Monday, October 17, 2011

Wading in on Don Cherry

Everybody's got an opinion about Don Cherry, with the lunch pail crowd firmly in his corner and we 'sophisticates' grinding our teeth every time he comes on the tube.

Even his most loyal fans admit that he's the very definition of a garish blowhard.

I pay him no mind, because generally I watch the RDS French broadcast with Pierre Houde who is better and more exciting than any commentator on the English side, TSN or the CBC.
I gave up on the CBC after listening to Bob Cole, the CBC's number two commentator (and I say that tongue in cheek,) who is assigned the few Habs games that are still on the CBC. While once a decent commentator, Cole has lost it these last few years. He is so dreadful that if you played a drinking game and had to down a shot of whisky every time he made a mistake, you'd be falling down drunk by the first intermission.
My favourite Bob Cole line.....
"The referee has stopped the play, something is happening!"

While Cherry is not exactly public enemy number one in Quebec, he is widely despised for his comments over the years disparaging Francophone players. Link
Most of these comments were tinged with a pretty obvious undertone of scorn and as such Quebecers just hate him, even Anglo Quebecers.

But the truth is that I've heard worse on the RDS post game show l'Antichambre where Anglophones are routinely given a rough ride.  I wrote a blog piece about it.
"Alain Chantelois couldn't contain his disgust at the fact that all four of the Canadiens' coaches, behind the bench during the Canadiens/Oilers game on Monday, were anglophones. His tirade on the talk show L'ANTICHAMBRE that followed the game was unacceptable
....Although the instigator, he was not alone, ex-Nordiques coach Michel Bergeron joined in the fun and listening to these two, was like watching two old southern racists sitting on the porch dissing blacks."
The latest Cherry controversy centers around comments he made October 6th, where he lashed into three retired NHL enforcers for advocating less violence in Hockey. Here's a YouTube video of that rant and you can skip forward to the 5:40 mark to hear the controversial remarks.

Cherry called Stu Grimson, Chris Nilan and Jim Thompson 'pukes,' 'turncoats' and 'hypocrites' for claiming that the substance abuse problems they had was attributed to fighting in the NHL.


I don't know any of the three personally, but Chris Nilan lives in the Montreal area and does a little radio work for the local TSN affiliate.
I ran into him shopping in Pointe Claire and he seemed like a regular guy, trying to save a few bucks in the local Costco.

'Knuckles' Nilan (is there a better hockey nickname?) looks and sounds like he should be in Hollywood, he'd be perfect playing the part of a tough Southie,  like in the film 'The Fighter.'
Watch this interview, I'm sure you'll agree, he just oozes character. Link
Obviously he's no hockey billionaire, just a guy trying to make it after a rough couple of years since retirement.

Nilan claims to be flabbergasted after being singled out by Cherry and says he never said the things Cherry attributed to him.
“I’ve never, ever attributed my problem, drugs and alcohol, with the fact that I played the role of enforcer for all those years,” Nilan said
If that is true, Nilan's reputation was damaged unfairly and he was defamed in front of millions of people.

The lawyers over at the CBC were having palpitations and delivered a message to Cherry that he had better apologize or face a legal and public relations nightmare.

On Saturday night he did a mea culpa and apologized. Not a namby-pamby apology but one that was probably written for him by lawyers in which he stated categorically that he was wrong. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow for the pompous fool.

Notwithstanding, I don't think an apology is enough. I hope Nilan sues the ass off of Cherry and his enabler the CBC.
In fact, Cherry's admission and apology strengthens the case against him.

It somehow seems grossly unfair to pick on someone like Nilan, a regular guy who truly didn't deserve this.

In a Twitter response to the apology, Nilan let Cherry off the hook, he shouldn't. Cherry only apologized because he was forced to.
An apology isn't enough to undo the harm.

The whole incident hurts Nilan's ability to be a more successful broadcaster, forever tainted by Cherry's harsh words, notwithstanding the apology.

Nilan lives in Montreal and the CBC broadcast was seen locally and so.....Nilan can sue Cherry right here in Quebec, before a Quebec judge. HA! HA!!!!

Hey, Don......GET OUT THE CHEQUEBOOK!!!!

By the way, in the blog piece I wrote about Alain Chantelois, I called on his bosses in Toronto to fire him for his anti-English remarks and call it a coincidence, he disappeared shortly thereafter.

