Canada’s Crusty Uncle Obsoleted by Marxist Tribunal
Hockey commentator Don Cherry, a fixture on Canadian television since his career as an NHL coach ended in 1980, has yet again done what he has long gotten paid to do, namely rile people up by talking about sports and society like your Uncle Ed at Thanksgiving dinner, shooting his mouth off about anything and everything, in equal parts Crusty Folk Wisdom and Self-Aggrandizing Beer-Soaked (that’s “BS”) Malarkey.
This time, the topic of his “controversial” (read “deliberately provocative”) rant was the patriotism of immigrants, and Cherry approached the matter in his typical style: anecdotally, parochially, and nationalistically. Wearing a poppy, as Canadians (like Brits) do in honor of the country’s veterans on Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the U.S.), Cherry veered off his “Coach’s Corner” analysis of the hockey game at hand to observe that when he was in immigrant-heavy downtown Toronto recently, he did not see enough (apparent) immigrants wearing poppies, which he cited as evidence that Canada’s newest inhabitants do not have enough respect for the sacrifices of those who helped to preserve and build the bounteous society to which these immigrants had come seeking their personal fortunes.
Needless to say, this comment brought hellfire from the sensitivity police — i.e., a majority of the Canadian population, ninety percent of the political class, and ninety-eight percent of the media — who cited it as evidence of Cherry’s supposed pattern of racism, divisiveness, hate speech, and ultimate obsolescence. His employer, Sportsnet, disavowed Cherry’s comments in the typical progressive fashion, which is to say they declared themselves to be in perfect collective lockstep with the Marxist tribunal’s vanguard sensitivities of the moment, and denied any association with the hideous and obsolete Cherry. More revoltingly, but equally unsurprisingly, Cherry’s longtime Coach’s Corner sidekick and straight man Ron MacLean, who had given a thumb’s up of support for Cherry’s comments during the live broadcast, came on the air the next day to grovel before his real and imaginary accusers, begging their forgiveness if only they could give him a second chance to prove he is not the horrible racist his longtime friend and professional benefactor — but now obsolete man — Cherry is.
Today I find that Cherry, who is eighty-five years old and a kind of living legend in Canada — the man who coached Bobby Orr in his final great season in the NHL, the man whose Boston Bruins served as arch-rivals to the great Montreal Canadiens of the late 1970s, and the man who, live on air during Coach’s Corner, kissed his old nemesis, Canadiens’ star Guy Lafleur, on the cheek as tribute, upon the latter’s retirement from the game — has been fired. Fired for referring to immigrants as “you.” Fired for questioning the level of appreciation Canada’s new citizens may have for the military men who died for Canada’s freedom. Fired, in short, for being your Uncle Ed. Declared obsolete. Told to go away and die alone somewhere. Excommunicated from the church of progressive multicultural purity.
There is nothing new or atypical about Cherry’s latest comments. Nor is there anything in them that is fundamentally out of bounds in an open-minded conversation about patriotism and respect for veterans. One may disagree with Cherry’s sentiments, critique his logic, and generally dislike his combatively over-the-top tone. (For what it’s worth, I do not agree with most of what he says about anything, and in fact I care even less than I agree.) Disagreeing, critiquing, and disliking is what Cherry’s critics used to do. But that is not what has happened here. This is something more — a sign of the times. A declaration has been made; “such views” (i.e., politically incorrect ones) will no longer be tolerated in Canada. An example is going to be set here, using a famous old has-been as the model for all to see. No one is above the new law of the land, i.e., the law of progressive orthodoxy. Those who do not accept and abide by this law will be forced out of public life, barred from the marketplace, left to die alone. Obsoleted, we may say.
In short, Don Cherry has not changed over the decades since he first became a much-beloved, and oft-ridiculed, popular icon. Rather, it is Canada that has changed, specifically from Pierre Trudeau’s land of terminal-aspirational Marxism to Justin Trudeau’s land of death-stage tribunal Marxism. The extent to which most Canadians still think they live in a semi-free liberal democracy is the measure of progressivism’s success. They do not even realize their lives depend entirely on their obscurity and acquiescence — on quietly conforming to, and bowing before, the palliative mythology of beer, hockey, and “kindness” that tranquilizes them through their national transmogrification from citizenry to slavery.
This is not about Don Cherry. If anything, it is about Ron MacLean, who publicly pointed an accusing finger at his eighty-five-year-old friend and partner, selling him out to the plantation owners to save his own skin. That is what the Tribunal means. There will be no divided loyalties. Canada, and everything in it, belongs to the Tribunal. You will accept your menial role in the mechanism of State, or you will be purged, and mocked on your way out to the gallows as an example to others.
My homeland is vapors. Communist Canada.
