Canadian hockey commentator controversies are not usually news stories in the U.S.–thank God—but yesterday was an exception. Broadcaster (and former NHL `player and coach—I remember him from his days coaching the Boston Bruins) Don Cherry, 85, who has the fame and following that few U.S. sportscasters ever attain (Howard Cosell, perhaps? Curt Gowdy? Vin Scully, maybe?) talked himself out of a job by using his “Coach’s Corner” segment on the “Hockey Night In Canada” TV broadcast to criticize Canadian who didn’t wear poppy pins to commemorate the nation’s Remembrance Day, the counterpart to Memorial Day in the states. Veterans groups sell the pins, which signify recognition of the sacrifice of soldiers who died in service of the nation.
In typical rambling fashion, Cheery had said,
“I live in Mississauga [Ontario]. Very few people wear the poppy. Downtown Toronto, forget it. Nobody wears the poppy. … Now you go to the small cities. You people … that come here, whatever it is — 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 paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada. These guys paid the biggest price for that.”
The presumed translation of the brief rant was that Cherry was criticizing immigrants (“You people”…”who come here”) for being unpatriotic and too cheap to buy a pin as a gesture of thanks and respect to fallen soldiers. Social media and most of the Canadian sportswriting community immediately condemned the remarks, and called for Cherry’s dismissal.
Everyone connected to the broadcast quickly shifted into apology mode. Sportsnet president Bart Yabsley said,the day after Cherry’s outburst, “Don’s discriminatory comments are offensive and they do not represent our values and what we stand for as a network. We have spoken with Don about the severity of this issue and we sincerely apologize for these divisive remarks.” Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie had a particularly incoherent one, calling Cherry’s remarks “despicable” on Twitter, and adding, “We’re proud of diverse cultural heritage and we’ll always stand up for it. New immigrants enrich our country for the better. We’re all Canadians and wear our poppies proudly.”
Wait–is she saying that immigrant Canadians do wear the poppy pins? That the ones who don’t aren’t Canadians? Oh, it doesn’t matter: the point was to signal her virtue and not get into details. Cherry’s on-air co-host, Ron MacLean, had been seen by TV viewers giving a “thumbs-up” to Cherry’s words during that segment, and realiazed that thump could cost him his gig, so he quickly grovelled apologies on social media and on the air during the following day’s Sportsnet NHL coverage, and threw his long-time broadcasting partner to the wolves under the bus. “Don Cherry made remarks which were hurtful, discriminatory, which were flat out wrong. We at Sportsnet have apologized. We know diversity is the strength of the country. I owe you an apology, too. I sat there, I did not catch it, I did not respond,” he said.
With friends and long-time colleagues like MacLean, who needs enemies? MacLean could have apologized for his apparent endorsement of Cherry’s statement without piling on. He could have said that he was sure his partner didn’t mean to denigrate immigrants, rather that he was trying to promote the pins on behalf of Canada’s veterans, and that was the reason for the upwards thumb. Well, I’m happy that you still have your job, Ron, you weasel. Whatever it takes.
Cherry does not. Yesterday, Yabsley announced that Cherry was gone saying in a statement,
“Sports brings people together. It unites us, not divides us. Following further discussions with Don Cherry after Saturday night’s broadcast, it has been decided it is the right thing for him to immediately step down. During the broadcast, he made divisive remarks that do not represent our values or what we stand for. Don is synonymous with hockey and has played an integral role in growing the game over the past 40 years. We would like to thank Don for his contributions to hockey and sports broadcasting in Canada.”
Cherry refused to apologize or soften his sentiments. “I know what I said and I meant it,” Cherry told the Toronto Sun after he was fired. “Everybody in Canada should wear a poppy to honor our fallen soldiers….To keep my job, I cannot be turned into a tamed robot.”
Should Cherry have been fired? Sure. If this was his first undiplomatic foray into sensitive non-hockey, non-sports issues, I might argue that his employers and his public should give him a warning and a pass, but it wasn’t. He was outspoken in his support for Toronto’s former buffoon Mayor Rob Ford, and referred to climate change believers as “cuckaloos.” He used “Coach’s Corner” to criticize Canada’s lack of support for the the U.S’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. For a while, the Canadian network carrying “Coach’s Corner” placed him on a seven second delay.
That tells you what you need to know, doesn’t it? Cherry was untrustworthy, and increasingly irresponsible. At 85, he had reached the point where he was going to say what he wanted to say, and his judgment was suspect. No organization can afford to employ someone like that who refuses to acknowledge any boundaries. Everyone had long given him the benefit of “The King’s Pass,” and this is how lazy and cowardly suspension of standards for a lucrative star usually works out: badly.
When an organization realizes that any employee’s risks of continued employment exceed his or her benefits to the organization’s image and the bottom line, firing for cause is the only responsible course, and a completely ethical one. Cherry’s rant crossed several lines that I particularly hold want to see maintained, and I assume many others do as well. Don’t tell me what charities I have to support or be considered selfish and without compassion. Don’t tell me that I have to do something you do to qualify as patriotic. Don’t tell me what messages I have to convey to others.
In fact, don’t give me your opinions on anything but what you are on TV to talk about due to your experience and special expertise. Who cares what an old hockey coach thinks about the issues of the day? I place this in the same category as NFL players presuming to impose their political views on fans who just want to watch football. It’s presumptuous, it’s disrespectful, and it’s a bait and switch. The fact that Cherry’s employers let him get away with doing this for so long makes them complicit and enablers, but it does not and should not prevent then from taking the correct action, however tardy.
This isn’t a matter of punishing a public figure for being politically incorrect. This is a removing a human loose cannon who apparently thinks being obnoxious on television is his right. He’s wrong. Broadcasting for compensation is a privilege, and Don Cheery abused it.
