Maybe it is time to pull the plug on them. They're becoming more like Fox News than Fox News. Glenn Beck would have loved Cherry. They both act like idiots and get paid megabucks to do it.
Time to remind Canadians just who Cherry really is. Not the hero of the working class, after standing with Rob Ford against them. Just another corporate shill getting rich off the Neocons.
One of my favourite episodes of All in the Family was the one where Archie Bunker is singled out by a group of "concerned Americans" and asked to join their club. At his first meeting he has a rude awakening, when they all put on white sheets.
For several seasons we heard him use terms like "Japs", "Chinks", "Hebes", "Pinkos", Dagos", "Polacks" and "Coons". Hurtful words that made us cringe, but we accepted them, because they came from Archie Bunker.
However, in the above episode, Archie finally realizes that words do matter, because they can and often do, turn into something more. The local chapter of the KKK was planning to burn a cross on his son-in-law's lawn because of a letter Mike Stivic had published in the paper, that painted him as a "commie".
Hatred hit home, and it was only then that Archie took notice.
For years we listened to the rantings against foreigners taking over hockey from Don Cherry, and again we laughed. After all, it was Don Cherry. Making bombastic statements was his shtick.
But then he entered the political arena, campaigning for Rob Ford and denouncing progressives as "pinkos". On Fox News North he tells Brian Lilley that he appreciates what "yous guys" were doing, trying to take the country back to the 1950s, and Lilley refers to him as a true Canadian "patriot".
Cherry didn't disappoint the audience and you could almost hear the cheers when he used the term "multiculturalism baloney".
It should come as no surprise that Anders Breivik, the Norwegian home-grown terrorist, uses the same language, protesting against immigration and multiculturalism.
And just as we knew that the right-wing would spin this, far right Swedish politician, Erik Hellsborn, writes on his blog:
What was it that really drove Behring Breivik? In the manifesto, he says very clearly: anxiety. Concern that multiculturalism and Islamisation threaten the Christian West's existence. In a Norwegian Norway, where the Left's preposterous dreams of a multicultural society had not taken root, this tragedy would never have happened. If there was no Islamisation and mass immigration, there would have been nothing to trigger Behring Breivik to do what he did.
Stephen Harper refers to multiculturalism as a "weak nation strategy", despite the fact that most Canadians like the fact that we are that kind of society.
Archie: I'm gonna go into town and get me a good Jew lawyer. Mike Stivic: Do you always have to label people? Why can't you just get a lawyer. Why does it have to be a Jewish lawyer? Archie: Because if I'm going to sue an "A-rab," I want a guy that's full o' hate!
I doubt Breivik ever listened to Don Cherry or watched All in the Family, but his "manifesto" can be found everywhere. On right-wing stations like Fox News, north and south, and even in government parlance.
He did not act alone but had millions of people behind him.
Don Cherry, I know, would never attempt to justify this man's actions, but let's hope it's his wake-up call. He has a huge following, and those who don't wince at his words, hang on to every one of them.
This has certainly been Norway's wake-up call, as they are now planning to investigate all of these right-wing "patriot" groups.
And I believe that Breivik's actions may have a different affect on the populace. The crowd of mourners included people from all cultures and religions, and one young man made an impassioned plea to the nation that they not abandon democracy because of this.
The judge in the case, is wisely refusing to give oxygen to this young man to spew his hatred in a courtroom, barring the media from what would surely be a sensational event.
I posted recently on a group in Great Britain, the English Defence League, another in the "Patriot Action Network". It has since been learned that they have connections with this Norwegian.
EDL warns that the Muslims "are breeding like rabbits". Where have I heard that before?
Different era. Different vctims.
Harper's National Citizens Coalition created an anti "Boat People" campaign, doing all the math, if Canada allowed those fleeing Vietnam to settle in Canada. One "man of the cloth" even referred to it as "ethnic indigestion".
But guess what? Their numbers were a little off. Go figure.
Mike Stivic: Why couldn't they say "Buddha, bless you" in Chinese? Archie Bunker: Because they don't say that, that's why. If they say... Well, if they say anything at all, it's "Sayonara". Mike Stivic: That's Japanese. Archie Bunker: Same thing. Mike Stivic: It's not the same thing! Archie Bunker: What are you talking about? You put a Jap and a Chink together, you gonna tell me which is which? Mike Stivic: That's right, because I find out about them. I talk to them as individuals. Archie Bunker: Sure you talk to them. You say, "Which one of you guys is the Chink?" Mike Stivic: [yells] I don't believe this. He's making me crazy!
I know the feeling, though not the kind of crazy that inspires bombings and mass murders.
