Poppycock!

Demands are suddenly loud for the CBC to fire Don Cherry, because of the following on-air comment:

“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 paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada, these guys paid the biggest price.”

There are also calls for the head of co-host Ron MacLean, for seeming to agree instead of objecting.

MacLean has now publicly apologized and condemned Cherry’s remarks.

If this transcript is accurate, these calls are, in the literal sense, insane. They are out of touch with the reality of what Cherry said. All he said is that not buying and wearing a poppy is ungrateful. It surely is. To top it off, it seems in context as though he might be quoting someone else, not expressing his own sentiments.

He seemed specifically to be referring, when he used the term “you people,” to the people in downtown Toronto.

Cherry is being accused of “racism.” Yet he did not mention any race. If someone wants to read some specific race into the words “you people,” then any racism is clearly in their own minds, not, so far as we know, in Cherry’s.

It is more plausible to infer that Cherry was criticizing immigrants. If he was, “immigrant” is not a race. To make it about race is still a stretch. And even this much is inference. He might plausibly have been referring to young people, who predominate in the Toronto downtown. Or perhaps young immigrants, but disrespectful because they are young, not because they are immigrants. Or perhaps just urbanites, who think it unsophisticated to wear a poppy.

But even if he were thinking of race, should even this matter? Let’s stop and think for a moment. Why is it fine to criticize young people for being disrespectful of traditions, or to criticize Torontonians, but not immigrants, and not racial minorities? If nobody chooses their race, nobody chooses to be young either. People choose to live in Toronto in the same sense immigrants choose to live in Canada. The cases seem parallel. Yet criticisms of the young, and of Torontonians, are commonplace and considered witty and wise. Obviously, this is not equality: this is giving special privileges to immigrants and on the basis of race.

Criticism of anyone, including any group, must be in bounds. If not, we fundamentally lack freedom of speech, and automatically also equality before the law.

On top of this, this furor is all shockingly disrespectful of Don Cherry, a man who has made a significant contribution to our culture, intimately bound up with hockey as it is. He was, after all, a finalist when the CBC ran a popular vote on “the greatest Canadian.”

And the attack on him is an attack on Canadian culture. Surely a deliberate one.

If it is not simply stark raving mad.