SOME PEOPLE REALLY MAKE STUPID STATEMENTS

As human beings, we are all prone to making stupid statements at some time or other during our lives. For the most part, the only consequences we undergo for such stupidity is to suffer from embarrassment or having to apologize. I can think of two silly statements I made that I wish I didn’t utter.

The first one took place in an elevator when I lived in Winnipeg back in the 1950s, In those days, elevators were operated by elevator operators. Our elevator operator was a young woman who was having trouble getting the elevator to be level with the next floor. I turned to the people behind me and said, “This elevator is like life. It has its ups and downs.”  The young elevator operator looked at her passengers and said to them,
“And its occasional jerks.”   I can still hear the laughter from my fellow elevator passengers.    

The second time I made a stupid statement took place on a street in Toronto in the 1980s. I was driving my car on my way to court where I was going to represent one of my clients. An elderly motorist was cutting in front of other cars as he was apparently in a hurry to get somewhere, At an intersection where we had to stop because the traffic signal light was red. I lowered my driver’s window and yelled at him by saying, ”Hey you stupid old goat, Drive more carefully.” Half an hour later I saw him again. He was the judge who was going to hear my arguments on behalf of my client. The judge recognized me and asked, “Mister Batchelor. Do you still think I am a stupid old goat?” I replied. “Your Honour, as you are well aware, driving, on the streets of our city is stressful and sometimes causes us to see images that are not really there. That is when our imaginations kick in and gives us false visual impressions. I can see by looking at you on the bench and listening to your decisions, you are obviously not a stupid old goat.” He smiled and said ,”I can see that you are a wordsmith. I hope that your argument is as good as your statement you just made” It was because after the judge heard my argument, he acquitted my client.

The rest of this article is about a man who made outrageous statements and his fame as a sports announcer later eventually vanished like the mist when the morning sun warms up the atmosphere.  His name is Donald  Cherry.

Donald Stewart Cherry was born on February 5^th, 1934 (three  months after I was born) he was a former Canadian ice hockey commentator. He is also a sports writer, as well as a retired professional hockey player and National Hockey League coach. To say that he is well informed about the sport of hockey is an understatement.  From 1984 to 2019, Cherry also hosted Grapeline, a short-form radio segment with fellow sportscaster Brian Williams, and also created the video series Rock'em Sock'em Hockey.

In 2004, Cherry was voted by TV viewers as the seventh-greatest Canadian of all-time in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)  miniseries,  The Greatest Canadian. In March 2010, his life was dramatized in a two-part CBC movie, Keep Your Head Up, Kid: The Don Cherry Story, based on a script written by his son, Timothy Cherry. In March 2012, CBC aired a sequel, The Wrath of Grapes: The Don Cherry Story II.

Cherry has sometimes proven to be controversial for making political comments at Coach's Corner, in which he faced criticism for remarks regarding Canada's lack of support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq by  insinuating that only "Europeans and French guys" wore visors on their helmets, and he even denied the need for climate change.  His program  was about hockey and not about the Iraq war or political issues.

In bygone days, under his then employer (CBC), it was Cherry’s rants about chicken Swedes, French guys wearing visors, pinkos, (a slang term coined in 1925 in the United States to describe a person regarded as being sympathetic to communism, though not necessarily being a Communist Party member) lefties and the like. In November 2019 while then working for Sportsnet, his ranting  was different. This time it was really ugly. It wasn’t about hockey, even tangentially, but about “you people,” presumably new immigrants who he protested that they were  ungrateful beneficiaries of our great hockey land of “milk and honey” because they weren’t wearing Remembrance Day poppies.

MacLean who was the regular straight man to Cherry who was  guy wearing the ridiculous suits, kept silent throughout the monologue, peering at Cherry, nodding at the words, flashing the thumbs up after the worst had been said. The next day, on Sunday’s Rogers Hometown Hockey broadcast. MacLean was the only one who apologized for what had happened.   He said, “I sat there, I did not catch it, I did not respond. Last night was really a great lesson to Don and me. We were wrong.”

Cherry later said to The Associated Press, “I know what I said and I meant it. Still do. Everybody in Canada should wear a poppy to honour our fallen soldiers.” He then said, “I did not say minorities, I did not say immigrants. If you watch ‘Coach’s Corner’, I did not say that. I said ‘everybody.’ And I said, ‘You people,’” he added. “Irish, Scottish, anybody that’s newcomers to Canada or wherever they come from.  They should wear a poppy” too. He was also referring to immigrants of the nationalities mentioned as newcomers.

Incidentally, a great many people didn’t purchase the poppies because a great many people don’t bring cash with them when they are shopping since nowadays; people pay for their purchases with their credit cards. That is what I also do.

