When the demons of celebrity twist fame into infamy

After weeks of silence and no sightings of #JG anywhere, this week brought him out from under cover via a double whammy Tuesday-Wednesday. After being fired by CBC on October 26th, he summarily filed an apparently futile $55M lawsuit against CBC, even though the collective agreement he was subject to actually precluded him from doing so, as he must follow a grievance process mandated by that agreement. The futility of that lawsuit was emphasised by the announcement on Tuesday that he was withdrawing it, with cost, and would have to pay his former employer almost $20,000 in legal costs. 

It was as predictable an event as it was futile, from the get-go, and simply underlined the horrible advice he may have been given (or good advice he ignored) in the days following this story breaking; his Facebook post, the lawsuit and the courting of the court of public opinion (as well as some minor celebrities) were all a desperate scramble for support in advance of what he knew was coming next. Irrespective of whether he was directly advised, inappropriately, or acted on his own questionable judgement, his actions in the early term were destined not only to fail, but to actually continue to work against him - even today. 

Damage control is one thing, but to actually portray himself as the victim, taking advantage of the uninformed and presumably naive quarter of a million Twitter followers, well, that's something else. I suppose the idea was not just to buy even a few precious days of the spotlight being turned on CBC as legions of fans expressed outrage (as they did!), but maybe in his dreams he thought CBC would buckle under pressure, hand him a couple of million dollars, and he could fly off into the sunset of his career - but still a free man. If so, it was a gross miscalculation, as CBC refused to budge from their position, and as more truth came out, some of those minor celebrities standing up for him were forced to sheepishly sit back down with red faces and question marks about their judgement/motivation hanging over their heads. 

After being dropped by various agencies and lawyers, the guy was splashing in the waves all on his ownsome, but it seemed that at least the advice being given him was of higher quality (and of purer motivation) than those who seemed to have just taken advantage of his situation. The rats always come scurrying towards you when you are bleeding out, they pick the bones, then just as rapidly they all scurry back off the sinking ship when they have gorged sufficiently. Thus, his silence in recent weeks was at least indicative that someone with even half a brain was supplying solid legal advice. Stay the hell out of sight, and shut your mouth - including, or in particular, silence the virtual voice on social media!

So, out of the blue, big lawsuit dropped. One simply had to know that something big was coming next. As it did. The day after the suit was dropped, it transpired that a surrender to Toronto police had been negotiated, he was arrested and charged with four counts of sexual assault and one count of the strangely titled "overcome resistance - choking". The latter charge is somewhat foreboding in that it comes with a maximum sentence of life in prison, even if it is highly unlikely that any judge will exercise that option. At the same time, bringing someone to the verge of passing out is but a heartbeat (or two) away from potentially killing them - so it's one very dangerous game. When it happens without consent, it's about as close to attempted murder as one can get, without actually intending to kill someone.

If you look at this triumvirate of faces above, you can see that things have become really serious, really fast, as #JG exits a Toronto courthouse with his legal eagles, and the eminent Ms. Marie Henein (at right) at the helm. They call her fearless and brilliant, and I am pretty certain that any alleged victims are going to be put through some potentially brutal interrogation by her - and the choice of a female lawyer is surely no accident. Who better to stick it to female accusers than another woman? One who will have scrutinised any weak spots in their version's armour in great detail and will no doubt pick them apart with ruthless precision. I don't envy their position, I must say.

There was an overwhelming feeling I had when watching the melee outside the courtroom, and it concerned the whole rollercoaster of fame and celebrity. What a transformation in that man''s relationship with the cameras, the media, the public and other celebrities. #JG has led a very privileged life to date, with the loving camera lens and hungry microphone never far away, and golden boy status endorsed by the CBC corporation, all interlaced with an adoring public who saw him as one of them who made it, big time. In the big time. When he walked out onto a stage at some event or other, or came out of a club after a party, there were always claps and flashes and calls, and security would have to keep the salivating hordes from reaching the celebrity. 

This week, he was faced with a very different version of that circus, with everyone wanting to get a look at him, and/or a piece of him, for totally contrasting reasons to before. In the past all the girls probably wanted to kiss him, while today they would probably be more likely to hit him with their handbags, if not something harder. Instead of security helping to transport him through a lovefest to the safety of his car, now they are needed to actually keep him safe from being assaulted - by that very same crowd. The loving gaze of the camera lens has turned into more of a voyeur's stare, and even though for years he must have loved seeing his face plastered everywhere, today he would probably give a year's salary to ensure his face was nowhere. The current scenario is a total antonym to his previous experience of fame and celebrity, twisted from what used to be a total self-promotion trip into an absolute deconstruction of that celebrity and fame. Fame became infamy. Famous now infamous. 