_________________________
Source: ESPN
Ethics Alarms 
Glass half full?
At least Yabsley, et al, didn’t blame Cherry’s indiscretion on President Trump…yet.
(Milwaukee) Mayor Tom Barrett Blames Acid Attack Against Latino Resident On Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric
The notion that sports brings us together has not watched soccer matches in the UK
It does seem knee jerk to read criticism of immigrants. To the extent that I comprehended any criticism, I thought “you people” referred to city slickers who refused to the wear the pin, but still enjoyed visiting the small towns in the countryside and buying their fresh farm products.
Perhaps he meant “milk and honey” metaphorically, and that’s how they read criticism of immigrants into the ramblings? (Isn’t the US the land of Milk and Honey? Is it cultural appropriation for Canada to call itself that?)
I think the mitigation is that this is who Cherry was. From day one, he wore ridiculous suits with big collars, often cradling what had to be the ugliest dog on regular TV, and mouthed off. He’s been doing that since 1986. 33 years of stupid rants about literally anything and everything, and the CBC continued to pay him an ungodly amount of money… But this, THIS, was the straw that broke the camel’s back, apparently.
I’m not going to defend him, I always thought he was overpaid and under-intelligent, but excuse me if I’m skeptical over the CBC et al’s concern that the guy they’d been paying to do his schtick for 33 years continued to do *exactly* what they paid him for, and then got himself cancelled for saying something *objectively* more tame than other shit he’s said over the decades. This pear clutchery isn’t a reaction to what he said, it’s reacting to getting bad press.
Agreed and spot on.
“This pear clutchery isn’t a reaction to what he said, it’s reacting to getting bad press.”
What he said:getting bad press:the bottom line: company well-being. It’s all the same thing. It’s like shock jocks: stations keep them on because people like the high wire act, until they fall and make a mess, and then it’s “How dare he?”
This is the “he’s just being who he is” rationalization…and I just checked: that’s not on the list yet.
Oh, almost forgot: Is clutching pears a Canadian thing? (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
We’re… too eco friendly to clutch pearls! Yes, that’s it! You Phillistines what go around ripping sand cysts out of mollusks should be ashamed, or something.
Seriously though, that’s going in my top 5.
Sand cysts is going in my Top Five.
FWIW, I dug sand cystless mollusks, of the Razor Clam variety, commercially in Dakovak Bay on the Alaska Peninsula over 40 years ago.
Take a bad angle trying to wrestle one those buggers to the surface, and it becomes abundantly, and painfully, clear why they’re called Razors.
It would only be a rationalization if I were defending what he was doing. I’m not, I’m saying the CBC doesn’t get to act shocked and offended when Cherry does *exactly* what they’ve been paying him to do for the last 33 years.
It would be like someone hiring a contract killer and then pretending to be surprised when someone got killed. No, no, CBC PR department, you are not shocked, shocked you tell me, here are your winnings, signal your great virtue elsewhere.
And I agree with that. They can’t be shocked. They were playing with nitro, knew it, and it exploded.
What is interesting to me is that in no part of this post, and in the comments offered to it, is the underlying issue spoken to. That underlying issue is the rapid process of multi-culturalization of Canada through the same ‘unrelenting’ processes of immigration that is leading to a similar kind of ‘displacement’ of the original demographic of Canada.
I do not know a great deal about the CBC but I suspect that it is a semi-communistic organ whose purpose is the social engineering of a people and a nation along certain, specific lines.
There are people in Canada, and a developing movement of activism, who reject what is being done to Canada because they know where it will lead. When you change the physical character of a people by the (excessive) importation of different types of people, you change the character of that nation. Note that the mind-frame that allows this is always ultra-progressive and *idealistic*. They seem only to see things their way, but behind *their way* one notices coercive control mechanisms.
The thing is that this particular announcer Don Cherry (I know nothing about him) is likely not the best vehicle to express the social discontent that is brewing among ‘the original demographic’, but I also assume that the original demographic, as in dumbed-down America (having been subject to the policies of a multi-culturalizing regime for a long time) is simply not in a position to voice their concerns either publically, or articulately. I have noticed that the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ are often unarticulate sorts.
The following video can be taken as an indicator of what ‘the canary in the coal mine’ has to say about what is being done to his culture. It has to be stated, because it is true, that this is a video that concretizes a reaction: a social reaction. It has a function that goes beyond it *facticity* (or lack of facticity). It is designed to arouse nationalistic sentiments and to inspire forms of xenophobia. But I use xenophobia not in a negative sense: it is absolutely their right to have these sentiments.
I have a confession to make, I never watched Cherry, or coaches corner, and so I missed when 5 years ago the CBC sold the franchise to Sportsnet. It doesn’t change much, ad lib in “Sportsnet” every time I wrote “CBC” and it changes nothing. Your comment, which I will paraphrase into “I don’t know what it is, but it’s probably communism.” Amused me. Very hammer-nail.
The rest of your comment is…. novel. Canada doesn’t have the same problems with immigration that America does. It’s mostly because we don’t share a land border with a country with a significantly reduced quality of life, and we aren’t the first stop of the journey away from a whole lot of shitholevilles that doesn’t also resemble a shithole, which makes the meat of your comment feel…. frankly ignorant. Most importantly to you: Upward of 70% of our immigration is white, and visible minorities make up less of the population pie of Canada than they do of America. Most important to me: Basically all of our immigration speaks either English and/or French, and adults have a minimum of a high school education. Our racial tensions, such as they are, revolve mostly around our aboriginal peoples, and the system of ghettos that are reserves…. It’s a real problem, but it’s hard to argue that’s a newcomer problem.
It’s actually kind of a neat juxtaposition how what some Americans (And self-hating Brazilian Jews) see as communist-comrade-lite Canada has managed to implement things like merit-based immigration and voter ID laws. But maybe that’s just me.
