Okay, so there’s a mini-series on television right now called “Whistler”. I don’t particularly care to watch it, but it’s in the news. One of the central figures in the show is a blond snowboarder who won an Olympic gold medal and lives in Whistler.
I hear about this, and I’m immediately thinking that the character is loosely based on Ross Rebagliati. You know…the blond snowboarder who won an Olympic gold medal and lives in Whistler. After he won his medal in 2002, they tried to take it away because there was marijuana showing up in his drug tests.
Well it turns out that Ross has demanded compensation for the fact that the tv character shares many similarities with him. To which a producer says:
“All I know is Ross’s name never came up, Ross’s reasons for his success never came up. It’s just not accurate…Our show writer was so stunned by the allegation. It was just unbelievable. You know, lots of people ski, lots of people snowboard, a lot of them look the same. That’s where it ends.”
And to which I say:
“Wow, is this guy ever full of it.”
There are some lies you can believe, but this one’s just plain idiotic. This guy is telling us that in all the production, no one ever wondered that the character bore a similarity to Ross Rebagliati? Maybe, just maybe the writer didn’t. Yeah, okay, maybe he just thought it was a neat idea that the snowboarder had won a gold medal. Cuz you know, no Canadian from Whistler had ever done that before.
I could believe that these dumbasses didn’t think of Ross at all…if they had spent the last five years cut off from rest of the world. But let’s get real. You tried to base a character on a real-life person. You were dumb about it. And now you’re looking and sounding like really bad liars.
Maybe you weren’t smart enough to talk to Ross beforehand. Maybe you thought you’d get away with it. And hey, maybe you will if you stick to your guns.
But everyone knows the truth, and in the end, that’s all that matters.
Funny thing is…this is such a stupid and inconsequential thing to lie about. I guess that’s why I can’t excuse it.
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