Needless to say, prejudice and ethnic strife are plagues on humanity. But when it comes from Canadians, it somehow seems quaint. This report from CNN/SI, on CBC hockey broadcaster Don Cherry getting a 7-second delay on his broadcasts based on his habit of spewing controversial rhetoric:
The move was prompted by remarks made two weeks ago during a discussion on visors. Cherry implied that players who wore them lacked courage -- he said that they might be viewed as "sucks" -- and noted that it was mostly European players and "French guys" who had donned shields.
These are two of Cherry's favorite hobby horses: Europeans and French-speaking players. He has been relentlessly critical of both over the years. On a Coaches Corner segment a few weeks earlier, he said drug use in junior hockey was confined to the Quebec leagues. While continually wrapping himself in the Canadian flag, he once dismissed Nagano Olympic flag bearer Jean-Luc Brassard, a mogul skiing champion in 1994, as "that French guy." His Canada apparently does not include Quebec.
I've never heard of anyone "wrapping themselves in the Canadian flag" before. It sounds funny. Like a way to keep warm after returning from a late night Moosehead-fueled outhouse run and finding yourself locked out of the cabin without your toque.
Believe it or not, I'm not a sophisticated viewer of hockey so I can't honestly appraise Cherry's characterization of European and French speaking players as cowardly "sucks." My planned viewing of the NHL All-Star Game this afternoon on ABC (broadcast live from the Saintly City) just took on some additional gravitas.
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