It's not surprising that the CBC probably aren't too unhappy with this week's events, not least because it justifies their termination of #JG, in that he would now be off the air anyway and if any of the charges stick he would have to have been fired at that point. But even I have to admit that I was not expecting that CBC would have been ready so quickly with an hour long exposé of Ghomeshi, which was shown last night on CBC. What a title too, effectively implying that his celebrity status is already deconstructed completely - "The Unmaking of Jian Ghomeshi". This was shown as an episode of "The Fifth Estate" last night and although there weren't too many surprises, it is clear that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than CBC has acknowledged, and a truckload more than the public thought they knew about Ghomeshi. 

It's a spectacular fall from grace - one powered by the same media frenzy that catapulted him to fame in the first place. I dare say that some might find that to be appropriate. Fame and celebrity can be given, and it can be taken away again, by the very machine that installed it. However, in the end, the unmaking of jian ghomeshi was orchestrated not by the Toronto Star nor Jesse Brown nor the alleged victims themselves; the unmaking of jian ghomeshi was directed by the man himself, and I bet that this is something with which he will struggle in many lonely years to come. 

The cold light of day feels a lot colder when it used to be warmed up by loving media flashbulbs and the warm glow of an adoring fan base - it being taken away leaves one feeling colder than if it had never been there at all. That loss is but one price to pay for the darker side of this former celebrity and individual - it will be up to the courts to decide on any other price he has to pay. - Kevin Mc

Cue does not contain a Q - and neither does the future!

Well, hello there, once again! Here we are, a week later, with CBC anxiously awaiting our thoughts on what to do next with the tarnished Q brand now that the halo above its former host's head has not just been lowered, but effectively was forcibly dragged to the ground like Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad, back in 2003. We have heard more than enough about said host, and now the conversation turns to the future - and what that future holds for Q.

As firmly as the spotlight has been on #JG, CBC itself has been under increased scrutiny from both the public and governmental viewpoints, not least due to the claims that CBC, as a federally funded employer, enabled the host and/or ignored complaints made about him. As stated in our last post, Heather Conway's rather disastrous interviews on the subject did almost nothing to change that perspective, and in fact furthered the image of CBC management as a bunch of old conservative fuddy duddys; nowhere near as synonymous with "contemporary" or "modern" as their host's name was/is with "Q". 

The public were asked for their "insights and ideas" and there have been many comments but no apparently clear path forward. Social media do allow one to get one's personal agenda out there, of course, just as this blog allows me to do (!), and while the suggestions have been many, it's not obvious how various suggestions would actually be constructive in terms of reconstructing the cracked Q (and CBC) brand and building a new future for the team and the corporation. What we would put forward for consideration would be:

• As much as I am not a fan of positive-sounding clichés  in the face of adversity, it is in fact the truth that CBC has been presented with an opportunity here: what they will do with Q might go a long way to restoring a degree of public/governmental support for their funding and ongoing existence as part of the broadcasting zietgeist in Canada.

• One thing we don't want to hear is any more moaning about the level of that funding and any layoffs that occur due to cutbacks. Belt-tightening was already occurring prior to the Q crisis, and #JG himself was prone to criticising federal funding cuts on his various platforms. What I always found irritating was the sanctimonious tone of those bleatings, as if broadcasting was somehow holier-than-thou, and should never be cut back. 

• Even in the face of national unemployment and a recession, for example, we still need to ensure broadcasting is not impacted (?) - total nonsense! Radio and broadcasting should follow normal economics in that if your audience shrinks and you are no longer considered an essential part of the program (pun intended!), then you have to either improve or (be) move(d) on. So, now that the CBC is under intense scrutiny and their ROI is being newly evaluated, if further cuts come then just zip it and get on with the job. Or even better, get better at the job!

• As far as I am aware, Q is not American Idol. Ergo, and to wit, this "opportunity" should not be misconstrued as a chance to bring in a faded star (but one with a recognisable name) and allow them to rebuild their fame and derive a new career out of it. I heard a lot of buzz about a certain Jann Arden, and that is just not the way forward, even if she herself is rather shamelessly courting CBC to entertain the possibility. But why should they - Jann can go make another record to generate income, and CBC can go find an actual contemporary broadcaster - one who knows that job. Yes, I do know about "Being Jann" and in fact it is being Jann that effectively disqualifies her from the job, being older than even #JG, among other reasons (see below).

