Don Cherry – MASTER OF NONE

The Western Cultural Tug of War

Unless you are interested in German history, few will have ever heard of the WW2 Allied air raid devastation of cities such as Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, or a host of smaller towns and villages. It has been estimated that 410,000 German civilians were killed by bombing raids with the vast majority of deaths coming in the last year of the war. Paradoxically, the German public did not rebel against Hitler’s National Socialist Party and the hoped for civil unrest against the Nazis did not materialize.

Now let us do a little thought experiment and imagine for one second that I felt it was appropriate to create a symbol to remember all the innocent Germans who died in those attacks. Sure, some critics would say most of them deserved it because they were personally rounding up Jews, gays, gypsies, and other undesirables for the ovens. But there were plenty of innocent German children literally burnt to death during the fire-bombing of their cities. The guiltless dead should be remembered.

Let us continue this hypothetical exercise and visualize the creation of a red poppy with a stylized swastika in order to commemorate those deaths. The resulting unholy, apocalyptic firestorm would be legendary. Except for a handful of neo-Nazi groups, there would be swift, universal condemnation of such a creation along with probably calls for my prosecution for Hate Speech and Crimes Against Humanity.

The reason I am bringing up this touchy topic is to highlight the cultural tug of war within society over which particular symbols, phrases, thoughts, statements, etc. are deemed acceptable for public consumption or exposure.

The brouhaha over poppies earlier this November clearly illustrated the divide over what used to be culturally acceptable with what is now becoming the norm. Don Cherry’s ‘You people’ statement has become a racist euphemism. It is old, white male privilege and misogynistic to suggest that Canadian immigrants should wear the poppy for Remembrance Day. Not that long ago, it was deemed patriotic and respectful to remember Canada’s war dead (all of them despite which ‘group’ they belonged to) with a sacred symbol that tied all Canadians together for a brief period of solemn remembrance.

Here in Manitoba, a young, female, high school student was berated, accused of Hate Speech, and disproportionately punished with suspension due to a poster stemming from an alleged incident over Rainbow poppies. It is deemed to be a ‘call to incite violence‘ against the gay community by using such phrases as ‘Keep it in your pants’. This is despite the societal norm and actual laws against public nudity. But if you are marching in a Pride parade with your penis flopping around, that is given a pass. Throw a Rainbow poppy on your lapel for good measure to help flaunt your Freedom of Expression and the assemble against white male oppression is complete.

From my personal experience, I attended a 2010 Vancouver Pride parade and witnessed plenty of bare chested women and one group of about 20 men proudly displaying their penises to the 200,000 plus crowd. Somehow, I do not see this as acceptable behavior if I wandered into a crowded women’s public washroom and whipped it out for a piss. Of course, I could get away with those type of actions if I identified as a Transgender woman.

As an aside, I have reached out to the young lady’s father to see if anything has come from the incident but he has declined to answer. Plenty of hate and attention has been directed at the student, school, and staff, so I will trust that the local School Board has done their due diligence on this matter.

Another percolating story to do with verboten phraseology is gathering steam regarding Bill Peters, the head coach of the Calgary Flames. A decade ago when Peters was the coach of an AHL hockey team, he supposedly committed the unforgivable sin of using the word ‘nigger’. The accuser, Akim Aliu, who according to some pundits such as CTV’s Jess Allen, does not represent the standard white colour of hockey players. Therefore the use of that specific pejorative directed towards him was doubly racist. Using slur words to put down entire categories of people, races, or genders have been used since time immemorial and there are hundreds of different words used to insult others. Did the 20 year old Aliu have such tender feelings and naiveté to be so mortally appalled by gutter language to the point that it destroyed his subsequent hockey career? Or perhaps, the man just was not that talented and is looking to cash in on the flooding tide of moral outrage culture. Ironically, it sounds as if he was playing offensive rap music for the team and Peters was ticked off about the choice.

Are insults and verbal abuse acceptable in polite society? Of course not. There are definitely better ways of motivating and interacting with people especially if you are in a position of authority over them. I had an Executive Officer onboard HMCS Athabaskan who yelled and berated me on a daily basis. To be fair, he was surly and abusive to most of the officers. Also, I was not particularly talented as a MARS officer, so looking back, I can see some of the man’s frustration. But instead of choosing to melt from those experiences, I choose to see them as a metaphor related to the tempering of steel and see myself as a stronger individual from the abuse.