Often, I like what you write, or perhaps I should say the way that you write. I don’t much like the content of what you write because I think you are a rather classical ‘conservative’: one who has no desire at all, nor need, to conserve anything at all: therefore a fake-conservative. You pose as a conservative but you are more accurately a liberal. It is not like that is some kind of *evil* though. You use the term ‘ignorance’ interests me.
It is not at all that I hallucinate that it is ‘probably communism’ and more that I discern that it is very definitely neo-Marxism, and the degree to which a neo-Marxist platform is proposed and integrated.
Alongside ‘good liberal types’ (you are an example), who do seem to be of relative good will and nature, there is another type. And these people are in my view dangerous and destructive in what they do. And discerning them, and labeling each of them appropriately, fairly and accurately, is my object. This is difficult because there are lies flying around everywhere. So, with that said, I propose that *our* project is one of getting clear about our classificatory scheme. But it is more of course: it has to do with accurate interpretation of our world and also clarity of intellect and intellectual ideas.
Perhaps you would offer some comments to what this interesting and intelligent fellow is saying here. What he says seems to me of crucial importance.
I find that I get more accurate information from his analysis and the way he approaches ideas and their effect in our world, than nearly everything that I get from people who comment here about *current events*, which always seems to surface oriented and shallow. This is not meant as an insult. It is the way I see things. Now the question to ask is: Why is that? Why do people think and see through such limited and limiting lenses?
Yes, yes, you have little more than contempt for me and you had that since a long time. But please put that aside and — really, I implore you — to offer some commentary on what the fellow says in his discourse, above. I’d be interested in hearing your perspective.
Note that in his talk he speaks of the ‘positive’ aspects of sound liberal policy (and he is a Canadian speaking about Canada) and another ‘attitude’ of which he is profoundly critical, and with very good reason. Therefore all that he says hinges on discrimination: the capacity to see subtly, penetratingly and clearly.
Also, I am originally Venezuelan, or I guess you know that and are just messing with me? But I am curious: is a Jew that becomes a Christian still a Jew? (It is a trick question of course!)
Missed out on the zoo horse, eh? To your question, because “Jew” can refer to a culture, or a race, it depends, but I’d argue that when someone is disproportionately concerned about race and the relative badness associated with non-white peoples, them being a South American Jew is at least marginally amusing. At least to me. Perhaps I’m odd.
And as to the third party campaigning… I’ve never been more tempted to type “lol” into a comment unironically. Making sure that voters are citizens via voter ID laws is a partisanly liberal policy? Merit based immigration is a partisanly liberal policy? I mean, if that’s how you want to interperet them, I’ll own it and back those policies every day of the week. We’ve had this discussion before; I don’t respect your labels, they’re meaningless. When pressed, you can’t define them, you make no attempt to, you just sprinkle labels and buzzwords around hoping to distract people.
I have argued — with very good reasoning — that America should understand what tens of millions of Meso-Americans will do to the integrity of the nation. But I have never argued for anyone’s ‘badness’.
I have also argued against what Neo-Marxists who have institutional and academic power to define and determine policies can do and are doing in their project of a) multi-cultural imposition and b) inculcating anti-whiteness.
I have advocated for the right of people of European descent to honor themselves and to get out from under the terrible weight established by the Neo-Marxists and their focused hatred of Europe and ‘whiteness’.
I definitely argue for — and communicate with — people from all over South America of European descent, and some of Indigenous descent — who advocate for their cultural and racial integrity, always in the face of corrupt elites with specific agendas that can be identified and labeled (and these have a positive aspect and a negative aspect).
If I am ‘disproportionately concerned’ (though I do not think I am) I would make mention of your entire lack of understanding of what the larger implications are of the Multi-Cultural agenda. And to this end I presented here a very interesting and well thought-out talk by a concerned Canadian citizen whose argument — whose range of ideas and considerations — pales anything you say now and possibly will ever say.
If I am ‘concerned’ about anything I am as concerned about people like you — sharp, intelligent, with a modicum of educational background — who are yet unable to grasp the full extent of what is going on around them and who are, as you are, in (what I discern as) a ‘dumbed-down state’. I will admit to tremendous imperfection in my technique or my immature style of communication and any number of different faults (not the least that I am entirely new to all of this) but I will not fault myself for making a bold effort to point out to very headstrong people, who operate within hubristic certainty, that there are certain things they need to see.
Basically, the thrust of my argument is encapsulated in the discourse I presented to you. What he sees, and what he points out, is a sort of stultifying disease of the mind within many Occidentals and it is that they we have to get out from under. To do so is supremely ethical. In fact it is sort of ur-ethical. If one does not do that one commits a very real ethical sin: to oneself, to one’s culture, to the high ideals that have been fought for, and to all that has been given to us.
As to being a ‘traitorous Jew’ and having seen the Christian light — that for me was really just the beginning to awakening to the larger project of helping Europeans to see themselves. Which does mean *getting out from under* how Jews describe them. A Jew by his nature and confession is and must be anti-Christian. In any case I cannot conceive how one could be a Jew and ‘support’ Christianity: unless you modify Christianity. Of course that is what is going on, culture-wide, on a large scale: the undermining of Christian metaphysics. And where do you stand in relation to this? Hmmmm?
The ‘preservation of Europe’ is just a term and it cannot make the real issue clear. I do not know how to make it clear and I struggle to do so. And I struggle to explain to people who, at times, seem like intellectual dullards. That does not mean they lack the *equipment* it means that their intellects have been dumbed-down. And that is, at the final point, a demonic process.
Everything reduces, as I become more clear about every day, yet with a kind of wavering that disturbs me, to what one finally serves in this life. If you understood more of these things it would reflect in what you write.