Now if only I could get rid of Don Cherry.

33 comments:

  1. I won't disagree with the jist of this article, but considering the SRC allows a puke like Gilles Groulx to go on Mario Dumont's political show and dis those not of his «pur laine» ilk stating «tête carré» this and «tête carré» that and other racial innuendos, with no retribution, then get off Don Cherry's ass.

    What's good for the goose is good for the gander. On the other hand, where you are right is he did name names, and there may be repercussions for that. If the case were to go before a Quebec judge, Cherry would be as good as dead as there is no lack of anti-Anglophone bigots on the bench.

    If the players named want to go after Cherry, that's their perogative, and I'm sure the bigwigs at the CBC glued that scripted apology/retraction in the palm of his hand. They have to cover their asses as well.

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  2. Ya know, Chis Nilan is one to be talking. This guy goes on the Mitch Melnick show and Mitch always asks "so what did use to call Milbury ?" Nilan " called him Miss Milburry cause he wore a skirt on the ice and hid behind his teammates".Funny as it is, Why is he allowed to say stuff like that?. Is it that different from what Cherry said?.

    We are defending the honor of who ? bums, plan and simple. He glorifies busting up some guys face and says he enjoyed it. He earned a living doing things to people that we would get arrested for.

    The only reason this got as far as it did its cause he is and ex Hab, and the fans here are so anal about the team they lose it. So please Chris you got your 15 mins of fame , go PAK DA KAR and stfu.

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  3. Universite de Montreal has a top notch Veterinary school in St Hyacinthe east of Montreal. I've been many times with a sick Dog I had who has since passed. When one enters the main lobby, one notices on the wall a large plaque of the major donors to the hospital. Front and center at the top of the plaque,  none other than Don Cherry himself. Cut the guy some slack, he's a showman that does more charity work than most people could even imagine. 
    http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=1211a8d7-2b35-4e9d-ba74-9a9456181be9&sponsor=

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  4. There's no reason for our taxes, which pay for CBC, should go to anyone who's racist against any Canadians.

    Gilles Duceppe doesn't deserve a CBC paid job, neither does Don Cherry.

    In fact, is there any valid reason why a bigot like him who probably has a learning deficiency is on tv in the first place?

    I'd expect it from my province (Quebec), where our politicians are openly racist, but Canada should be better than Quebec.

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  5. Problem is, most of the complaints on Cherry come from Quebec where bigotry and racism thrive.Pot calling the kettle black?

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  6. Problem is, most of the complaints on Cherry come from Quebec where bigotry and racism thrive.Pot calling the kettle black?

    Yes, that's because his racism is towards french canadians.
    And yes, french extremists / seperatists are racist. That doesn't mean people from the rest of Canada should use it as an excuse to justify their own racism.
    Don Cherry is just as smart a a french racist separatist... Is this a good thing?

    The idea is to be better than the french crazies... not to be like them.

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  7. One thing about Cherry that stands out more than frustration, bullishness, and ignorance is how boring he is. He's the kind of guy that can talk for 10 minutes without conveying anything..."let me tell you this kids..." and off he goes with some triviality...that he then contradicts the next day...

    People in the media are paid to yap about everything and nothing, and the more controversial they are, the more viewers they bring in...Mario Dumont knows what he's doing when he invites Gilles Proulx over...(I won't even mention dweebs on American television, like Beck, Dobbs, Hannity and O'Reilly).

    The mainstream media has slipped very low indeed...

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  8. "Yes, that's because his racism is towards french canadians."

    Ok so let me get this clear, he racist towards French Canadians. So this means that when the habs games are on, mostly on RDS, people in Quebec are switching over to the CBC to hear Cherry. Please.

    This is once again where someone told someone that he hates French Canadians so they just assumed he rags on the French on each show.

    When Cherry starts to talk Like Proulx or Rejean Tremblay, where he once said on CKAC that George Laraque got that commercial with the girls in bikinis "Nous savons tous que les hommes noirs ont quelque chose entre les jambes" and nothing happened to him. Acceptable because he is french and allowed to say that.

    People should look in their own backyard and see what is wrong with this province and not give a dam about someone who is bashing former nhl goons.

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  9. Good for Don Cherry, keep sticking to Kebec and the metis-French every chance you get. They deserve it, the racist, intolerant scum bag language Nazis.

