For many years it used to be so easy to laugh at the antics of former hockey coach and broadcaster Don Cherry. My wife does not like him because, as she complains, he shouts when he talks. She is also not all that impressed with his sartorial choices. She thinks of him as that loud buffoon in the loud outfits. It should be also noted that she is not an enthusiastic fan of hockey. He normally talks to hockey fans. That is why when he moved out of his area of expertise—hockey—that he started to lose friends and no longer amused followers.
Cherry’s hockey knowledge is accepted and respected. His knowledge of politics is not. He can make an outrageous statement in the context of hockey and people will laugh and say, ‘That’s Don Cherry.’ They will cringe at some of his less politically correct comments and then forgive him. It is when he makes an outrageous comment about politics that he can alienate many who see that he does not know what he is talking about. Very few of us, for example, appreciate being called ‘left-wing kooks.’
In his speech to Toronto City Council at its inauguration this year, Cherry decided to tell us ‘left-wing kooks’ what he thought. ‘Left-wing’ is not an epithet. ‘Kook’ is an insult. It means a crazy or eccentric person. While Cherry might have been directing his comments at the Toronto Star, he included a broad swath of annoyed people en route to his joke. Cherry crossed the line.
Cherry had already demonstrated his political naiveté with his lending his well-known voice to Julian Fantino’s Conservative campaign in a bye-election in the Vaughan riding. He lost some fans there.
Cherry’s persona as a commentator was built on the style used by Howard Cosell, the American football commentator in the 1970s. Cosell’s brashness and loud style was offset by his warmth as an individual and his unstinting support for his charities. You could agree or disagree with him about the capabilities of this or that football player and his loud voice but you had to like the guy for what he stood for.
It was always obvious that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation deliberately paired Cherry with announcer Ron MacLean to enable the corporation to have an immediate counter to Cherry’s excesses. Without MacLean in attendance, Cherry is a loose cannon. He seems to need a keeper.
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