• I do think the CBC are smarter than we may give them credit for, but at the risk of stating the obvious, the last thing they need right now is a (social media) loose cannon the like of Jann Arden. Isn't she the one who had some kind of Twitter outburst over a much younger and more hyper-talented Nelly Furtado at some point? Isn't she the one who took to a Twitter tirade in defence of Paula Deen? And isn't she the one who was every bit "insensitive" when railing against a certain Steve Jones of Newcap Radio, including comments about his lack of a certain piece of male anatomy? Hardly appropriate for CBC.

• There were many comments in the media about her being a "cyberbully" and trust me, hitching the venerable CBC brand to her wagon is the last thing they need right now - a media disaster in the making if ever I heard one. Who would want her sitting in front of a laptop or smartphone at 3am after a hard day at the office and after a few too many cans of pop? Scaryyy! Her record on Twitter to date effectively precludes her from being in any way associated with the Q flagship show. I have nothing against Norm Macdonald (another popular choice), but he is just not the right fit for this show nor does he have the cultural savvy or hip factor needed to host a multifaceted emission such as Q.

• So, CBC, it's really rather simple. Get off your backsides, and find a broadcasting star-in-the-making.  I refuse to believe that #JG was one of a kind (at least not in a broadcasting sense, anyway!) and there has just got to be a talent pool out there to choose from, if not choosing to handpick from within the CBC empire itself. No, it should not be a rotating series of hosts, as many suggest - we ain't gonna start doing Peter Mansbridge and his rotating hosts, nor Rick Mercer and his series of co-hosts, so let's not start that nonsense with Q. Identify a new host, and roll with it. 

• Go to college radio stations across the country, or across North America, use your considerable network to reach out and source raw talent, look at CBC TV talent and see if anyone might work, or God forbid, look within the Q team itself - clearly the individual(s) who wrote the #JG essays is/are a talent worthy of consideration. It has to be someone who already knows who the coolest bands in Toronto (or Montreal, or New York, or even London) are today, and someone knowledgeable about music, film, books and contemporary culture. Let's not forget that even though he was in fact middle-aged, #JG was "preternaturally youthful" and he had strong appeal for the 21 to 35-year-old demographic, so the host should be young, not old. Someone who doesn't need a massive support team to tell him/her which bands they should be into currently, or to promote on the show. 

• We already dealt with the name of the show last week, but to reiterate, I think Q just needs changing out and returned to simply being the seventeenth letter of the alphabet, as far as CBC is concerned. The issue is not so much rebuilding a "Q" but actually relegating it to memory, while a brand new day and whole new brand is created as its successor. There is less to gain in some nostalgic continuation of a tarnished, dysfunctional brand than in reframing it and using the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and begin again. The fact that #JG's Twitter account has been removed and his website "jian.ca" is now offline both indicate that even he seems to think that evaporation is the way to go. New host, new name, new show - that's the path forward, CBC! 

• A new show does not mean that it cannot mirror the old show in terms of scope and ambition - it's just a 2014 upgrade to the old show. An upgrade that helps to slowly erase the bad taste left by the demise of the old version, and staff and public alike begin to see Q as memory only, stuck in the past where it now should belong. Change is as good as it is inevitable in broadcasting, and CBC should dive into that change today with relish; a relish they have not heretofore been associated with or known for.

• Finally, but by no means leastly, even though it is far from being essential, wouldn't this be a great opportunity to bring a female to the fore, for a change? Replace old #JG with a hip, cool, younger female host who is a fanatic about Canadian (if not global) arts and trends and one who has a great broadcasting voice that can help in part to reshape the future for not just what was once called Q, but for the CBC corporation as a whole. Replace a now fallen former golden boy who has been accused of abusing women repeatedly, with a sharp new golden girl - there would be something quite symbolic about that, I feel. 

Oki doki, those are my thoughts on the subject this chilly Saturday morning! Quite naturally, there will be those who may agree, and surely those who will passionately disagree, and isn't that the way it's meant to be when we are discussing something which we are all passionate about? Only CBC management know what's coming next, and we are waiting anxiously for the news - all I can say is that we truly hope that they get it right, the first time. Err, make that the second time! - Kevin Mc 

PS - Hmmm, speaking of Nelly Furtado.... ;)
#QtheFuture

Q the future by getting to the end of (the) Q!