The idea of exposing people, especially the young, to adversity and difficult topics is the thesis of a book I recommend, ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. As our hyper-sensitive, Western nanny culture fueled by social media justice warriors seeks to ‘protect’ more and more of society, they create the intolerance of an Orwellian totalitarian state. If you think the occasional banning from Twitter or Facebook is infringing on your right of Free Expression, soon it might be steep fines as being contemplated in BC. So despite laws on the books against actual Hate Speech and Hate Crimes, politicians are being encouraged to erode Canadian Charter Rights. Soon, biased politically appointed tribunals reminiscent of witch hunts or the Inquisition may be deciding to fine/banish/destroy the heretics because of hurt feelings. As described in the book I mentioned, society is trending towards adapting to the ‘most sensitive’ person as opposed to the previous paradigm of catering to the ‘most reasonable’ person. Less and less will the average person be inclined to speak up for fear of swift and damning retribution. The road to Hell, a.k.a. Political Correctness, is indeed paved with good intentions.

The pendulum of ever evolving culture swings back and forth between the vocal, minority progressives and the silent majority. Time will tell regarding which aspects the bulk of the population will adapt to and which will be rejected as a step too far. What is disturbing is the creeping, fascist tactics of the progressives who seem to act as if all methods of distributing their narrative are warranted. Free expression is universal and just because you think something is hateful and offensive does not mean that it needs to be banned or cancelled. People do have the option of ignoring ideas or actions they do not agree with.

Oh, if you feel like becoming a social pariah and enjoy receiving death threats from anonymous social media users, feel free to run with that swastika poppy idea that I posited.

Good luck with that little piece of Free Expression.

Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.

Photo Credit to Charles M. Schulz and the creators of Peanuts

Grapes and Wrath

From 1943 to 2005, the NHL enforced the ‘Two line pass rule’ in order to prevent players from ‘cherry picking’. Cherry picking in hockey was deemed to be a lazy way for an attacking player to get a jump on the defence. Cherry picking is also a derogatory term for picking and choosing items that are most advantageous to your position. This past Remembrance Day, Don Cherry got reverse cherry picked and was summarily fired from Coach’s Corner, a position he co-hosted for 38 seasons.

To be absolutely clear, Sportsnet definitely had the right to fire Don Cherry’s ass. It was reported that the network received an unprecedented amount of complaints about the now infamous segment. One little inconvenient item that came up in the Rebel News interview was that Coach’s Corner ran numerous times that night. Ron MacLean gave it a ‘thumbs up’ and the show’s producers had zero issues and not a peep was said to Cherry about blowback from his remarks. But the complaints came in the next day, blood was on the ice, and everyone piled on.

As Don has said since the firing, he is disappointed that he did not get a chance to clarify his statements and he would have liked to finish the season. But he understood the decision and is prepared to live with it.

Time will tell whether or not Sportsnet’s actions will adversely hurt their bottom line.

So, let us take a quick, dispassionate look at the actual transcript of what got some people so riled up:

“You know, I was talking to a veteran. I said ‘I’m not going to run the poppy thing anymore because what’s the sense? I live in Mississauga, nobody wears — very few people wear a poppy. Downtown Toronto, forget it! Downtown Toronto, nobody wears a poppy.’

He says, ‘Wait a minute, how about running it for the people that buy them?’

Now you go to the small cities, the rows on rows.

You people love — that come here, whatever it is — you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey. At least you could pay a couple of bucks for a poppy. These guys paid for your way of life, the life you enjoy in Canada. These guys paid the biggest price.

Anyhow, I’m going to run it again for you great people and good Canadians that bought a poppy.”

So for anyone familiar with Coach’s Corner, this is typical Don Cherry getting on a roll. It is no secret that he adores and supports the members of the Canadian Armed Forces. It is no secret that at times he is not the most eloquent of speakers and does not mince words. In fact, there is very little middle ground regarding the man, people either love or hate him.

On the hate side of the column, Ron MacLean’s apology seemed to hurt Don the most. Don says that he understands why Ron did what he did and hopes they can still be friends.

