Not too long ago, a certain prairie dog editor went on a tear about Don Cherry and his ridiculous endorsements of right-wing politicians Julian Fantino and Rob Ford, both of whom were recently elected to public office; Fantino to Parliament for the Conservative Party of Canada, and Ford to the mayoralty of Toronto. Both are antidotes, in Cherry’s mind, to the “elites and artsy people” whom Cherry believes are running the nation’s business.
Well, Stephen is in good company. John Doyle, the Globe & Mail‘s TV critic, is also worked up about Don Cherry’s off-ice comments and stops just short of calling Cherry Canada’s own Glenn Beck.
Fantino and Ford represent slightly different shades of the loony right in Canada. Cherry is the looniest of them all. From the vantage point of wealth and fame accrued from a pulpit on a public broadcaster, Cherry is merrily pushing this country to the far right, loony division. Rob Ford believes there’s been a “war on cars” in Toronto and, apparently, as this war was way more successful than the “War on Drugs,” the “War on Poverty” and the “War on Terror,” he was required to step up and save the car, car owners and all things car.
Doyle, whose invective is among the finest and sharpest in Canadian media, also takes the CBC to task for its failure to stand up to the bully tactics Harper’s Cons have used against all of their enemies (real and imagined) in their largely successful effort to govern as if they had been elected to a majority government.
Of course, in its hands-off attitude, the CBC is tacitly supporting Cherry’s peddling of Conservative dogma. The CBC has been kettled, in the same way that cops “kettle” crowds during demonstrations or protests. The tactic is to surround, contain and intimidate the protesters, leaving them with only one exit option. Since the first election of this minority Conservative government, the CBC has been surrounded, intimidated and criticized by the right to the point where its only choice of response has become a sharp shift to the right.