Subsequently, Cherry was fired by Sportsnet from Hockey Night in Canada due to the fallout from comments suggesting that immigrants who came to Canada benefit from the sacrifices of veterans but aren’t wearing Remembrance Day poppies. Cherry saw his 37-year career on Hockey Night in Canada come to an abrupt end with his firing on Remembrance Day, two days after a Coach’s Corner segment in which he complained immigrants — whom he referred to as “you people” were not wearing poppies honoring our veterans. How did he know that no immigrants who came to Canada wore poppies on their clothes?

He told a friend years ago that he would never step down or quit his roles as a hockey broadcaster.  He said that Sportsnet would have to fire him which ironically it did on the afternoon of the 14^th of November.

Don Cherry had to have known that some day in the future. his career as a broadcaster would end this way. What he didn’t know was when it would happen or specifically why it would happen.  Further, he had to have realized that one day in one of his rants. he would say the wrong thing or in his stubborn foolish mind, what others would believe to be the wrong thing and that it would catch up to him and end his career with Hockey Night in Canada.

He had known many times how he had walked the tightrope while working for the CBC. He understood, for the most part, how far he could push the envelope and, every once in a while, he pushed it too far. Internally, the CBC, where he spent the majority of his broadcast career, would go apoplectic looking uncomfortably away while figuring out how to balance profit, ratings and Cherry’s bombast and his butchering of the English language with Cherry’s  own rather stringent broadcast values.

More than 10 times, this fool was on the verge of being fired. But the CBC held its breath, ignored its best instincts and hoping that whatever controversy of the day he brought the CBC, would go away. They knew that Don Cherry was good financial business for Hockey Night in Canada and Hockey Night in Canada was big business for the CBC. However, insulting Canada’s immigrants about them not wearing poppies was far too much for the CBC to choke on.

As an aside, many years ago, I sat in the living room of the Canadian retired general who told me that he brought about the concept of wearing the red poppy to show all Canadians that we owe so much to our Canadian warriors, both alive and deceased.

For anyone to chastise our immigrants who weren’t wearing poppies on their clothes is outrageous. It is quite possible that these immigrants also fought in either the first or second world war as soldiers. Just because they are not wearing the poppies in respect for Canadian fallen soldiers and the immigrant’s fathers and grandparents who fell beside Canadian soldiers doesn’t mean that BIG MOUTH Don Cherry should be chastising them, There are a great many Canadian citizens who also weren’t wearing the poppies on their jackets. He didn’t chastise them.  This makes him a racist.    

Further, all of us have the benefits that our fallen warriors who sacrificed their lives for us to enjoy such as our freedom. This applies also to our immigrants. Our immigrants may not have had a family member killed in battle but they are not legally required  to wear the poppies out of respect to the families whose family members died in battle or suffered terrible injuries even though the money they pay for the poppies goes to a good cause.  They may not have found stores that had such poppies boxes  in them. I didn’t see any such boxes when I entered stores in November.

His actual statement directed towards our immigrants  in Canada was, and I quote:  “You people … you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you can pay a couple bucks for a poppy or something like that. These guys (s0ldiers) paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada; these guys paid the biggest price.

That statement caused a huge outcry, leading to Sportsnet’s decision to fire the long-time hockey TV personality. But Cherry says he saw nothing wrong with his original racist comments.

If Cherry had addressed his comments to everyone in Canada who didn’t wear the poppies on their clothes, that would be OK, But instead, he chose to chastise only  our immigrants.He had turned a call for unity into an us-and-them snit steeped in stupidity and racism.

 

Cherry also claimed that he could have stayed on as co-anchor of the “Hockey Night in Canada” segment “if I had turned into a tame robot who nobody would recognize. I can’t do that after 38 years.”

When considering the kind of man this windbag is, the words that would come out of out of my mouth if I was facing him would be, “Go fuck yourself.” even when I know it is something that is anatomically impossible for him to do. 

He whined, “I’m unemployed now, after 38 years. It’s kind of strange, to be unemployed halfway through the season – and of all days, Remembrance Day. It’s sad,” Does he not have his restaurant in Niagara Falls as a source of income? Niagara Falls is a strong and vibrant community that is only made better by newcomers and people from diverse background that live there. Cherry had better watch what he says if he moves there since the newcomers will avoid going to his restaurant if he insults the newcomers by uttering hisvsilly rants.

Whether persons living in Canada are newcomers or members of visible minorities living in Canada, there's a possible chance that they or a family member, will one day be subjected to a random query about their cultural background and contribution towards the Canadian fabric and not necessarily by a Canadian citizen with more social history than immigrants. As long as the query is respectful, there is nothing wrong being done to the person being questioned.  Such confrontations are common. They can happen to anyone at anytime and anywhere.