A Jew by his nature and confession is and must be anti-Christian.
On n’a pas peur de vous, vous fille d’un poire-agrippeur! Allez vous faire bouillir tes fesses! Je vous eternue, idiote!
[Crédits à Monte Python, M. Humble Talent et deux de mes amis juifs franco-canadiens]
Je vous eternue eternement . . . works nicely as well … and can be translated as:
I am eternally sneezing you in the grammatical aspect of constancy. 🙂
The weirdest things happen when people cannot contain themselves and instead of having some sort of argument or coherent rebuttal resort to the strangest — but in this case rather interesting — retorts.
So, as often happens, you have to stop, back up, and slowly disassemble what they are saying (or trying to say): a kind of idea-deconstruction to break it down into its parts; and then to make sense of it.
Taken from an historical perspective, European Christianity and the ‘diaspora experience’ had never been a very nice experience for European Jewry (to put it lightly). The Jewish experience in Europe was largely one of suffering. But then that is the nature of ‘exile’ and that is the nature of Jewish exile and, as anyone who cares to investigate such things, a facet of ‘diaspora pathology’.
And this *experience* is part-and-parcel of both Jewish self-understanding (“We are the victim-people and this is the role given to us by HaShem”) and underpins Jewish experience itself, everywhere and in all places and times. The more identification with the core of Judaism, the more a radical reaffirmation of its basic tenets.
It is beyond any doubt that Christianity, and the mission of Jesus Christ as it is recorded in all the Gospels, confronts Judaism in a direct and radical way. There is no way to get around this. If one wished to express it in this manner one would have to say that ‘the Gospels are anti-Semitic’. Christianity was born out of this ‘swerve’ (to use a literary criticism term):
Clinamen – [Harold] Bloom defines this as “poetic misreading or misprision proper”. The poet makes a swerve away from the precursor in the form of a “corrective movement”. This swerve suggests that the precursor “went accurately up to a certain point”, but should have swerved in the direction that the new poem moves. Bloom took the word clinamen from Lucretius, who refers to swerves of atoms that make change possible.
To understand why this is so requires various essays so I will leave it at that.
In my own experience I have begun to understand that Judaism qua Judaism has in a sense a ‘natural enemy’ and it recognizes its enemy as such. For there to be an ‘entente’ between Judaism and Traditional Christianity Judaism must denature the Christian message or modify it. It either has to be modified and reinterpreted, or denatured completely.
Out of this comes what is called Dispensationalism, and one modification of that is to arrive at the understanding that there are *two dispensation*: one for Jews and one for Gentiles. This movement is very strong in the US (and most of the Neoconservative Gentiles — Bush Jr. for instance — were dispensationalists). It is a very strange entente I suggest. Utterly non-Biblical however.
OK, so there you have the base. Now, what in Heaven’s name did I say that warrants the label of idiote? Merely to have noticed that this is so? I guess that must be it. But this is why I always say that *Everything has to be put out on the table for examination*.
So, let’s return to:
Now, I meant of course a ‘practicing Jew’ and an Orthodoxically-grounded Jew: one who observes the Torah Law in the very strict sense. That excludes those spin-off Jews who are sort-of Jews but are more properly on the steady road to assimilation, or who adopt other religious modes (Buddhism being a popular alternative). Reform Judaism, largely, is a deviation from classic Judaism and the Judaism of a Jew. In its own way Reform redefines what a Jew is.
To continue as a Jew and one firmly ensconced in the fundamental Jewish beliefs (people refer to Talmudic Judaism in this context) one must stand in opposition to Traditional Christian belief and understanding. The two cannot exist side-by-side. Or they have a very uneasy tension.
[It amazes me how little many people seem to be aware of the nature of the conflicts in our present! That is, the causal chain and the causal history. Oh well . . .]
I would appreciate your thoughtful commentary on the ‘discourse’ that I linked to in a YouTube video.
It’s lipstick on a pig. Perhaps it was eloquent, but there wan’t anything new or exciting in there, and the narrator falls into the same traps you would expect out of a white nationalist, most notably the conflation between culture and race.
I don’t even mean that was winkwink inferred, he said it straight up; around the 11 minute mark he made a point that it is illegal for Europeans to discriminate, but it is legal, nay, encouraged to discriminate against Europeans, and gave the example of affirmative action…. But there is no affirmative action that discriminates against “Europeans” write large. That statement only functions with the direct and complete conflation of “white” and “European”.
Earlier in the speech, he talked about replacement theory, how people like Robert Borden were being replaced by Viola Desmond on the 100 dollar bill. Bork and Desmond were Born 50 miles away from eachother, both hailing from Nova Scotia. They were both the children of immigrants, the only difference between them was that both of Borden’s parents were whi… sorry… “European”, and Desmond was half blac… Sorry… “African”. I guess the other difference is that because she was half black, Desmond couldn’t even attain a beautician’s license in Nova Scotia, so she became a civil right’s activist. But they *were* both Canadian. Hell, they were even both of European descent, but one looked black, and all of a sudden, that’s not European enough for you.
And I think that’s where you (That’s the Royal “You”, meant to encapsulate all the the grown up Hitler Youth) fail… You don’t understand culture. You actually make the same mistake as the progressives, except you go about it in different ways: Progressives view culture as a static, unchanging thing, and view the appropriation of that culture as a grave sin. White Nationalists view culture as a static and unchanging thing, and view any deviation from that state as the great sin of erasure. In reality, culture is alive. It evolves over time, we piecemeal it out… We take the best and reject the worst. The game of life is not a race to discover everything first so that you can deprive others of those discoveries. We Share it. The game of life is not a futile stand to maintain a way of life that fails to maintain relevancy in a modern era. We Build it. And we do those things together. Culture Is More Important Than Race, and Race Does Not Determine Culture.