After all the bedbugs and ballyhoo about the #JianGhomeshi affair, and the seemingly instantaneous and simultaneous deconstruction of his celebrity brand, things have quietened down as the inevitable legal process settles in to pick at the bones. Bones is the word, because it seems that all that's left of JG and even Q this early into the crisis is a charred set of smoking embers with only the blackened bones providing any evidence of what was lost. 

This past week, CBC filed a motion asking the Ontario courts to throw out Ghomeshi's $55M lawsuit on the grounds that it is simply not valid due to a collective agreement that requires the complaint to be handled by a grievance/arbitration process. Additionally, and I think we all agree they are right, they claim that there was nothing defamatory in their statement about information having come to their attention that precluded  his employment, nor was there a breach of confidence if the guy showed them something that was stored on a company smartphone or device. 

Much as CBC are going to come out of this mess more on top than Ghomeshi, who may well have hit rock bottom here in Canada, at least - neither does CBC come out of it looking much better than the giant prehistoric institution that it is oft accused of being. The Canadian Media Guild union that would be handling any grievance process was not delighted by Heather Conway's jumping of the gun by talking to Peter Mansbridge on "The National" (among other). Carmel Smyth (CMG President) voiced that sentiment following Conway's appearance, stating that,

“One would have thought there would be enough respect for the process that she’d have the patience to await the findings of the investigation".

It is a fact that CBC have engaged employment lawyer Janice Rubin to conduct a third party investigation into the Ghomeshi scandal, but in that case, why in God's name would Conway speak up now in advance of the findings of Rubin's investigation? As the union has implied, it reeks totally of an attempt by Conway (i.e. CBC management!) to exonerate themselves totally, even in the face of having apparently brushed complaints about Ghomeshi's "idiosyncrasies" under the warm rugs on the Q studio floor. If you believe what you read, anyone anywhere near Q knew all about Ghomeshi, and for CBC senior management to claim that they were in the dark seems highly unlikely at best and outright fallacious at worst. 

It wasn't just that CBC erred in allowing EVP for English Services, Heather Conway, to speak to the media (uhmm, that would be her media, given that it was Peter Mansbridge!), but it was both the inappropriately chosen/clearly shackled Mansbridge and the cluelessness demonstrated by Conway that added fuel to the fire. Make that salt in the wounds, if you are one of the victims on the show, or elsewhere. To have had any real impact, Conway would had to have been grilled by a non-CBC TV personality who was not scripted or handed a set of questions they could ask, as Mansbridge no doubt was - and it thus came across as a scripted attempt at exoneration for upper CBC management. While they are ruminating on the subject of #QtheFuture - there is something that appears to be missing from this picture which can help significantly - it's called leadership!                                          
Listening to Conway discussing the term "rough sex" was painful if not actually wince-inducing, because she came across not only as (perhaps understandably) misinformed but she also demonstrated the type of stuffy conservatism that typifies one's image of CBC itself. She was spectacularly inarticulate on how the story evolved and their lack of response to it, and as an employer, stating that she had "no reference" on what "rough sex" actually means, well, come on, wake up - it's 2014, not 1974. Like any other corporation with a need in a particular area in which it has no expertise, well, you hire a consultant! Or you order your HR department to get trained/informed on such issues, so that you can deal with it. Brain surgery, it ain't!! And this is the CBC, not the BBC, right? 

Then again, this entire story is not a little reminiscent to this boy of the DJ scandal that rocked the BBC, involving primarily Jimmy Savile in the 70s and 80s, who like Ghomeshi had used his fame to gain access to his targets, but the difference is that Savile was allegedly an out-and-out paedophile who carried on abuse over a period of several decades. Then again, given further free reign, who knows how easily the Ghomeshi story could have become a decades-longer history of abuse? Thank God for small mercies, eh?

The CBC did do the right thing, but only when faced with a level of evidence of what "rough sex" really means that was impossible to further sanction - especially as it appears that some (all?) of that evidence was on a CBC-owned media device, and that the evidence was volunteered rather inexplicably by the perpetrator himself - Ghomeshi. In some moment of presumed arrogance over his importance to CBC, the man showed them what all the fuss was about, and somehow expected that to be enough to make it all go away? This attempt alone is proof positive that the guy's head was not in any normal state of mind, indicative of either sociopathic tendencies underlying his polished public image or that mounting pressure from the victims and Jesse Brown were taking their toll. 

