How Ben Mulroney Got The Wendy Mesley Treatment
Poor Ben Mulroney. The impeccably coiffed interlocutor to the stars on eTalk, the veteran of a seeming thousand red carpets and photo ops has been sideswiped by the very crowd he thought would protect him. Instead of being preserved for the brave new world, he’s become a tasty cancellation-culture morsel for the people he’s fed so long.
Like a downmarket Wendy Mesley, Ben was caught on the wrong side of the current O tempora, o mores! Worse, his downfall wasn’t due to any of the slavish pandering and fashionista frothing he’s performed over the years. It was that the SJW types he’d coddled finally made a fuss over what everyone had know for years. Mulroney, like his doppelgänger Justin Trudeau, is white privilege incarnate.
In case you missed the fun, Mulroney’s wife and fellow follower of fashion, Jessica (of the Brownstein fortune), got herself into an untidy dustup with Sasha Exeter, a fashion blogger and, now, racial grievance influencer. Harsh words and micro-aggressions were exchanged. Jessica hinted at suing for “liable (sic)”. In doing so she forgot the first rule of liberal guilt. Don’t get into a debate with a visible minority person who has six figures worth of social media followers.
Before you could say “Where’s Meghan Markle?” Jessica was defrocked of her gig I Do, Redo on Bell Media and subjected to drive-by sliming from people who give muckraking a bad name. The purported brand strategist and Markle confidant was obliged to deliver the now-fashionable penitence for her willful blindness in a manicured statement.
Decrying her “problematic behaviour,” she then chided herself “for not doing enough when it came to engaging in the important and difficult conversation around race and injustice in our society.” (As an aside, we hope there’s a nasty corner of Hades reserved for the PR scribblers who produce this pap.)
This, in turn, shone the harsh spotlight on her hubby, who’s fashioned a lengthy career in a field he’s perfect for: Vapidity. (That his fellow scion of power, Justin the PM, had not done the same and saved us all so much distress. But we digress.) After much time keeping his head down in the trenches of banality, Ben’s family and accomplishments were suddenly targets for the younger set— who, if you’re not paying attention, are In a meltdown at the moment over critical race theory and other hip topics.
There were suggestions in the press from Exeter that Jessica was an intimidating figure in the story meetings and executive halls, dispensing frontier justice to those of colour with whom she clashed. Then, in a Mesleyesque treachery, Ben’s own colleague ripped him publicly for having a negative vibe. Echoing the textbook for white guilt, White Fragility by Robyn DiManno, Mulroney’s former longtime collaborator Lainey Liu described Ben and his wife as scary folks.
“I’m afraid of the Mulroneys. Because I am a woman of colour. Because I don’t have family connections. Because I run a gossip blog which means I’m not as ‘family-friendly’ or ‘safe” to many brands’… If I’m worried, then, and I have a platform, imagine the people out there who don’t have my advantages.”
In her dismissive analysis, “He is to me, as Thor would say, “a friend from work”. Ben would appreciate that joke, but I think he’s probably mad at me.” That would be the knife plunging in the back of her friend from work.
Poor Ben. Time to am-scray ow-nay.
So this weekend we had the requisite press statement from Mulroney, acknowledging that world’s worst-kept secret: “I benefitted from my white privilege”. Distancing himself from his wife’s faux pas, Ben announced he was pulling back from his onerous duties asking actresses who did their dress or actors about their current pescatarian diet. Mulroney said he hoped that the “new anchor is Black, Indigenous or a person of colour, and they can use this important platform to inspire, to lead and to make change.”
Please. Visible minorities on air is not the issue to #BLM warriors. It’s visible minorities in positions of power where they can replace the white majority (almost 80% of Canadians are not visible minorities) and demand reparations for slavery. But Mulroney and many of his appeasing liberal class still haven’t grasped this. They can’t see that sulfurously angry attackers are only emboldened, not impressed, by him offering his $200 coif on a platter.
The retreat into a cringing position is an invitation to try again— only harder— to move the power needle in a society made docile by its cozy lifestyle. Or as Ms. Liu sighed, “… when a Black woman is right, even when she has been victimised (sic) by a white woman flexing her white privilege over her and threatening her livelihood, and can prove it (!), she still has to perform the LABOUR of telling her story in a way that she knows will best prove her case to white people.”
The horror. The horror.
No one should worry about the bailiff repossessing the Mulroney cottage. The now-powerless couple have a few bob put away for a rainy day. But we’re unlikely to see quite as much of their handsome countenance for the next little while. And Meghan won’t be dropping by, either. She’s allegedly “mortified” with her “tone-deaf friend.” Yet somehow, some way, they’ll get by.
For those media colleagues now ripping the Mulroneys there is no need to repeat what we wrote about the current crisis in contemporary journalism from the previous column The Snitches Who Betrayed Wendy Mesley . Only to say that it’s headed to a very bad place inhabited by those who traffic in “gossip” as a journalistic discipline.
Leaving traditional journalists to echo Snagglepuss. “Exit stage left.”
UPDATE: Here is Mesley’s forced statement to protect CBC’s chicken-heart management and let them discipline her.
https://twitter.com/WendyMesleyCBC/status/1276263794684186625
JUST IN: After her vituperative denunciation of the Mulroneys for their privilege, Laney Liu is now reaping what she sows from the grievance tree. Turns out her reference to Janet Jackson’s new look being “ghetto” has some calling for her to be put in the social media barrel for punishment.
https://twitter.com/WendyMesleyCBC/status/1276263794684186625
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his next book Personal Account with Tony Comper will be available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca this fall.