Many others were less charitable about the long time TV personality’s choice of words. Numerous media figures and politicians slammed Cherry. For example, Peter Mansbridge conflated Cherry’s commentary with ‘The notion that they were all white is not only dangerously wrong, it’s an insult to those thousands who lie in the ground in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and so many other places.’ One might be confused about that leap of logic when you read the transcript.

From the world of Facebook, a Lana Ray, a former employee of the Ontario Native Womens Association wrote a very long piece opining that support for Don Cherry is ‘institutional gas lighting’ and ‘Through his comments, Mr. Cherry reinforces a master narrative of white supremacy and settler colonialism.’ That’s quite the stretch pass to infer that all the woes of Canada’s Indigenous peoples can be encapsulated in a rant about getting people to wear more poppies.

Many people that I have spoken with about this incident have had a visceral reaction to Don Cherry’s remarks. In their eyes, he is a straight up racist, misogynistic boor with no redeeming qualities and should have been de-platformed ages ago. The use of the phrase ‘You people’ was described as the trigger determining the racism charge.

In fact, the deeply offending phrase was discussed today by Cynthia Loyst, a co-host of CTV’s The Social. She was speaking about the ‘grandfathers and weird uncles’ in your life who talk about ‘those people’. Supposedly, ‘those people’ being referred to ‘always have a certain type of skin colour’. Obviously, although Cherry did not say immigrants or New Canadians of colour, the insinuation is that he is an old school racist along with all the rest of the old, white, male Canadians. Ironically, Ms. Loyst, only a short time later says ‘you people, who are into sports’. Somebody, some would say the virtue-signally left, likes shifting the goal posts.

This is the crux of the arguments in favour of the firing of Don Cherry. People are selectively choosing some out of context remarks and are uncharitably projecting their worst case ideas of what he meant. Don has repeatedly said since the firing that his intent was to say ‘Everybody’ should be wearing poppies. This was corroborated by one of the few sports columnists who is actually sticking up for the man. Toronto Sun columnist, Joe Warmington during a CTV interview, said that he already knew what Cherry was going to say on Coach’s Corner because he had interviewed him the evening before. Don’s intent was to scold ‘Everybody’ who was not wearing a poppy.

Don has a habit of saying ‘you people’, ‘you kids’, and ‘you this and that’. It is nomenclature that can be used to indicate a group of people, for example, those Canadians who were not wearing poppies this year. Don Cherry is not the only person who uses this term.

So if he meant ‘Everybody’ should be wearing poppies, what exactly is the outrage about? Are his detractors for people to wear less poppies and to devalue Remembrance Day and veterans? Who are the real bigots and racists in this lopsided rink?

Ah, but numerous articles and people pointed out Cherry’s history of misogynistic and insensitive attitudes towards women, Natives, climate alarmists, etc. But a lot of other people would say, he was just stating opinions shared by many other Canadians and that he was not the most politically correct while stating said opinions. Let it never be said that along with enjoying hockey, Canadians are ever tired of airing their opinions.

From the beginning, Don Cherry was hired for Coach’s Corner to be an entertainer. Being flashy and somewhat controversial was part of the gig. But in the end, Sportsnet decided it was time to pull the goalie.

For all Canadians, lovers or haters of Don Cherry, I would suggest that you read through his Wikipedia entry. As mentioned, he spent close to four decades co-hosting Coach’s Corner. His accolades and charitable work are quite impressive and he ranked #7 on CBC’s The Greatest Canadians series. It was a sad day for Canada when this man was summarily terminated with zero attempt made to let him explain himself.

Of course, what really drove the knife home and has pissed off his supporters was the coup de grâce occurred on Remembrance Day. For those offended by Cherry’s words, maybe you should think about that cruel act. Do a few missteps here and there through the course of an illustrious career really warrant the lopping off of his head just because the mob demands it? Are his critics so perfect that they will always be onside no matter the issue? Grapes was a Rock’em Sock’em type of guy, not afraid to take an opponent into the boards. I guess that is offensive to people who are more comfortable playing from the bench.

Whichever side of the play sheet you fall on regarding the man, Don Cherry was a true man of integrity. In typical selfless fashion to the troops, Grapes was more concerned about his firing interfering with the day for the veterans then for his own well-being.

Remembrance Day was sad for an extra reason this year.

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Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.

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