Opening up to the CBC was as critical an error laced in hubris as the ridiculous attempt to sway the public/media with his Facebook post a few days later. That worked for a hot minute, though there was a ship of fools who bought the fiction hook, line and sinker, before the whole ploy backfired totally inside less than a week. The guy is either nowhere near as smart as the image portrayed of him in public, and/or he really thinks that Joe Public is a total dumbass who cannot see through the papier-mâché facade of a few well-chosen and well-crafted words lining the surface of his reality.     

So where are we today? Well, we come to the opening image from my last blog on this subject, which is still totally appropriate today, underlining the fact that the whole future of Q is one massive gaping question mark. The disappearance of Q executive producer Arif Noorani from CBC corridors for a week following the break of the Ghomeshi scandal, and his subsequent departure from the show itself can presumably be taken as some kind of indication that the times they-are-a-changin' - the big question is does Q have a future and if so what does it look like? 

    

I see I have dragged on again as usual, so in the interest of brevity I will only touch on this aspect today, but will get into my direct recommendations to CBC next time. Well, CBC, ya did ask, as the banner at the top of this blog clarifies, so, we will tell you! Let's cut to the chase right away, shall we? As far as I am concerned, the Q brand is soiled, dirtied and dysfunctional, particularly and not ironically because that brand effectively was Jian Ghomeshi. He conceived it, created it, ran it, nurtured it and became synonymous with it, to a point where he did get to the level of gaining too much power in the CBC corridors. 

The fact that he was synonymous with the Q brand, and that the Q brand is owned by CBC, creates an oxymoronic state of affairs, over what was an exceptionally powerful brand for the CBC, but which now is one with an exceptionally powerful degree of disdain and even hatred attached to it. There is only one thing to do, irrespective of whether a very similar but retooled show returns to the air in the near future - bury the Q! It cannot be called Q. For everyone to heal and move on, and even (especially?) for those who have worked on the show, it absolutely must be rebranded! 

That rebranding has to come with separation of Ghomeshi from it (already done to an extent) and distancing of it from the term "Q" which is riddled with Ghomeshi's name, imagery and memory. "Q the future", by all means, but do so by removing the letter from the broadcasting lexicon, and returning it to where it now belongs: simply being the seventeenth letter of the alphabet, as far the CBC goes. Ghomeshi has gone, and let him take the Q with him. Why? Well because nobody else wants it or cares about it anymore. - Kevin Mc

Q just became one massive Question mark!

      

How does that song go again? Ah yes - "What a difference a day makes" - and while some days can truly rock your world and make a difference, we will extend it a little and exclaim what a difference a week makes - particularly if you are a "presumed-gay radio show host called Keith" who has now apparently morphed into ex-CBC radio and TV personality Jian Ghomeshi. 

It has been such a wild rollercoaster week on this story, the narrative of which went from being largely "Poor Jian!" all the way over to being robustly "What a douche bag!" - all inside a mere seven days. The moment I saw that he was initially "on leave for an undetermined time" to deal with "personal issues", I told our Cris here at EU that this story was gonna blow, and not in a good way. The outcome seemed inevitable, almost from the get-go. 

I told her last Saturday that I didn't believe for a second it was to do with his dealing with the loss of his father, but rather that it had to be about sex or drugs or both. After the Rob Ford fiasco and the city's unfathomable support for a drug-taking Mayor (even if it was during one of his drunken stupors!), one now sort of sees Toronto as the drug culture capital of Canada, and one could envisage a minor celebrity such as Ghomeshi assuming he could get away with a snort or two here or there. 

As it turns out, the story had a lot more sex than drugs in it, but not your common-or-garden domestic type of sexual shenanigans; it seems that this guy is into the rougher side of life in the old boudoir, which he had managed to keep incredibly quiet until relatively recently - and that was a lot less to do with his carefulness out there in dating land and way more due to the alleged victims adhering to a code of silence - no doubt further solidifying some form of rock star-like Godheaded cockiness and belief that societal rules didn't apply to him. Or, if you believe (I don't) what he has said about it, he rather astoundingly doesn't seem to think he did anything wrong, and the story has no legs.

