The CBC's loony-right night in Canada

John Doyle, The Globe and Mail:

I spent part of the weekend reading up on Don Cherry’s views on how this country is run and by whom. A bracing experience, with dollops of black comedy. Rather like watching the Leafs.

And it eventually occurred to me – who needs Sun TV News when CBC is unsubtly furthering a right-wing agenda? Thanks to CBC’s hands-off, shrugging attitude to Don Cherry’s political activism, the broadcaster is authenticating that activism.

In case you don’t live in the centre of the universe, you should know that today Cherry will “introduce” Rob Ford, the new mayor of Toronto, at the mayor’s first council meeting.

Why is Ford Don Cherry’s kind of guy? According to the Toronto Star: “Voters are ‘sick of the elites and artsy people’ running politics, says Don Cherry.” Cherry is also reported to be pleased by things “shifting around a bit to the right” and is further quoted as saying, “It’s time for some lunch-pail, blue-collar people.” That wouldn’t be Ford, exactly, as he’s a well-off career politician. Even just reading Cherry in the paper one can hear the tone of sanctimonious self-importance so familiar from Hockey Night in Canada.

This is Cherry’s second foray into politics. Recently he endorsed Julian Fantino, the Conservative candidate in last week’s by-election in Vaughan, and recorded a telephone message endorsing the former Ontario Provincial Police commissioner. These acts have unleashed some peculiar commentary, much of it of the gee-shucks variety written with a lavish number of puns about hockey. Like it was all meaningless. But it isn’t.

Here’s the thing: The politicization of Hockey Night in Canada is now complete.

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