fair enough – that’s a legitimate political position: you like program x, you want to see it stay on the air, and you’re willing to get political to see that it does.  Well done!  But hipster, would you be upset if the CBC, without government intervention, axed the programs you don’t pay attention to as a means of limiting their spending?  How much of this debate is principle, and how much is you wanting your favorite podcast to stay on the air?  Should it matter?

Enter CBC’s most popular program: Hockey Night in Canada, bringing the nation together since 1931.  Specifically, long-time hipster antithesis Don Cherry.  I couldn’t find how much CBC pays him per Coach’s Corner, but I did find his listed net worth to be $12 million, most of which I imagine comes from the CBC these days.  The Left in licking their lips in anticipation of this guy getting the axe, especially in light of his outspoken right wing stance on many issues.  When I tuned in to a recent episode last night, Grapes let slip one of the worst soundbites I’ve ever heard, “I don’t feel women are equal.”  Jesus.  Left-wing lynch mobs now mobilizing.  The full quote, in reference to female reporters in male locker rooms (and the suggestion of male reporters in female locker rooms), “I don’t feel women are equal.  I feel they are above us.  I think they are on a pedestal and they should not be walking in when naked guys are walking in. And some guys take advantage of it and I don’t think (they) should be.”  Full quote is more understandable from a “he’s 79 years old” POV, but no more acceptable to the Left.

So it’s clear that the Left would have no problem squeezing Grapes out.  Now, if I’m in charge of the CBC, and I’m running it like a business, I’m likely to keep the bro who generates the most ratings and brings in the most advertising money, it just makes sense.

Now let’s paint two extremes:

1. Tories celebrate their biggest moral victory to date when they axe the CBC entirely, forcing it to operate as a regular old private broadcaster.  Shelagh Rogers is out of a job, and the Left freaks out.

2. A hypothetical government gives the CBC carte blanche, they being practically-minded business folk pour most of their money into their reliable, popular programming and up Cherry’s budget.  They also spend more on arts, culture and music programming on CBC Radio, and make 5 new seasons of Heartland.

Is the Left happy under scenario 2?  They want Cherry gone, but recognize the CBC’s actions as making business sense.  If only there were some way they could put one of their people in charge of what the CBC spends money on.  Wouldn’t that be awesome?  Like a really cool person who values Canadian music and will promote the programs that matter to us.  Of course there would have to be some government body overseeing everything to make sure the programming is kept artsy, relevant, and left of center – no more Cherry-bombs up in here!

Now, how is that different from what the Tories are doing in principle?

http://www.canadianprogressiveworld.com/2013/04/29/canadians-overwhelmingly-reject-don-cherrys-sexist-remarks/

http://rabble.ca/news/2012/05/cbc-crisis

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/jj-mccullough/harper-bashers_b_3221173.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporation#Television

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/don-cherry-net-worth/