Don Cherry has vocal supporters online, but only about a dozen people showed up to protest his firing at an impromptu rally held in Toronto  on the afternoon of the 16^th of November.  

Outside the Rogers building at 1 Mount Pleasant, near Jarvis St., a larger number of journalists and TV crews surrounded the few protesters who expressed their undying support for Cherry and their opposition to his dismissal.

Sportsnet, which is owned by Rogers, said it terminated Don Cherry because his remarks were “divisive.” His co-host Ron MacLean also apologized Sunday night on his own show, Hometown Hockey, calling Cherry’s remarks “hurtful, discriminatory” and “flat out wrong.”

While Don Cherry’s firing might have been couched in moral terms, it was likely more of a cold, hard business decision based on dollars and cents, and possible marketing losses.

Simply put, the long-time Coach’s Corner commentator’s angry on-air shtick was no longer worth the risk for sponsors such as Labatt, which shells out millions of dollars a year to have Budweiser front and centre on the broadcasts. And with Sportsnet already on a cost-cutting binge partly because of the price of its $5.2 billion broadcast contract with the NHL, the network could ill afford to upset a major sponsor.

“There comes a point when Cherry pissed off substantial numbers of viewers. And he also pissed off the sponsors. They worried that consumers may associate them with whatever’s been said,” said Alan Middleton, a marketing professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business.

Younger consumers, particularly the ones beer companies are increasingly struggling to hold onto, are more likely to make purchasing decisions based on what they understand as a brand’s values. The beer companies don’t want their young purchasers angered by the firm’s ’  spokes person’s by his ignorant rants.

Cherry’s Saturday night rant about “you people” not wearing poppies to honour Canadian veterans was likely the “last straw” for both Sportsnet and title sponsor Labatt, said David Kincaid, CEO of Level5 brand marketing. Kincaid, a former senior marketing executive with Labatt who negotiated the brewery’s first sponsorship deal with “Hockey Night in Canada” in the mid-90s when it was still on CBC, said the brewery likely wouldn’t have had the authority to fire Cherry. But, Kincaid said, they may have put pressure on the broadcaster for disciplinary action.

“The sponsor really wouldn’t be able to directly say ‘get rid of him,’” suggested Kincaid. “They’d say ‘we don’t like this and we’d like you to do something about it,’ and the ‘something’ would be up to Sportsnet.’”

In a statement on Cherry’s firing, Labatt stressed that it had made its feelings about Cherry’s “inappropriate and divisive” words known to Sportsnet after the Coach’s Corner segment.

“The comments made Saturday on Coach’s Corner were clearly inappropriate and divisive, and in no way reflect Budweiser’s views. As a sponsor of the broadcast, we immediately expressed our concerns and respect the decision which was made by Sportsnet,” Todd Allen, vice-president of marketing for Labatt Breweries of Canada told the Toronto Star in an email. 

It was destined to end badly for Cherry. His self-appointed role as guardian at the gates of old-time hockey, tub-thumping patriot and the image of an old cranky white Grandpa who was let loose into Canadian living rooms on Saturday nights, with the intent to offend. He kept the job for as long as he did because he did the job his former employers at Rogers Sportsnet expected him to do. But there comes a time when enough is enough.

I find it remarkable that Don Cherry should have become an example of how vulnerable opinionating jobs are in the 21^st  century culture. To have such a job as Don Cherry had for nearly 40 years, is a privilege. The price of having such a position is to sometimes be willing to say out loud, or to write, things that are self-evident but can be on occasion, impolitic.  He was, for the last half of his career, a grotesque, preposterous spectacle. There was hardly anyone left who still respected what he said in his TV shows.

The job of appearing on Coach’s Corner was to provide the professional coach’s s0-called special, informed view of the game of hockey. Are any of my Canadian readers of my blog old enough to remember when Don Cherry played hockey? ? He once had such a large fund of anecdotes, most of them concerning personalities and events that were still half-current, that he could use up a few yarns on Hockey Night in Canada and have plenty left to burn on a syndicated radio program and a TV chat show.

After all these years of experience in the sport of hockey, it was obvious  how little Don Cherry seemed to actually know about the game. “He knew fighting and he knew checking, but he didn’t know hockey,” according to Suhonen, a legendary European coach.. “He didn’t have any idea about skills or tactics or anything like that. He was good at explaining the game’s nuances, and was halfway in touch with its evolution, if only for the purpose of denouncing it. It would be interesting to go back through his broadcasts and find the exact moment at which hockey became a complete afterthought to him. When he talked about the culture of the game and the moral imperatives of the locker room, he was still speaking, until 1995 or so, with lingering authority and somewhat recent knowledge. He has always kept his eye for young talent, something successful pro coaches never seem to misplace altogether.