    We love you Don, keep up the good work.

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  10. Haïti chérie dit: Don Cherry, quel minable personnage, je pense la même chose de Proulx et compagnie ! Ça ne m'empêche pas de croire que les racistes au Québec, se sont plutôt ceux qui tentent d'imposer l'anglais comme langue usuelle alors qu'ils parlent français. Le Québec représente bien une nation qui est actuellement au sein du Canada mais qui est en tout point capable d'assumer pleinement son indépendance comme mes ancêtres en Haïti !

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  11. ...to Haïti chérie: Go for it! Like your ancesters in Haïti, go for separation. Imagine...Quebec can join Haïti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere along with dictators for leaders, each one bankrupting the piss poor excuse for a nation more than the prior one. If Quebec wants to go down that road, go for it, but not as part of Canada.

    Don't get me wrong. Haïti is to be pitied for all those poor people have endured, and then an earthquake came along to make a rock-bottom horrible situation even worse.

    Should Quebec decide to go the way of Haïti, don't expect one iota of sympathy from me when the world's sixth most indebted jurisdiction fortunes drop like a sack of led.

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  12. For my Jewish friends, particularly Editor and Mississauga, something to boil your blood a bit:

    http://www.vigile.net/La-Cour-Supreme-plus-juive-que

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  13. To Troy and other readers

    An unfinished post scheduled for Friday went out inadvertently for a short while in an unfinished form. My apololgies. It will appear Friday.

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  14. It would appear Me. Christmas is a bit of a raciste..non?

    It is after all, vigile.net, and we all know the depravity and despair of their contributors. Losers.

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  15. Editor and everybody else... Have a GREAT laugh at this (in French, for those who can understand the inferior language):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHJeE2JMj9E&feature=related

    Unrelated to the topic but VERY FUNNY (as funny as Howard Stern's pranks). I've seen these kinds of prank calls on Quebec TV since the late 80's.

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  16. ...to Troy: Nahhhhh...it doesn't make my blood boil. It simply goes without saying that on a one-to-one basis, Jews are smarter than Québécois «pur laine».

    Don't get me wrong, I could introduce you to Jewish people who can easily be labeled village idiots (my ex-spouse for one, and especially my current companion's ex-husband).

    Look at history. Israel started as a bunch of sand dunes and today it is a very affluent, prosperous nation, with more university graduates and accredited professionals on a per capita basis that any and every other nation on Earth. It is also the only true democracy in the Middle East.

    Quebec, by it's on Ministry of Finance's numbers, is the 6th most indebted jurisdiction on Earth, created language laws that chased about 300,000 potential taxpayers off their soil and openly promotes racism like the article in vigile.net.

    My office building looks right on Highway 401, North America's busiest highway. A few years ago, some crackpot engineer invented a means to convert the energy of moving traffic on pavement into electricity. I'd look at the enormous volume of traffic on the 401 figuring how much electricity we could harness from all that traffic. It's green energy and I think the amount of electricity generated by this means would be astounding. Thousands of homes and commercial properties near the 401 can be lit with all this.

    In the meantime, one of Quebec's few large scale entrepreneurs, the late Pierre Péladeau, griped about Jews taking up "too much space" in his media. I'd call that a blessing. It was really something when he tried to backtrack and state he was pertaining to Anglophone Jews only. Although it's not nice to state this, I felt a certain vindication when I heard about his death. Racist jackass!

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  17. I forgot to clarify in the above post that the engineer that turned moving traffic into electricity was an Israeli. Top that, Quebec!

    Oh, and please be sure to elect Amir Khadir as your next premier. You'll see so much investment money leave Quebec so fast it'll make your collective empty heads spin!

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  18. Mr.Sauga:

    You know that there are anglophones of all religions, races and cultures in Quebec, right?
    You seem to dislike the language extremists, and yet you seem to be the same when it comes to religion. Your claim that jews are smarter than french canadians is just ridiculous. You may be correct in many cases, but still, any generalization like that is plain ignorant, and makes you seem just as bad as the people who you're writing about on this site.

    Do you realize that religion has caused much more conflict than language ever has? Do you realize that there is no religion which is better than any others, they've all had their share of oppression and violence.