Yesterday, when the Toronto Sun revealed that Jack Layton was once again battling cancer, they were forced to close down the comments section, but not before one reader posted this:
"Who couldn’t help but rejoice in NDP leader Jack Layton’s devastating news"
Why would the Sun be shocked by this? The same paper that compared Layton to Lenin.
If the Neoconservatives want to take us back to the 1950s, they've already accomplished a return to the 1960s, Cold War mentality, when everything was a "commie plot".
Breivik speaks of "cultural Marxism", a term used by Harper's buddy Paul Weyrich, and countless others in the new right-wing movement.
What now passes for conservatism.
Weyrich and his flock want to return to the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement, when segregation was legal and acceptable. Others want to go back to the 1950s, when white women were churning out those white babies, in the post-war "baby boom".
In reading books and essays written by, and not just about, the neoconservatives, I've found many common elements, from the philosophers they quote to the people they hate.
One common desire most share, is to return to the 1950s, when women knew their place and everyone went to church.
And just as they tap into Alexis de Tocqueville to justify the government getting out of the business of helping the poor, they use his observations about religion, noted during his travels to the United States, as reason for a theocratic state.
De Tocqueville wrote that most Americans were not only Christian, but spoke the common language of the Bible. "The people's voice was the voice of God". Few mention, however, that he also commented that this would create a lot of hypocrites.
Touche.
But why the 1950s as the target decade?
I suppose the 1920s, while roaring, was an age of high income disparity and heavy gambling on Wall Street, that created the "crash". The 1930s was a decade of poverty and the 40s, synonymous with war.
They can't jump to the 1960s, because of the civil rights movement, that they believe was the beginning of the end. The 1950s on the other hand, invokes memories of sock hops, soda fountains and mom in her apron baking cookies.
Who wouldn't want to live then?
Don Cherry, in his interview with Sun TV, says that he believes in what the right-wing station is doing, trying to recapture that decade (with all of its Cold War mentality), because the 1950s was when Canada was at its best.
OK, I'm game.
Because the wonderful life that these guys remember, was the result of the creation of the Welfare State.
William Beveridge, the engineer and author of the Welfare State, believed that if people were expected to rally behind their country during war, then their government should take care of them during peace time. Show them what they had fought for. A better life.
Canadians were also ready for a society free from poverty and inequality, and demanded social reform. The government responded by introducing several social welfare policies, many borrowed from the CCF (now the NDP).
Liberal prime minister Louis St.Laurent, established the Canada Council to support the arts, and expanded social welfare programs, like the family allowance, old age pensions, government funding of university and post-secondary education and an early form of Medicare termed Hospital Insurance, laying the groundwork for Tommy Douglas' healthcare system in Saskatchewan and Pearson's nationwide universal healthcare in the late 1960s. (Wikipedia)
In the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower, expanded social security and reduced military spending, even warning against the "military- industrial complex.
Yet these things from the decade that Cherry so fondly remembers, are anathema to the neoconservative movement, he so loudly endorses.
It was not a decade when people were expected to take care of themselves, but one where the government stepped in to make sure that all people were taken care of.
It was also a period when trade unions were strong, fighting for better wages and benefits, that allowed families to thrive. In the U.S. the average worker income increased 61% between 1950 and 1959.
Those are the 1950s that the neocons aspire to recreate, and yet they are fighting against the very things that gave us that decade.
Paul Weyrich, another man behind the success of the movement and Stephen Harper, is a co-founder of the Religious Right. At a meeting of the controversial Heritage Foundation that he helped to create, he stated: "We're not here to get into politics. We're here to turn the clock back to 1954 in this country. And once we've done it, we're going to clear out of this stinking town."
If that means a return to strong labour unions, caring governments and the strengthening of the welfare state, I'm in.
I'll be the one marching down the street, carrying a sign: 'Women are people too'.
My right-wing followers keep sending me links to Sun TV and to articles by right-wing columnists, but this interview with Don Cherry on Fox News North just makes me incredibly sad.
This is so beneath him.
I have mentioned the wonderful memory we have of Cherry, when my kids were young, but since he's entered the political arena, I find it hard to remember that he is a kind man.
My son ran into him recently at Canadian Tire, spotting him in line, looking nervous. He didn't recognize him at first, because he said he looked like a little old man. No one appeared to notice or care and he went through the line without so much as a wave or a nod.
So my son followed him out to the parking lot to say hello and noticing that he was wearing a Tampa Bay Lightening hat asked "what, no Boston Bruins"? Cherry laughed and said "No. I'm not going to jump on that bandwagon".