One of the stupidest things that video stated was that there was no such thing as a Canadian culture. How a *Canadian* could ever be stupid enough to say this is beyond me, neither Canada nor America are carbon copies of a European nation. We have different traditions, we have different mores, we have different outlooks, we eat different foods, we wear different clothes, we have different past times, If I had to choose between a Victorian Era European culture and current Canadian culture, then I could slap a maple leaf on every square millimeter of my clothing, chug a liter of maple syrup, and tell you, politely, to piss off, you hoser.
Here is where I respond to your fierce *arguments*!
https://ethicsalarms.com/2019/11/12/there-were-many-good-and-ethical-reasons-to-fire-don-cherry/comment-page-1/#comment-657782
Honestly, his statement is imprecise and fairly nebulous. He seems to be exhorting all people to buy a poppy in support of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. His critique seems to be for anyone not being thoughtful enough to do so.
So, the CBC felt the need to fire Cherry, fine. Hope they treat others similarly who might say questionable things about people to the right of Mr. Trudeau. (Betting they won’t.)
I am betting CBC was looking for a reason to get rid of Cherry
He’s just outspoken from the wrong…um…perspective; were he to realign his ideology, MSNBC would surely come a callin’
What an odd comment. You do notice what the ‘Progressive Left’ is doing in America as they show their power and clarify their intentions. You must notice that one arm or plank of their program has to do with annihilating ‘whiteness’ as a foundation of identity as they become a party of People of Color and advocate for their interests which cannot, of course, allow for even the presence of mild forms of identity among the European descended. You must notice the lengths to which they will go in silencing those who mildly oppose their goals while they *destroy* those who are vocal and articulate.
All of this is pretty clear.
You notice all of these things and begin to notice that your own basic interests are threatened, and yet you can seriously state that you hope *they* (Maoist semi-communistic socialist hacks and those who serve those objects) will ‘treat others similarly’. You seem to understand that they (certainly!) won’t, and so you have negated the thrust of everything you have said.
What needs to be seen here is 1) processes of demographic displacement and the propaganda-constructs that are offered to people through which they visualize their fate, which are presented through a Maoist media entity and its machinations, and 2) what happens when a subject voices even the most minimal critique, however stupidly, however inarticulately.
It is the same or a very similar thing in the US: a regime of thought has been established as *good* and *proper* and even ‘conservatives’ have been captured by the distorting narratives of the Progressive Left. Most cannot think outside of those parameters. Firing Don Cherry is related in kind to Fox News saying it would never allow the commentator who said that Greta Thurnberg was a mentally ill child. It is absolutely and undeniably true: a statement of fact and a truth. But note that you are not allowed to make such statements! (The Fox commentator was much more articulate and direct however, and thus more dangerous, than Don Cherry who ‘speaks sideways’ to an issue that cannot be spoken of directly).
Similarly, if any person of standing and influence makes a ‘true statement’ in the public arena — Don Cherry moved in that direction only — he must be taken out. What is the meaning there? It is obvious: it has to do with control of perception and the application of state intervention to shut it down.
I can’t fault your analysis, but using this as an impetus to fire him seems wrong. You have to look for “dog whistles” or some such conspiratorial pap to get immigrant-bashing out of that statement.
I don’t know beans about this guy, but I do agree that sports commentators, coaches, and players should shut the hell up about politics while they are on “company time.” Unfortunately, there are just so many double-standards on this issue, I have a hard time getting behind this one.
Then again, I can’t muster enough give-a-shit about this controversy to fill the space between a hydrogen-oxygen bond, so I guess I’ve abused my privilege of commentary on this one.
And I forgot to mention that it was the Twitter reaction that drove the firing, at least by the reporting I’ve read. We may never know for sure on that.
“Cancel culture” strikes again…
Don Cherry was fired by Sportsnet, a private broadcaster. Sportsnet out bid the CBC for the NHL rights some time ago. It has a deal with CBC permitting it to carry certain games, where Don’s segment appears in the first intermission on Sat nights. So the public broadcaster did not fire him, a private one with a public brand fired him. There was no issue regarding freedom of speech in the incident (and I don’t think anyone has suggested that here).
Cherry, no doubt with the blessing of CBC and Sportsnet, has been a long and very strong supporter of Canadian troops, veterans and first responders. A number of Canadian sports teams (e.g. MLB, NHL) have adopted more common American practices recently of promoting these same groups and you can buy your camo design team uniforms of course. I am guessing that Cherry’s early adoption and promotion showed the teams that there were new avenues to be taken and that fans have a kinship to such things. That Cherry should fall on Remembrance Day for an episode about poppies is more than a little ironic. Lest ye forget and all.
My very large office building in Toronto hosted its annual ceremony yesterday. The crowd is always well numbered and very diverse. I noticed no more or fewer poppies this year.
Preaching about how to be a Canadian (or any other citizen, group member, etc.) is not well-received here or in lots of countries. Cherry could have taught people about the significance of the poppy and the good works done through such fundraising. Then he could have invited people to wear a poppy. He could have even lamented that he wished more people did.
But Cherry has a history of bashing and brawling and is never subtle. What can make for good TV one day can make for awful TV the next.
When Sportsnet readjusted its on-air talent this summer for the new hockey season, there was strong speculation that DC would not return. I think the end was very near.
[ https://youtu.be/Z6x8q6lBLgw ]
Except that does not really apply if, for example, one is attuned to and agrees with the analysis offered in the video whose link is above.
I first heard of Cherry last season, after the Carolina Hurricanes started making a practice out of celebration performance after home wins — you know, that forbidden thing of having fun. He called them ‘a bunch of jerks’.
The Hurricanes promptly had t-shirts printed up with ‘A bunch of jerks’ on the front — they were a brisk seller the rest of the season. And they’ve had even more fun mocking Cherry for his comment ever since.