    If we get rid of the stupid language laws someday, are we supposed to replace them with religion laws?

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  20. Le joual équivaut au slang, donut-eater moron.

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  21. @ Anon. at 11:20 AM:

    You're about as intelligent as a monkey if you think that Joual and Quebec French are different languages.

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  22. http://www.thestar.com/article/1071825--harper-to-give-ontario-13-more-federal-seats?bn=1

    Harper backed down. Stabbed Ontario in the back

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  23. "Le joual équivaut au slang, donut-eater moron."

    Tim Hortons and Dunkin Donuts are very popular in Quebec, so go eat some donuts along with May West and Jos Louis cakes, sugar pie, pea soup and poutine, and wash it all down with a pepsi.

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  24. To 2:49 PM.

    "The colloquial term joual is often used to refer to a variety of Quebec French associated with the working class of the Montreal area, characterized by certain features perceived as incorrect." Source: Wikipedia.

    Take that, half-american.

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  26. Well this is a mature discussion..

    Why do you let the racist frenchies get to you so much? By getting mad and lowering yourself to their level, you're just giving them what they want.

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  27. @ Anon. at 3:41 PM:

    Joual is very similar to the French spoken elsewhere in Quebec and can be understood by most if not all Quebecois. However, any form of Quebec French is difficult for people to understand in France. That's why they need subtitles on television shows and movies produced in Quebec.

    I would rather be considered a half-American than a full-fledged Quebecois.

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  28. ...to Anon @ 10:09AM:

    My response last night was probably not for your consumption. I figured some wise guy posted that vigile.net garbage to pick a fight, so I chose to pick up the gauntlet, wet it, and then slap that person across the face with it.

    I did qualify that not all Jews are that smart, but on the other hand, who really developed Quebec society before the majority decided to stick it to the minorities? There was a thriving fur district around Ste-Catherine/President Kennedy and Bleury Sts, a thriving garment district up around Meilleur/de Chabanel and de Gaspé Streets. Remember Max Naren, A. Gold and Sons, Morrie Gold and other haberdasheries in Montreal, and even small towns in Quebec? There were family businesses on The Main and elsewhere. Remember Ben's, the Brown Derby, Dunn's (they resurrected after being closed a few years) and other delis.

    The Italians were best known for construction--lots of it! Also cosmetology (coiffeurs and barber shops), Italian restaurants and other businesses as well. Many Greeks who came to Canada opened restaurants or got into trades. There was a chemist living around the corner from my family. All their kids were outstanding students, and one I grew up with became an orthopedic surgeon. Actually, his family moved back to Greece, and I looked him up a few years ago to find his practice is in Toledo, OH.

    The point is those who immigrated did so because they were oppressed in their countries, saw that Canada and the U.S. were lands of opportunity and took advantage. Sadly, Quebec has been doing what those other countries were doing in a more genteel way with laws as opposed to aggressive force and hostility.

    Anyway, the proof is in the pudding. As stated previously, Israel became a country only 63 years ago and when the first Jewish settlers arrived in the former Palestine, it was mostly sand dunes. Now it's a thriving, modern nation, designed like any Western developed country with all the amenities. Hostile neighbours make living there much harder than in North America, but the people pull together when the need arises. Israel has gone from sand dunes to a full-fledged, world-leading developed civilization in well under a century. Quebec, especially Montreal, went from being the number one city in Canada on down the list, and the crumbling infrastructure is only getting worse, not any better.

    Driving to work here in Mississauga this morning, I saw a big stretch of the main thoroughfare I take to work freshly paved over the weekend, and I said to myself "THIS is the way to wisely spend the language police budget here in Ontario." Waaait a minute...we don't have language police here...maybe that's why our roads are in shape Quebec can only dream of...with very few exceptions, perhaps.

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  29. ''Mieux vaut être pur et dur qu'être impur et mou'' Pierre Graveline

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  30. "I would rather be considered a half-American than a full-fledged Quebecois."

    Je dirais plutôt américains de seconde classe.* Pas de chance non plus au Québec car vous passerez bientôt en troisième classe. :))

    *Selon ce qu'on peut voir et entendre dans la plupart des shows télé provenant des É-U,les canayens sont de bonnes têtes de Turcs :P

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  31. whats worse is a whitte person accusing another white of racism,tthats when you know the accuser is completely brainwashed.

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