They shook hands and when my son told me that, I wondered if Don Cherry knew that he had just shaken the hand of a "left-wing pinko". Because like me, my son cares about things like poverty and homelessness, and worries about the impact of the ignorance revolution.
I love Brian Lilley's introduction, referencing an article from the Toronto "red" Star. Yes, the Star, that communist rag. What a goof. This from a station that, if you look at about the one minute mark, announced underneath that the new cabinet would be "nameded" today.
Instead of bashing "pointy headed academics", they might want to take a few spelling lessons.
One of my favourite Youtube channels is that of The Young Turks, and they also cover the ignorance of the new right. Discussing Pat Buchanan, and Harper mentor Peter Brimelow, at about the three minute mark, you'll see that these "white nationalists" also suffer from a brain cell deficiency.
They almost make Don Cherry's "multiculturalism baloney", "left-wing pinkos" and "these types of people" sound intelligent. And "university professors who have never worked a day in their life"? Where is that coming from?
Cherry's brother, Dick, who was my children's elementary school principal, is the total opposite of his brother. Quiet, intelligent and caring. I wonder what he's thinking now?
Had I been in that line-up at Canadian Tire, I probably would have just ignored this outrageous character, afraid of what I might say to him. I prefer to keep the fond memories.
Of course this has real estate developers "salivating" with the opportunity to cash in on this windfall. But what will it mean for those who will be forced to move out? The new redneck mayor is promising a 'shelter allowance' in lieu of subsidized rent, but how much of an allowance would he be prepared to give?
This is another attack on the poor. According to the authors of Persistent Poverty: Voices From the Margins, the average cost of a two-bedroom apartment in Toronto is $1,134 per month. And since many of those living in public housing are families, they would have difficulty living in less.
The working poor making minimum wage, barely earn enough to cover that, before paying for food, clothing and other basic necessities. Those on social assistance are allotted $791.00 per month maximum, and that's only if you have children, and 358.00 as a "basic living allowance".
One of Rob Ford's campaign promises was to deal with the "immigration problem", and we know that many of Canada's poor are immigrants. Is putting an end to public housing part of that strategy?
When Ralph Klein was premier of Alberta, he announced that:
"Bums, creeps and unskilled workers are not welcome. We will use cowboy techniques to deal with people who rob our banks, add to our welfare rolls, add to our unemployment lines and create rising crime rates." (1)
And as part of that strategy he provided those "bums, creeps and unskilled workers" with bus tickets to British Columbia. Mike Harris in Ontario also toyed with the idea of shipping out our "undesirables".
Klein eventually had to stop, when the BC premier complained that he was also sending them convicted criminals.
But what happens if there is a mass exodus of the disenfranchised? It may solve Rob Ford's problem, but what will it mean to other communities already hard pressed to provide the very basic necessities to its citizens, many victims of the recent Wall Street created "economic crisis"?
But then a few people will get filthy rich and isn't that what's really important?
Maybe Don Cherry will put them up.
Sources:
1. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2 4, Pg. 52
After calling any of us who care about the plight of workers in Rob Ford's Toronto, 'Left-wing Pinkos', Don Cherry must be so proud of the mess that he has helped to create.
And while I don't agree with some of Thomas Walkom's column on the subject, he does make a good point, when discussing the private firm that will get rich off this:
Ostensibly the attack on unions is driven by fairness: We hurt, therefore you should too. In fact, it’s driven by resentment. When Holyday says that Toronto city workers earn more than those who pay taxes, he’s not being technically accurate. Plenty of Torontonians make more money than civic employees.
But he’s tapping into a sense of class snobbery among those who think that garbage collectors deserve no more than the barest minimum.
Walkom suggests that the city will save money. They never do. They just change the dynamics of the money earned, from workers to owners.
Many successful people will include in their bios the fact that they are the son/daughter of mill workers or labourers. But they forget that their parents had good union jobs that they were able to have for decades. And those good union jobs provided benefits, like dental plans, so that they didn't have to go to job interviews as adults, with bad teeth. Or chronic coughs from living in damp houses all their lives.
And the pay from those jobs went back into the economy, helping to increase the service sector. Many students worked their way through university or college working in restaurants. Now former union workers are taking those jobs, which has had an impact on student employment.
As Walkom says:
Still, for most Canadians, the attack on unions is self-defeating. To a large extent, the North American middle class exists because of unions. As unions disappear, income disparities grow, poverty increases and society becomes more insecure. The U.S. is evidence of this.