So the people in Raleigh no doubt are sad at the loss of an icon to make fun of……
One of the main things I notice about you as a writer and thinker is that you are terribly supeficial. But that is one of my main critiques of this blog: you see surface and talk about surface, but you seem to have real troubles getting under the surface to *causation*. On the other hand, I want only to uncover the causal chains that have led to the corruptions of the present, but to point this out — to have this focus — is very distressing for *you*. So, then I say that *you* are directly involved in the causal incidents and are *a part of the problem* and not a solution: the knives come out. At that point, I regret to say, you have identified an enemy and, with the same shame and blame tools of the Progressive Left you attack. Your arguments though are weak at best and fallacious at worst. And in your case, here, now, there are overt fallacies running throughout this ridiculous piece you have offered.
You have offered no commentary at all to the thesis he talked on. It is as if you did not listen to the talk. But this could be telling: you cannot hear for all that you have ears to hear. This points to obstinacy. I am now and I have always been interested in and concerned by this obstinacy, and out of this comes my critique of faux-conservatism: the Conservative Pose. You are in no sense of the word a conservative and this is plain to anyone with capacity to distinguish. Yet you pose as one. For this reason you are *situated in a fallacy* and for this reason there is little power in your superficial commentary. In this sense — I do not mean to sound mean — you are *useless*. You prate, you chirp, you prattle and you pose: a Canadian Intellectual Dandy!
You seem to have failed to grasp that he begins with the assertion that in Canada (in his view) there is a similar thing going on as in America: the toppling of national historical figures. And directing a unique species of *hate* on them. This is vilification. He then mentions that under a Multi-Cultural Regime that there are positive and constructive elements (a *proper liberal openness* it might be called) but that concurrent with this there is a Neo-Marxian element which he carefully defines. It is deconstructive in its intent. Why? Because it is based on a ‘decolonization model’.
Because only a unified, alert and self-conscious people can have a defined interest and communicate those interests in a colonization project (the construction of the Canadian nation in its historical sense) a reverse-colonization occurs under Neo-Marxism in which the core identity of a people is attacked and made to seem evil and wrong. This is the thrust that animates the Progressive Left, and this thrust is described, in acute detail, by those who articulate its project. The Multi-Cultural Model arises out of this and it is (always) an elite imposition on the people of a Nation. It is based in solid ideological constructs which are then channeled into the academy and the governing, managerial state. From there it filters out through all manner of different cultural products and becomes, perversely, a New Ethics.
But who defines Multi-Culturalism as a governing model? Why? When? How? He brings this out and links it to the 1970s. But it is largely the same across the board in the Occident: this is when the radical projects of those involved in ‘deconstruction’ of the Occident really began to dig in. That is, the reverse-colonization or the *acidic processes* of an intellectual culture of endless critique. These processes are wider and deeper than mere Multi-Culturalism, and they have to do with a whole range of impositions that were forced into culture by elite actors. Though he does not go into it, many others have noticed what T. Sunic refers to as ‘liberal rot’. Suffice it only now to allude to this wider destructive trend, nevertheless it is extremely relevant to a sound analysis of our present. (And I must note that any discourse on these themes is totally absent from all your writing. Again: you are not a conservative because you define nothing needing conservation).
Under the regime of thought that has infected our present — the Multi-Cultural Model — it must happen that the Original People and their identification-structures are weakened. Because multi-culturalism is by definition many different people, with very different history and trajectory, who are brought into a cultural space as Walmart shoppers are brought into the aisles of the shopping center. No one of them has any specific right to define the Nation; and all of them must surrender their right. And they surrender that right to the State, in essence. They becomes subjects of a specific sort of managerial state, a new state with new designs and intentions.
Out of this arises a New Ethics and a New Mores which begins to concretize into an ideology of sameness, and this certainly begins to erode the former National identification structures of those who made the nation, who built it and who comprise it. I refer to that as The Original Demographic, and an original demographic very certainly exists in Canada, in the US, and effectively everywhere in Europe: the people who make the Nation: the people of the Nation.
In the New Model it is the State and its PR (propaganda) agencies that go to work to build and establish the New Models of Identification. This involves, as it obviously must, the deconstruction of the older identification models. We know more of this by recent events in the US of course, and perhaps it is even more raw and more obvious what is really going on there: the deconstruction of structures of identity, and the implied reconstruction of new models. But it must be understood that these processes, in large part, are not organic and thus genuinely cultural (in the sense that you have used this term and what it implies). What powers these ideological impositions? As I say: elite forces, those that have the power to engineer culture; economic factions with an interest in creating a *Walmart Culture* of mere consumers: and this I define as Neo-Communist. It is underpinned by a Neo-Marxian ideology for, when you examine it and what it creates, and what it must de-create, it is clear to anyone with two eyes in their head that it follows the socialistic model. And the imposition of it on culture is a process of ideological imposition based on different forms of manipulation but also of *robbery*. Because you have to subtract so much from a specific people (the People of the Nation) in order to create the bland multi-cultural model.
No, my Dear Sir, I suggest that the real failure to understand what culture is, is a failing that you need to address. But you have not really ever thought these things through now have you? I say that because all of your discourse is similarly superficial. And I repeat: you are not a conservative. You are profoundly allied and ensconced in all the false-ideas and fallacious ideas of the Progressive-Left. You have accepted them and you embody them.
First — of course! — you associate any proper and necessary national-identity with Nazism. Where in the heck have I heard that before!? ::: laughs ::: This is really your core position, your starting point. But essentially you reveal that a) your argumentation is fallacious and badly-grounded, and b) that it is emotional and based in *blame & shame*.
