The misplaced wrath of a self-loathing Tara Ariano

A few days ago Tara Ariano took a sudden jab at George Stroumboulopoulos (pro CBC tip: just remember the “ou-ou-o-ou-o” spelling rule).

At hand is the love-it-or-hate-it promo plugging The Hour‘s main net debut.

Tara asks: “Can we agree that dude needs to quit trying so hard?”

Who is Tara Ariano, you may ask? She’s a Torontonian that Torontoist once fawningly described as “practically internet royalty.” She’s a blogger, sometimes working under the name “Wing Chun,” starting Television Without Pity and Fametracker, as well as some others that are offline.

These blogs are about American TV and famous Americans.

Wing Chun’s personal writing? Usually about Americans.

All her cultural leitmotifs? American.

The subjects of her two pointless books? Yankees.

Where she goes for vacation? New York.

She’s a half-assed sellout, somebody with a complete and unwavering allegiance to American pop culture, who doesn’t have the integrity to actually move there. Or is it the talent?

Say what you will about George, but he tried it, failed it, came back to fulfill his contract, faced the press this week with humour and grace, and revamped his show.

So in case you forgot, the main net debut is at 11pm this evening.

Everybody Wing Chun tonight.

28 Comments

  • Anonymous says:

    Argh! The underscores! What year is this?

    Joe Clark, let me introduce you to HTML tags. I hear they’re gonna revolutionize this internet thing. Live ’em. Learn ’em. Love ’em.

  • Joe Clark says:

    I’™m sure we all agree that _Canada’™s Next Top Model_ is ’œCanCon’ the way _Entertainment Tonight Canada_ is. *Any* show succeeds as CanCon when ’œCanada’ is part of its title. (And a maple leaf is glue-gunned to its logotype.)

    _DNTO_. Well, bravo. It’™s _The Hour_, Radio One version.

    You can’™t finesse Tara Ariano as a defender of Canadian culture in any respect. Why does she live here?

  • Anonymous says:

    Ouimet didn’t read very deep into Ariano’s blog, or s/he would’ve read about her trip to Vancouver earlier this year, and about her frequent appearances on DNTO talking about CanCon like Canada’s Next Top Model.

    But hey, why let facts get in the way of an inflammatory opinion? Ouimet, you don’t happen to work in news, do you?

  • Joe Clark says:

    Actually, one of the attempted exposés had the kind of morphological errors associated with ESL speakers whose native language is French (e.g., dropping plurals, which are normally inaudible in French). It reads like something a French-speaker would have pecked out with two fingers.

    Claude is a Francophone, is he not?

  • Anonymous says:

    Yes, back on topic, unfortunately Wing Nut, er Chun, is just a reflection of most Canadians who say that they are soooo different than Americans and shit on them, but then all they watch are american programs and wouldn’t get caught dead watching a canadian program….just watch this week’s ratings for this week’s fine canadian programming on CBC….CTV just got extremely lucky with Corner Gas…it’s a fluke…the fluke of the century…and a very sad state of affairs….

  • Johnny Happypants says:

    Back on topic: Fametracker was good back in the day, especially the forum section and the fame report cards. Tara lost it when she wrote that long horrible article for the Post about the Dufferin Mall.

    Back off topic: Who cares who Ouimet really is. This blog is a great service to public broadcasting in this counry. Too bad the forum thing hasn’t taken off yet.

  • Anonymous says:

    Robert Lantos?

    The swine.

  • Flying Monkey says:

    Surely it’s not our dear friend Claude!

  • Ouimet says:

    The long knives are indeed emerging around me, but not from where we might think.

    I’m not in the habit of spying on my readers, so tonight I gave my visitor statistics and comment moderation queue to a trusted person who knows a lot more about this than I do.

    From looking at those numbers it’s quite clear that the sharper posts – including some vindictive ones that I didn’t let through the queue – are coming from the Alliance Atlantis offices in Toronto. One particular employee of that organization has spent hours and hours over the last week, both at home, and at work, reading and posting on this site.

    I thought the private sector was supposed to be busy?

    This reader is very interested in a post I wrote weeks ago about Alliance Atlantis poaching CBC.ca staff. He tried to “expose” me over there, too.

    I wonder who it is?

  • Anonymous says:

    Oh please, people. Why do you want to out Ouimet? I for one enjoy the insight, information and discussion that this site has brought us. Without her/him, where would we be?

    Besides, I know for a fact that she’s Kristine Layfield.

  • Anonymous says:

    Some 50,000 Canadians joined Allan in watching The Hour.

  • Allan says:

    from Tara to George to outing Ouimet.
    1. Thanks for bringing Tara to our attention. I don’t get the impression she’s all that significant. Doyle is the only bowling pin still standing, and by now we’ve seen the limits of his imagination. That only leaves you, Ouimet, now that AZ is out of commission.
    2. Is it possible to get off the cult of personality and talk about The Hour itself?
    3. Outing Ouimet may be an intriguing challenge but a small victory that would lose an otherwise useful dialogue with someone of responsibility at the CBC.
    Ouimet seems to want to promote awareness and discussion of all things CBCish. She also has an axe to grind with her bosses; a view widely shared among the rank and file.
    There’s also evidence of integrity and insight on this blog, and I think that’s what essentially brings me here whenever I scan the web. I’m passionate about broadcasting and communicating news and ideas, but the CBC was barely on my radar until I saw this blog. Now, I also care about it just a teensy bit.
    But it’s a Crown corporation, and trying to affect change is like trying to mold dried cement.

    Let’s face it, railing against the CBC is fun, and futile. The CBC is both us, and it’s not us. There’ll be no significant change unless a sizable mob gets involved.