"Rod Ford’s Budget Committee is right now working out the details of the opening round of his attack on poor and working people in this City. Ford campaigned on the basis of stopping the ‘gravy train’ at City Hall, but his Budget plans show how exactly he defines ‘gravy’," the group says on its website."The proposed cuts are real and they are deep - this is the information we have managed to gather so far, but can imagine are only the tip of the iceberg."
It's Mike Harris all over again. And the Ford crew are just as callous, with Rob's brother Doug telling them to get a job.
If Don Cherry was any kind of human being he would stand in solidarity with those workers. After all, he owes much of his success to the working class. But he's joined the Corporate Welfare State, so instead just snubs his nose at them.
He should be ashamed. I was once proud that he came from Kingston. Now I wish he'd say he came from somewhere else. Like maybe the bowels of Hell.
His particular concern this day was the government’s late admission of negotiations with the United States toward reimagining the 49th parallel.
“We need to ask,” Mr. Goodale asked, “what is the Prime Minister prepared to bargain away? For example, with respect to the admissibility of visitors, immigrants and refugees, will Canada apply its own standards, which many Canadians believe are better than American standards, or will a Republican Tea Party congress make the rules?”
For sure, if we owe the Americans anything in these discussions, it is surely for the endless number of cartoonish villains they have supplied for the sake of our fear and ridicule these many years. For the sake of Michele Bachmann alone we should perhaps consider sending them Don Cherry and a few cartons of Cold-FX.
Can you imagine Michelle Bachmann and Don Cherry in a debate?
I posted over a year ago on the Harper government's secret plans to end voter subsidies. Secret because few in the media reported on it. But MP Steve Fletcher granted an interview to the Winnipeg Free Press, in which he revealed that he would be attempting to add more seats in rural areas and Alberta, hoping to create a neoconservative dynasty. And that he would be putting an end to voter subsidies.
Voter subsidies were put in place by Jean Chretien, to replace corporate donations, as a result of protest, that the country's business elite was having far too much control over the politicians they financed. This amounts to less than two dollars for every vote cast, that went to the chosen party, enabling them to continue to operate.
The Conservatives don't need this, because corporate money flows to them through business financed think tanks and AstroTurf groups, like the Fraser Institute, the National Citizens Coalition and the Manning Centre for Democracy (started with a ten million dollar donation from one individual), and countless others.
In an interview with Postmedia News, Harper revealed that he would make ending the subsidies a key part of the Conservatives’ campaign platform. “A subsidy where parties make no effort to raise money is not acceptable, I don’t think, to Canadian taxpayers,” said the Prime Minister. Opponents to the subsidy cut say Harper is hampering other parties’ ability to raise funds outside of the private sector, giving the Tories a big advantage because of their ties to big business.
"Ties to big business"? Heck, they are big business. The only thing grassroots about them now is the grass they get on their expensive Italian leather shoes, when they leave the posh resorts where they are wined and dined for lucrative contracts.
Harper's former chief of staff, Guy Giorno was the top lobbyist for the oil industry. His new chief of staff, Nigel Wright, is a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, who is sticking us with those damn F-35s, because no one else wants them.
They are being nicknamed the "flying brick" or "Thud” (the sound the plane made when it hit the ground after failing to clear a runway, a rather common occurrence), comparing them to similar used in Vietnam.
And Harper is saying that tax payers object to the few million that our democratic votes provide to our chosen parties. Where was he when we were objecting to his $60 billion in corporate tax cuts?
There was an excellent letter in the North Shore News, which said in part:
Harper wants to undo this, and it's obvious why. Reverting to a reliance on private donors is clearly most helpful to parties who serve the interests of wealthy individuals and organizations. The Tories certainly fit that description. Harper's plan has nothing to do with fairness to taxpayers and everything to do with giving his party an edge. It should be rejected.
This campaign strategy could backfire, because Harper has clearly set his party up as the best friend the corporate elite ever had. And his policies that have favoured Canada's wealthiest citizens, have been to the detriment of the average Canadian, including the 125 billion dollar bank bailout with no strings attached.
The Conservatives have all the money and are using it to act in our worst interests. And that will be the choice next election. Corporations or Canadians.
A newly formed Vancouver-based group is challenging Don Cherry to a debate on Coach’s Corner to offset criticism that the fiery commentator is using Hockey Night in Canada to promote militarism and the war in Afghanistan. Hockey Fans for Peace plans to rally outside the HNIC broadcast of Saturday night’s Vancouver Canucks game against the Detroit Red Wings at Rogers Arena in Vancouver to make the point that hockey fans have the democratic right to speak out against the war in Afghanistan.