You paragraph, above, contains all your fallacies in one place. You throw this up — and I admit that it is formidable and with it you can trick people and divert them from the real and fundamental issues that are playing out in their real lives, except that your pseudo-arguments can be deconstructed, and your bizarre assertions laid bare for all to see. Each assertion you make here though has to be carefully addressed. But most people do not have the time or the energy to do that.
You are wrong about nationalism and national-identity, and you are wrong to associate it with National Socialism. In fact this is a projection: it is you are the people who impose your perverse ideology that end up acting like National Socialists when they really get down to their acute business of silencing their opponents; limiting their speech; reducing their rights.
You are wrong if you assert that a ‘culture’ is defined or made through random importation of any particular people or peoples through elite-run government-imposed ‘social engineering projects’. But you attack one (the man giving the talk) as being Nazi-like when in fact it is *your faction* that carries out a false imposition on *real culture* and what really allows it and creates it. Because this is so, you cannot *see* nor conceive how genuine culture is undermined!
These are just two examples of how your fallacies operate: as the sharp side of a doconstructing, destructive ideology.
I made it all the way through without insulting you at a personal level. One of the most important lessons I take away from my involvement here is to avoid the bait and stick to the enunciation of the important points. Your insults are a part of your superficiality. You imagine that by insults you gain some ground in argument? You do not.
You have no argument. Really.
Sorry, I should have titled this Open Letter to Humble Talent. I decided to remove it from the thread where the conversation was occuring.
For someone that says that you don’t put much stock in my insults, you sure get hung up real hard on them. Alizia, if I hadn’t had the opportunity to read your online screeds and manifestos for years on here you might almost have a point, but I have.
My disdain of your arguments isn’t a failure to grasp your points, it’s that I find them exceptionally wanting. You have an amazing ability to write walls and walls of text while saying very little, and then you have the temerity to get really twisted out of joint that I fail to be swayed by your word salads. You *still* have not defined your terms, you *still* have not said clearly what your point is. Real talk for a second, I honestly do not know if that’s because you are unable to do so, or because you understand that plainly spoken, no one would agree with you. I think that you want me to legitimize your points by engaging with them, but don’t think I’ll do it if I knew what I was engaging with. Because otherwise, what makes sense? Why devote hours of your life writing thousands of superfluous words that do literally nothing other than make it harder to engage with you?
As to the video… If You (and that’s the royal “you” again) were able to differentiate between race and culture, you might have the beginning of a point, but you can’t, so you don’t (Which, again, is *amazing* to me considering that you aren’t actually white, and you’re linking me to videos that say non-white culture is societal cancer). Because cultures aren’t equal, you could argue that we take in too much of the bad of other cultures, that you deem certain cultural facets you be better than what is being adopted, that you disagree with the ideas that are being presented… But you don’t. I think that at the end of the day, that would require growth, and you just can’t process that.
It’s funny, because your entire premise is based on something that isn’t actually true, the progressive cultural artifacts that are corrupting your cultural ideals originated in white, liberal spaces. What you rail against is a cultural invention of Europeans, non-white people just bought in, and now those white liberals and non-white people share that culture you so hate. Your model of cultural segregation and stagnation isn’t realistic or healthy, and again, if that makes me something other than conservative in your eyes…. I don’t particularly care. I still believe it, and whatever label helps you navigate to a place of understanding me won’t change that.
Well, with this I suggest that you read more carefully what I write and also what *we write*: those of us who define ourselves as of the Dissident Right.
It is very true that the corruption, if that is a fair term and I think it is, that is at the core of the problem *we* face definitely originated in ‘white, liberal spaces’. And that is why the notion of renovation and recovery — within our own selves — is of primary importance. And that is why the discourse that I linked you to, and reiterated just above with some of my own commentary, is relevant and not falsely premised. There has to be a starting point, and the starting point is within correctly-founded ideas. And the man was *spot-on* as they say (and I really think he described and elucidated very important points with a far wider application in our present, here and in other places).
If there is anything that is *railed against*, on my part, is is lack of seriousness or perhaps will & perseverance to get clear about the causal chain that has led to the strange conditions of the present. I am completely aware that I will have no luck getting through to you personally, but the value of a public space is really more for those who read and think about the arguments they encounter.
I cannot speak for others (in this so-called Right Dissident movement) but I do not have ‘hate’ for anyone. It is not hatred that motivates me. You are mistaken if you think I *hate* the (what I refer to as) Walmart Culture. I think there are better models. And I think (as I very clearly say and which you simply cannot hear) that the Neo-Marxian imposition leads to and produces various forms of socialism, or various expressions of it, which are destructive to culture — genuine and organic culture — as I define it. I could refer to the nation in which I reside now (but have few links to): Colombia. I can very clearly see the *apparent advantages* of semi-socialization (healthcare and other areas for example). But I can also see what is harder to discern: where these things tend. Here, as well, though working with different materials, there is manifest similar ‘Multi-Culturalism’ in both the positive aspects he mentions, but also the negative.
I find it provocative, and interesting (as in a little amusing), that you feel that you can actually speak about what is ‘healthy and realistic’. I am not sure that you are qualified. But I am open to hearing your discourse as I am open to hearing everyone’s discourse.
I think that what disturbs you is that — and it is definitely not myself doing this alone — that there are many people who do not feel that the trends that the man outlined in his talk are at all healthy. We speak and what we see and what we say definitely is not appreciated. We are denounced as you try to denounce me here and as many who write here also try to.
Indeed he speaks of the destruction of Occidental culture and the undermining of it. You must know that awareness of this trend of corruption and decadence did not begin with my epic posts! For example, and in an area I have somewhat more familiarity with than the social politics of Canada, in the US there are many different groups who are discontent, as the man in the talk is discontent, with the conditions of the present and who seek to examine *causal chains*. And their views are valid and important to understand.