Things went from "on leave" to he himself using the term "fired (from the CBC)" as early as Sunday, which was quite a transition in 24 hours! Of course, we already suspected that, and so he went immediately into damage control with a preemptive strike via a post on his Facebook page which lit up Twitter shortly thereafter. Tagged as his "truth", I found the entire post to be self-servingly constructed and crafted with purpose, and don't forget he classifies himself as, among other things, "a writer". I have trouble believing that crisis management agency Navigator or his PR peeps at Rock-It Promotions approved that post, and whether they did or didn't is irrelevant today - because it surely backfired in the end.

Why? Well, the purpose of that post was to set the scene and paint the canvas in a way that made him look like the super nice guy with a predilection for rather strange bedroom activities - practices some would just call kinky, whilst others may refer to it as decidedly deviant - and that this nice guy had done nothing wrong. It was an incredibly transparent case of taking huge advantage of his status as (minor) celebrity to manipulate many tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of fans towards his side, thereby somehow validating his version and discrediting any alleged victims.

Version is one word for it, but if you believe what the alleged victims are saying, it might end up being better defined as fiction, even if that's an area of writing he is not known for, yet. But if that version turns out to be anything but his "truth" then he will be further pilloried, for being a liar. It was a huge mistake if he did any of what is being described by various women, but maybe under pressure from family and friends to say something in his defence, he did what he had to do to gain a very transient control over the narrative. One can only imagine the hellish week that his mother and sister have just lived, so recently after their husband and father died in Toronto. 

It always amazes me how keen the public are to believe the powerful, famous and rich star, over the "trolls" who accuse them of what he is said to have done. Social media were lit up with all sorts of nasty comments directed at those who dared call him "a perv" or worse, and all sorts of people who have never even met him stand up early to defend him. I actually find this to be quite weakass for those uninformed defenders, because they are doing it to bring some much needed spotlight onto themselves - by being so vocal about their support for somebody they don't even know a little bit, about a situation they know even less about. 

The very fact that fans blindly believe is precisely what the stereotype Godhead sociopath depends upon and thrives on - their fame and popularity provides them with an umbrella that shields them from the rules that apply to everyone else. They get to use their audience as anonymous bullies who will defend them to the end, and ensure that victims do what they are meant to do - nothing. The fear of lawsuits and the star using their powerful social media pulpits to ruin one's reputation creates a fear of speaking up that is hard to shake; even today, not all of the now nine women involved have been identified. But the fact that a beloved Canadian actress has stepped up to the podium will definitely change this situation, almost certainly. 

The CBC itself will come under considerably greater fire than to date if it comes out that they did ignore the complaint made by one young CBC producer who says she made a formal complaint about sexual harassment by Ghomeshi, which was brushed under the rug by the corporation. An ex-Q staffer on a recent Jesse Brown podcast essentially said that everyone at the CBC knew of the Ghomeshi "problem" - directly implying that not only did the CBC know all about it but that their inaction was a sign of them being actually complicit and thus public money-fueled enablers of his behaviour. If the CBC needs a jolt as to how bad such things can get, they should take a look at that other beloved bastion of broadcasting, the venerable ultimate in conservative corporate media empires, the BBC, and their horrifying alliance (and dalliance) with a certain British DJ called Jimmy Saville. Brrrr. 

It's one thing to see various local Toronto wannabes or celebrity huggers adding their names in support of Ghomeshi's Facebook post, and quite another to see the foolish grins on their faces as they try to discreetly delete their Twitter support mere days later. At one point there's an opportunity to look liberal and "cool" by showcasing your support for a hip star you wish you knew, maybe even getting closer to the celebrity glow in the process, and a day later they look (and should feel) like idiots, sneaking into Twitter to delete their comments in the dead of night. 

In any story like this, jumping the gun when you hear one version, and not that of the CBC or the alleged victims, seems hilarious to this guy. There had to be another side to it, and it was obviously not going to be pretty. The CBC don't fire their golden poster boy for a bit of mere slap and tickle in the bedroom! And a golden poster boy of the CBC does not reveal his M.O. and varied sexual proclivities to the world, unless he is in a corner. Why would so many not see that? It reminds me of the unbridled support on social media for Lance Armstrong during his denials of doping, and all those people screaming at others in his defence sure learnt the hard way how misguided (and misled!) they truly were. 

