When Will Don Cherry Take a Hike?

One of the things I hate about being Canadian is having to listen to the right-wing redneck Don Cherry.

I do my best to ignore him. I once pulled a muscle leaping across the couch trying to hit the mute button. But because my friends find him entertaining I usually have to grin and bear it. And his demagogic shite just keeps getting worse and worse.

Cherry's latest stab at the spotlight came on Saturday's edition of Hockey Night in Canada, during an extended demonstration of his antediluvian world view. We all know how Don Cherry feels about things, if only because he's been shouting his opinions at us for three decades. But the act is getting tired. Tired, and worse.

But it was the way Cherry presented his case that left the usual sour taste. Besides the usual anti-European bile - which should perhaps be toned down after Cherry's attempt to build a junior team in Mississauga without Europeans back in 1999, resulting in a team that won 16 games in three seasons - Cherry showed a montage of soccer players celebrating, and as it showed a group of four enthusiastic black players dancing close to the camera, Cherry said, "Now watch this, look at this - this is what we want our hockey players to act like?"

The charge of racism has been thrown at Cherry over his treatment of Europeans and Francophone Canadians, but because those aren't traditionally identifiable minorities, the charges don't seem to stick. But intentionally or not, this looked for all the world like a more familiar brand of racism.

He has insulted Europeans, French Canadians, and gay people. He's a chickenhawk cheerleader who is always suggesting that other Canadians aren't as patriotic as he is. He is wrecking our national game and sending the wrong message to kids by glorifying violence. And now he's flirting with racism?

You know once he might have been an entertaining redneck making a fool of himself in a klown costume.

But now he's just a tiresome old bigot bore making us look like a nation of rednecks.

And the sooner he takes a hike the better....