I think that you are not a conservative for a whole group of different reasons, not just that you ally yourself with Neo-Marxian social policies and their manipulative machinations (it is more accurate to say that you simply do not understand what these are well enough to see why they are destructive in the long run).
And I do understand — I think — what your own social policy is, what you regard as the correct and proper way to relate to those specific trends in the present (in your own culture) that you admire and defend. (I hope that you at least see that I only get personal and respond personally when someone takes that tack with me, as you have). You see, I can respect all of that and understand it.
My position is now and has only ever been 1) getting the questions out in the open and formulated which 1a) involves responding to calumny (for example the sort of calumny that you — and others — regularly engage with in response to my ideas and those of the Dissident Right generally and working against your superficial understandings to articulate more profound ones); and 2) responding to and correcting your fallacious arguments and badly-grounded arguments. And 3) pointing out your own *complicity* in the ideology that also animates this Progressive Left and the general Neo-Marxian ideologies which are common and have penetrated so far.
So, for you, there you have another ‘wall of text’ that will make no sense at all to you. 🙂
You are projecting I think.
I would prefer that you improve your arguments. But if you can’t or won’t do that I only ask that you improve your insults! Either will be an improvement.
I think you really need to reread this paragraph and take it to heart:
“My disdain of your arguments isn’t a failure to grasp your points, it’s that I find them exceptionally wanting. You have an amazing ability to write walls and walls of text while saying very little, and then you have the temerity to get really twisted out of joint that I fail to be swayed by your word salads. You *still* have not defined your terms, you *still* have not said clearly what your point is. Real talk for a second, I honestly do not know if that’s because you are unable to do so, or because you understand that plainly spoken, no one would agree with you. I think that you want me to legitimize your points by engaging with them, but don’t think I’ll do it if I knew what I was engaging with. Because otherwise, what makes sense? Why devote hours of your life writing thousands of superfluous words that do literally nothing other than make it harder to engage with you?”
I’ll be more succinct:
1) You should write less, and say more. I’m not going to continue to read these walls of text, I respect my own time too much for that. If you actually want to have a discussion, have a discussion. If you want to proselytize in meaningless platitudes, carry on alone.
2) If you want me to respect the terms you use, I need you to define them. I have the feeling that you’re ignoring this request because either you can’t, or you like having the option to perpetually shift the goalposts, because if I don’t know where they are, I can’t notice them changing. Either way doesn’t reflect very well on you.
3) I still don’t know exactly what you think your point is. I’m dead serious. If you think I’m being obtuse, I challenge you to quote yourself where you think you’re being particularly clear, and I’ll take a second look.
1) You are deceiving yourself. The meaning in what I write is perfectly clear. Therefore, read (if you wish to) and isolate any point that you are unclear about, and inquire if need be. I reject completely your assertion that my meaning is not clear. In my post that began today’s my meaning is utterly and beyond any doubt clear. Everything that I wished to say, I said there. Refer to it.
2) No, I do not need to define terms that are commonly in use. All the words and terms used in that fellow’s talk (I do not know his first or last name) require no additional definitions. And all the terms I used in my post where I restated the basics of his very good and useful points and argument were also clear. If you have a specific question, ask it. (I do remember that long ago you said ‘Write in a way that I can understand or get bent!’ The problem is in you though, not in me). However, if you pose a direct and specific question I promise to make the effort to answer it.
3) Again, no. And the reason is that all you need to do is to read, carefully, the post I wrote this AM and you can clearly distinguish what my ‘points’ are. You are asking me to restate things and this is a waste of my time. I think you are genuinely obtuse. If you actually wish for some clarification of something specific, I will happily and in good faith give it.
It always seem to take me a bit of time — even after a response — to process what is going on (in this particular exchange). So, here are some additional thoughts.
If you are sincere in not understanding my points/our points (there is a *we* in all that I write because I am not advocating for myself) then I suppose I can take that as an honest statement on your part. (Except that I have suspicions about your ‘good-faith’ and have always felt that you did not/do not actually wish to converse or to understand: you wish to defeat or perhaps to discredit and that is your primary objective).
With that said, it occurs to me that you might genuinely not understand what the fellow I linked to is up to or perhaps I should say what he wants or hopes. I gather that listening to him all that you see is a Hitler Youth (this was your term). But don’t you see that this is your problem? A mis-identification, a mis-perception, and an imposition of your view?
So for you two choice present themselves: 1) you dismiss totally his argument and his ideas, and put the label to him of ‘Nazi’ or ‘crazy’ or ‘deranged’ (you say that we of the Dissident Right make the same mistake as the Progressives and therefore infer a similar error or perception).
Or you make an effort to understand why he has the position he does. (You can get another glimpse of him through his other videos, including one of an audio recording when he was — literally — pulled out of class and interrogated by his *Marxist professors*. Also, he interviews Michael Millerman and Millerman is a very interesting person).
But I think — my personal belief — is that in this time of conflict, where so much seems to hinge on one’s position and the consequences and ramifications of one’s position — that ‘listening to the other’ and (in your case) hearing the other, is not something many are willing to do. Because if you concede in one area you might be influenced to understand and possibly to be convinced.
Yet if you are interested in genuine clarification of what the Dissident Right (if I can speak of them as a monolith) desires or what they complain about, or feel they are losing, I could I think fill you in.
But what *they* want and what I want: these are not the same in many respects. I am interested in causal chains and the metaphysical posture that people have and how these influence their lived values (their existential choices). I am somewhat more remotely or abstractly engaged.
It is totally true that I am an unlikely and even mal-placed participant in this Blog. It is really set up for quick, even ephemeral, and rather superficial comments that quickly fade into the past.
Sorry! It just happened that way that I got in a way caught or addicted to commenting here. I have my personal objectives which I have always revealed.