Spokesman Kimball Cariou said Wednesday the group is calling on the CBC “to either stop the promotion of militarism during hockey broadcasts, or else to allow one of its members to debate Cherry during an upcoming Coach’s Corner.” Hockey fan and peace activist Derrick O’Keefe agrees. “It’s something that’s bothered me for a lot of years that Don Cherry’s Coach’s Corner has been used to really give a one-sided platform to talk about the war only in full support,” said O’Keefe, a member of the group’s Facebook page. “And when Don Cherry makes political comments during the hockey broadcast he’s never challenged.”
I admire him for announcing the names of fallen soldiers and he keeps them in our hearts and minds, but he should also, if he's going down that road, question why they are there and what they are dying for.
That would be a far better initiative than simply becoming an armchair warrior.
This country is in trouble and the Harper government is trying to pit the young against the old, blaming seniors for the debt that will be passed on to future generations.
Nonsense.
Our problems are not due to the Baby Boomers, now reaching retirement, but the rich. The rich, the richer, and the filthy rich. Those folks that Harper is determined to make even richer at the expense of everyone else.
On the eve of the second decade of the new century, a renewed alliance between young and old would help Canadians trying to make a better life for more citizens. Much of current public policy debate turns around attempts to foster irrational fears about what the future holds. A prime example is attempts to manipulate public opinion by evoking threats an aging population pose for our public healthcare system. The next generation will stagger around covering the debts incurred to look after the health (and income) needs of retirees; we are told this so often people start to believe it.
There is no truth to the idea that young Canadians will need to go without to protect seniors' pensions and healthcare. The issues facing Canadians, whether they be young, old, or in between, have very little to do with the commonly heard assertions about how the aging population threatens the future of healthcare; or, how the young will need to subsidize older Canadians in retirement. The real division in Canada today is the same one noted by Aristotle in the 5th-century B.C.: the struggle between the rich and the poor.
So my Army of Pinkos, while Don Cherry speaks only for millionaires, we are the ones speaking for the little guy. The average Canadians of all ages. The poor, the working poor, seniors, veterans .... everyone that the Harper government ignores.
And to all you young folks out there, write a little pledge and put it in the Christmas card to your grandparents, or elderly neighbours. Promise them that you will not blame them for the loss of any of the things their generation was able to take for granted. Because the fact is, we do not need to lose them. We just need a fairer tax system, so that those who get the most from this country's resources, pay their share.
Forget Don Cherry. Forget Stephen Harper. Forget Jim Flaherty.
There's lots of money out there, but it's being hoarded by the greedy. Time to spread it around a bit. Put an end to corporate welfare and demand that this government changes it's focus.
That money is our money, not theirs. Enough is enough.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Do you think I got their attention?
When our kids were younger, we went to Toronto for a few days over the Christmas holidays, and had tickets to a Maple Leaf game, when they were still playing at the Gardens.
We decided to drop in earlier in the day to see if the team was practicing (yes they do practice) and as it happened there was a charity skate-a-thon taking place, with several NHL stars, including Bobby Orr.
They were just setting up tables for autographs and as Don Cherry walked by to take his place, my daughter blurted out, "Don Cherry, Don Cherry. Your brother [ Dick Cherry] is my principal".
Cherry stopped in his tracks. "Yeah? Are you guys from Kingston?"
When we told him that we were, he immediately gave us the red carpet treatment, even introducing us to the rest of the stars at the table, including Bobby Orr, like we were his friends. We've never forgotten that.
But Cherry's recent nonsense over "left-wing Pinkos", has blurred that fond memory, though Cherry is only a symptom of what is wrong in this country, not the cause.
Divisive politics have created enemies, when there were none before. Everything has become a left-right issue, instead of a Canadian issue. And Don Cherry fed into that divide at a time when he could have used his celebrity, to help those who turned his often ignorant musings, into a successful career.
The opposition to the new Toronto mayor, Rob Ford, is that he will be throwing thousands of public servants out of work, at a time when unemployment is high. And he is doing this not to save money, because privatization schemes always end up costing more, but so he can make another small sector of the population even richer than they already are.
In the meantime, those public servants, will now be given the opportunity to do the same job for less money, to the benefit of the corporate elite.
And this "hero of the little guy" Cherry, is supporting that. And he is engaging in divisiveness to do it. Our own Glen Beck.
But I think that Cherry may have done us a favour, because he has provided a rallying cry. We can become an Army of "Pinkos".
And I don't mean an army of Communists, as my heading implies, because the term Pinko was never really about Communism, but the ignorance surrounding it. The misplaced fear and hatred that accepted an unprecedented buildup of military weapons, and suspension of civil liberties, while ignoring the needs of a nation's citizens.
No, my Army of Pinkos will take on the neoconservative movement.
