Six years ago this month, when Rogers Communications dropped a five-billion-dollar bomb on the Canadian television landscape when it scooped up the national NHL broadcast rights, one of the most talked about questions was what it meant for Don Cherry.
That this was one of the most talked about questions was indicative of just how incredibly outsized Cherry’s role as Canada’s Great Hockey Crank had become. The NHL rights deal had blown up the plans of TSN, the CBC, and was a massively risky bet for Rogers, but the big uncertainty was: what would it mean for Coach’s Corner? What if, gasp, the old guy dressed like grandma’s curtains wasn’t around to grouse about the old days and lament the influx of Swedes? Could Canada survive such a cultural loss?
Cherry eventually answered those questions himself. “I know I’m number one and Coach’s Corner is number one,” Cherry, then a spry 79 years old, said the week of the big Rogers deal. He followed this with a question of sorts for the suits at Rogers: “And what are you going to do?”
It was Cherry saying that he was untouchable. And he had reason to believe it, given the many instances of controversy he had survived. If there was a line he could not cross, he had somehow managed not to cross it.
He crossed it a couple of nights ago. In the time since Cherry complained on Hockey Night in Canada about people who don’t wear poppies, his comments have been put in the context of someone who often says risky things: about fighting, about foreign hockey players, about commies and pinkos and Rob Ford and Donald Trump. And yet, for all of the many times his remarks have landed with a thud and led to renewed calls for him to be removed from his pulpit, nothing he has said had the bitter, nasty edge of his Saturday-night comments. Even for Cherry, complaining about “you people” who “come from wherever” was a new nadir. Suddenly, all the checks and balances of a television broadcast had fallen away, and it was just a grumpy old man spouting off about something he didn’t like. The surprise, really, is that it has taken this long.
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See Also:
(1) The PC mob attacking Don Cherry is so hypocritical, it’s laughable
WATCH: Don Cherry Speaks To Tucker Carlson On Fox News.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubu-kUw9KnE
Talk about bullshit. Cherry gets tossed for comments about immigrants but skated away for years slaging french canadians. He has a point about new commers. While we were still deep in Afganistan, I drop into a local grocery. This big, healthy kid is delivering some kind of flat bread. I ask him what it is and he tells me its what they eat in country. What country is that, he replies Afganistan. I ask him why he is in Canada and he tells me he wants to live in peace. I lost it, why the f@@@ are you here when Canadians are fighting and dying to free your country, whats the f@@@@@@ problem you cant contribute to that cause?
I was asked to leave the store and a couple days later anothet of our lads made the trip down the Highway of Heroes. Is wearing a poppy really that great an effort ?