Unbridled, unquestioned support for Ghomeshi was not restricted to the general public, as some quite high profile personalities were quick to jump on the bandwagon; names such as Elizabeth May MP, Sheila Copps MP and even songstress Lights come to mind, among others. Lights referred to Ghomeshi as her "hero", which he may well have been, but in light (not lights!) of what the rumours were, what was she thinking, especially as a woman? I hope people have learnt that showing some restraint, and for once in their lives actually saying nothing is the correct response, until the story evolves and/or they sit down with the person involved and get to hear the details and then decide to support or not. In any case, Lights has de facto retracted her support as of today, given the announcement that Ghomeshi is no longer her manager. Ouch!

Even his old bandmates in Moxy Früvous have disowned him publicly, and now The Agency Group who have had Ghomeshi as a client ever since his Moxy Früvous days have just dumped him. Ditto Navigator, and rather shockingly even his PR gang at Rock-It Promotions have now flushed him as well. I am not shocked by that, at all, but it was shockingly timed given the staunch support of Rock-It head honcho Debra Sadowski who stood up proudly beside Ghomeshi only days before:

"I stand with massive solidarity by my client and dear friend @jianghomeshi. His courage is remarkable and admirable." 

That comment was posted on October 26th and yet he was history at the agency by October 31st; talk about the difference less-than-a-week makes?! From using terms like "remarkable" and even "admirable" about him, into total disassociation from him, in a business sense but presumably also in a personal sense. As I said above, sometimes it's simply better to zip it and not be made to look foolish later, until you have heard some facts. If Ms. Sadowski did get the wool pulled over her eyes by Ghomeshi, fair enough, but he certainly manipulated her friendship also then and/or played on the naivete that led to that outburst of support, as a woman, for a man accused of physically and mentally hurting other women. 

It sounds like she could have used a PR firm to guide her own PR firm on how she should have handled the PR forest fire instigated by one of her top clients! Rather ironically, on their website is the proud tagline that "Behind every story, is a publicist that pitched it" and one cannot help but wonder how Rock-It really feels about having for years pitched a story that is just that - a veritable work of self-promoting fiction covering up the darker truth hiding in plain sight on the comfy leather sofa in front of them. The leather did indeed run smooth on the passenger seat.  

Rock-It Promotions is one thing; Navigator is another. One can understand Rock-It being in a pseudo X Files frame of mind ("I want to believe") after many years of having him as a rock star client, but why did Navigator take him on just so they could flush him later? It was kinda obvious that this was going to happen, and it sure appears that they simply wanted to gain some notoriety even via a very transient association with this guy, and his story. It seems that in these kind of situations, some of the rats actually jump onto the ship that all the other rats are jumping off, pretending they didn't realise it was a sinking ship, so they then turn around and hop back off in mere minutes. 

It's all an extremely sick and sad story that is pure tragedy all round, particularly for the alleged victims and all those who put their names and professional reputations on the line in defence of the guy. It appears that The Agency Group, Navigator and Rock-It Promotions all now believe that the Facebook story and Ghomeshi's words are either partly fictitious, a total fantasy or clearly represent outright lies, and it would be the lies that must have been the straw that broke the camel's back. I suppose everyone wanted to believe him, not realizing how convincing master manipulators, sociopaths and celebrity aura can be. There is a lesson for all in the outcome of their business associations with him.

Life and our daily lives hang by such a delicate thread. Last Thursday Ghomeshi was plying his trade, business as usual, reading his essay on the Ottawa shootings the day before, by Friday he was not on-air in Studio Q, by Saturday he was "on leave", by Sunday he had been fired, by Monday he had staunch support building up from fans and business colleagues alike, and then by Friday, the ghosts and ghouls of All Hallow's Eve had come to visit then deserted him once again, leaving his career and life hanging by that thinnest thread. It's an almost inconceivable fall from grace. He just has to be the loneliest man in Toronto (or all Canada?) today, and it's hard to envisage him having any career in Canada again - he will have to go elsewhere. 

The fact that the Toronto Police launched a criminal investigation against him this morning opens a brand new chapter in this story, and it's not a chapter that is likely to be easy reading. One cannot help but have the feeling that it may be 2014 and not 1982 that is the year that he may remember longest and which might end up defining him best, overshadowing his life and career to date. If things degenerate much further, it seems that a certain "Big Ears Teddy" may be relocating to a much more confined space than his previous Cabbagetown or current Beaches digs, yet ironically he may still need to be turned away from some other unthinkable sights in front of him. - Kevin Mc