BBQ boy played the media for suckers.

A few minutes of digging reveals who he really is: not a blue-collar freedom-fighter but a kid from one of Canada's richest neighbourhoods, whose dad owned the property on which he ran his faux-Texan smokehouse.

If you've eaten at his joint or read the reviews, you know his schtick: the fetishization of Lone Star realness. Meticulous recreation of Texas "authenticity" not just in the food but in the room and in his persona.

It's a Disneyland simulation and he's the princess.

Like his media champion Rex Murphy, he's a privileged guy performing as Joe Sixpack. Plaid flannels, backwards cap, scraggly beard. It's a costume I might throw together at the last minute if I forgot it was halloween.

It's embarrassing how effective this routine was.

The trope:

"Hard-working man just tryin' to feed his baby"

Turned too many people into weepy sentimental losers.

Truth is, his restaurants (no table service, no booze, food travels well as take-out) was uniquely well-suited to survive the pandemic.

His politics were misunderstood and misreported.

We were told – here's a man standing up for the little guy. An act of civil disobedience against laws that protect multinationals and punish regular folk.

Which is valid. But that's not the principle he was standing up for.

Just read his tweets. Before his confused ramblings about flaws in the testing and unfair shutdown policies, he shared his baseline position:

COVID does not kill *enough* people for him to have to close his restaurant.

The death-count isn't "significant."

Now that the smoke has cleared, the question we're left with is not about him but about us: why is the media (and the public it supposedly represents & serves) SO responsive to this particular trope?

Why do we accept his archetype as the default or "real" Canadian?

...and why is it so much harder for us to invest as much attention or empathy into the thousands of small business owners who actually ARE going under, but who are not white?

Discussed today with @fatimabsyed https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/288-a-working-class-hero-is-nothing-to-bbq/