    The Hour is off to a great start. It’s the most hopeful thing we’ve had on the screen in a very long time, though there are aspects to it which I find disappointing.
    Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that I’m not working for it.
    I hope to be more specific when the topic of this show comes up again.

  • DMc says:

    Have to tell you — when the comments go to the vicious and the outing and the sniping it really reveals the poison that exists at every level at CBC.

    No one believes in the CBC more than me, but post lockout, with the atmosphere you hear leaked out of Fort Dork and gleaned from comments like this, it does make for an interesting feeling of “maybe the village needs to be burned in order to save it.”

    If your supporters are thinking this, then…

    Although you’re right on about Tara Ariano. Culturally colonized and yet still smugger than thou? Move to NY already, honey. You won’t be missed.

  • Ouimet says:

    Well, it’s a lot of fun trying to out me, or us, I’m sure, but I’m going to get corporate on all your asses and turn on comment moderation. Can we keep it on topic?

    Yes, I post under a pseudonym, which is cowardly. I thought we settled this a year ago?

    If you are so curious, send me an email and maybe we can meet face to face. I won’t bite you.

    And I didn’t realize my egocentricity was grating on people’s nerves. I’ll try to make it more subservient. Boy, that’ll be fun to read.

    Exit strategy? I never considered it. Maybe the other CBC, the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation?

  • Child-like-viewer says:

    Anonymous said…
    personally, I think Ouimet works in television. probably sports, but possibly for the George show (I’m not even going to attemmpt the last name…)
    10:26 AM, October 10, 2006

    ———–
    No, Ouimet is a collective of juniors at the CBC who read history and are doomed to repeat it. It is /are several authors.

    And “The Hour” website also doesn’t use Stroumoupolous’ surname.

  • Anonymous says:

    So, you think he doesn’t try too hard? C’mon.

  • Anonymous says:

    Hoo eee. So many attempts to out Oumiet lately.

    Oumie, if you do get dooced, rest assured it won’t be by a managerial type known for their willingness to dialogue re:public broadcasting. More likely it’ll be some lame old deadwood.

    Anyways, I would hardly put teamakers into the same bland pocket as Ariano.

    Though sometimes egocentric, this blog doesn’t sport dreck categories like ‘things i have bought lately’ and ‘things i wish i could say to other yuppies’. Yawn. You’re so web 1.0, Tara!

  • Anonymous says:

    Wow, lots of veiled and not-so-veiled attempts to ‘expose’ Ouimet these days.

    As mentioned before, these anonymous missives never make the morning communications ‘zine’, but they do chip away at some of the deadwood, buck passing egomaniacal bullroar that people *throughout the corp* have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

    Oumie, I hope you have a strategy in your back pocket in the event that you do get dooced.

    Until then, it’s great to see other managerial types try to blow the lid off this thing and expose their own vitriolic tendancies as they do so.

    At least you (mostly) care about public broadcasting as opposed to your own image. Keep that in mind if this trend of finger poking escalates.

    I’ve posted comments both pro and con, and now think of you as a kind of anonymous ombudsperson. If a manager ‘outs’ you, one can almost bet it will be somebody who is not known for their own skills in fostering open, forward moving dialogue about directions for the corp.

  • Joe Clark says:

    I am, additionally, waiting for somebody to point out that Anonymous1 anonymously decried Ouimet’™s ’œanonymous blogging from within.’ Hall of mirrors?

  • Joe Clark says:

    Anonymous4, wouldn’™t that mean that Ouimet is actually Nancy Lee? On the surface, a lot of things fit. I mean, I’™ve never been fired by fax-o-gram before, but I could see Ouimet getting mediæval on my arse and doing it.

  • Anonymous says:

    personally, I think Ouimet works in television. probably sports, but possibly for the George show (I’m not even going to attemmpt the last name…)

  • Al says:

    “And is blogging about another country’s culture any more spineless than anonymous blogging from within?”

    I think most people have figured out by now that Ouimet works in radio.

    Ouimet, why not tell us about why Radio 1 was “only” down 3% in the latest BBMs?

  • Anonymous says:

    He is trying a bit too hard in those promos.

  • Johnny Happypants says:

    Anon said “Half the staff should move to Israel”???

    Surely you meant Palestine.

  • Joe Clark says:

    Anonymous2, it would be more accurate to say that Ariano pioneered the use of volunteer and near-volunteer labour (50 bucks a pop or thereabouts) to churn out fantastically overlong reviews of individual episodes of American teen dramas.

    Such reviews could then be diced into one-and-a-half-screen nuggets, requiring many page refreshes that, conveniently, provide greater ad coverage (often by a frame at page bottom ’“ yes, actual frames).

    I rather quite clearly recall a post on Hissyfit, now long since destroyed, in which Ariano stated that they would continue to use such methods and do anything else necessary to increase advertising revenue. While, even at the time I read it, I understood that this was their bread and butter and everybody has to make a living, it seemed sleazy. And still does.

  • Anonymous says:

    Does it really matter? Ms. Chun pioneered the idea of writing 1000s of words on a subject, and yet saying absolutely nothing. Back in the dot com gold rush days, this talent was worth six figures, probably not since.

  • Joe Clark says:

    ’œMore spineless’?

    Ouimet is not anonymous. He or she is pseudonymous, and the need for such a pseudonym has been well established in previous postings and press coverage.

  • Anonymous says:

    Isn’t saying Tara should move to the states because she’s interested in and writes about U-S culture like saying half the CBC staff should move to Israel and the other half to England?

    And is blogging about another country’s culture any more spineless than anonymous blogging from within?

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