Cherry used his TV show to insult sports personalities. Alpo Suhone who was a respected coach from Finland hadn’t been with the team in Mocton much more than a month when Cherry appeared on TV, wearing his usual stupid-looking  suit that looked  much like  something an animal might eat.

Cheery asked a rhetorical question on his TV show, “Why did they bring a Finn over to coach Moncton?” according to reports at the time. “Wasn’t a Canadian good enough? I don’t wish him well in Moncton. What’s his name, Alpo? Sounds like dog food to me.” In my opinion, Cherry in his stupid costume looked like dog shit.

At first, Suhonen was baffled. “I didn’t really find it funny,” he said. He didn’t know Cherry. He didn’t know anything about him or why he might wish him ill. “Then, later, he got to know him more. Suhonen said later, “I found him to be a nationalistic, chauvinistic, narcissistic, toxic man. I know a lot of Canadians love his style, but his opinions about Europeans and their hockey, and the style he’s speaking, I find it very narrow-minded.” It was also racist.

For those in the hockey world who have been on the other side of Cherry’s ire, the news of his firing came as both a shock and an inevitability. “Don gets himself in trouble because he tends to go off half cocked and not really verify or sort through that which he intends to go public with,” said Stu ‘The Grim Reaper’ Grimson, a legendary hockey enforcer whom Cherry once called a “puke,” a “hypocrite” and a “turncoat” on TV. “I can’t help but feel that the game, at some point, a while ago, passed him by.”

For decades after Cherry’s verbal assault, Suhonen continued to work in professional hockey, in both Europe and North America. He now lives in his native Finland, where he recently produced a play about a Finnish hockey star living with the after affects of concussions suffered on the ice. Though they worked in the same building for two years, from 1998-2000, Suhonen said Cherry never spoke to him about what he said on air. He certainly never apologized. “No, no, no, no, no,” Suhonen said when asked about Cherry’s insults. He didn’t apologize then, and he wouldn’t apologize now, not for what he said, not even if it might have saved his job. That was Don Cherry. He stood by what he said, even if, as with Suhonen, he wouldn’t say it to his face.

Cherry’s tiny brain that conceptualized Coach’s Corner is still inside his close-cropped head. You could see this easily enough in the interviews he started to give about his firing. Don Cherry may not give an inch to his critics, because why start now, but he is obviously still an intelligent man conscious of the predicament he is in. It was only years before his firing  that  Don Cherry’s ability to stay on the subject of hockey that diminished over a period of decades such as  whamming his invisible piano and hollering and becoming a ludicrous self-caricature of a TV personality as many other public persons  sometimes do  which is to act the fool on TV.

What his conduct actually reflects is his enjoyment of an incredibly extreme form of the opinionator’s licence that kings gave to their medieval court fools. Pundits of all varieties and grades expect something like this as a matter of social contract, and because to do their job properly it may require saying unpopular things by definition.  However, the spirit of free speech requires maximum social toleration of error, and this goes double for people talking into a microphone without a script. Respect for the times we are in  also requires it, if the world of public opinion is not to be the exclusive freehold of the least experienced and especially those who flaunt their right to free speech in the ears of the public.

 Cherry had become technically and undeniably a terrible broadcaster at his job, and his credentials for performing it had long since lost all value, and everybody knew this all along. His conduct on the air is evidence that shows the strength, rather than the weakness, of the principles of licensed opinion in our civilization  in this  century.

I suppose the thing that bothers me most was the way Cherry had abused his television  pulpit and the impact that people like him are having on the public discourse even today.

Not everyone who has been part of a group targeted by Cherry on air dislikes him today. Georges Laraque, a longtime NHL enforcer, is both a French Canadian and a second-generation immigrant to Canada. He thinks Cherry doesn’t get enough credit among other Quebecers for, among other things, pushing the NHL to bring back the Quebec Nordiques. “There are so many things he’s done for French Canadians,” Laraque said. “But no one ever talks about that.”

in the last century, I was a broadcaster and host of my own TV show. For five years (every Monday evenings) I had guests from all walks of life on my shows.  I never made a racist comment in fact I even had a show in which a respected authority on human rights and the head of the Klu Klux Klan in Canada who were on one of my TV shows.  My other guests also included scientists, judges, politicians and even a former terrorist and a former bank robber etc. No one ever complained about what I ever said on my shows. That is because I had respect for the feelings of my listeners who watched my shows.