But University of British Columbia journalism ethics professor Candis Callison says in the current media landscape, O’Leary’s presence on the CBC is neither surprising nor radical.
“It’s within their purview ... to make a decision about how to move the network into this era,” said Callison.
O’Leary is not a journalist, he stresses, and as such has more freedom to tell it like it is, even if the language feels decidedly un-CBC (of old, anyway). “Do you think I’m going to let a little cockroach like you tell me what to do?” is just one O’Leary-ism.
O’Leary, 56, was born in Montreal. After graduating from the Ivey School of Business, he started a software company, which grew through various acquisitions and was ultimately sold to Mattel in 1999 for $3.7-billion. O’Leary now has a mutual fund company, O’Leary Funds, and homes in Toronto, Muskoka, Boston and West Palm Beach.
O’Leary’s TV career started with an appearance on BNN; the producer was so impressed, he asked him to be a regular. Now, his caustic one-liners have made him the guy many viewers love to hate.
“One of my favourite viewer e-mails of all time was, ‘Do you just keep Kevin O’Leary around so you look smart and sane?’” said Lang, O’Leary’s longtime co-host.
For all that mail, the recent complaint to the CBC ombudsman was the first the office has received about O’Leary.
It was lodged by Alex Jamieson, a 52-year-old who is Haudenosaunee. He was channel-surfing at his Mississauga, Ont., home last October when he heard O’Leary use the term “Indian giver” during a heated exchange with Lang. Weeks later, he complained to the show’s producer and then the ombudsman.
This month, LaPointe issued a report calling O’Leary’s remarks “unambiguously offensive.”
O’Leary did not apologize immediately. He says he was unaware the term was a racial slur and when he did learn the ugly truth, he was so horrified, he not only apologized, but asked his producers to draw up a list of other offensive terms he should avoid.
“If you know him, you can believe that to be true,” says Lang. “Not that that’s an acceptable excuse. You can’t say, ‘Oh I didn’t know what the n-word meant and therefore it’s acceptable for me to say it,’ but he didn’t. He was just being a dufus.”
Lang, the Ron MacLean to O’Leary’s Cherry, was commended by LaPointe for voicing her disapproval immediately during the show, but the ombudsman expresses disappointment with both CBC management’s and O’Leary’s handling of the situation.
Jamieson isn’t satisfied either.
“He should have been fired on the spot.”
Over at Dragons’ Den, Brett Wilson, O’Leary’s departing co-star (his last show airs March 30), says their good-guy/bad-guy depiction is pumped up somewhat. “I get the sense that the editing makes Kevin nastier than he really is.”
Wilson, who complained to CBC a few seasons back about show promotion that featured O’Leary more prominently than the others (“it looked like Kevin O’Leary and Friends”) rejects any suggestion of ego-driven animosity between the two. “If we saw each other at a social event, we’d certainly take time to spend together.”
And if you’re O’Leary – chairman of a $1.5-billion fund, trying to find time for your kids (aged 14 and 18), why bother with television? With all that grief? He certainly doesn’t need the money.
“I look at it as a yin and yang,” says O’Leary about his dual career. “It’s a left and right side of the brain. I need them both in my life; that’s balance for me.”
Plus, he says, the TV show makes him a better investor. “Can you imagine the information I get just sitting in that green room every single day? ... I’m never going to quit that show.”
