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Don Cherry goes off about “lefty pinkos” at speech to Toronto city council

Don Cherry

Don Cherry, announcer on CBC’s “Hockey Night in Canada,” is greeted by fans as he arrives for Game 2 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup finals between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings in Detroit, Sunday, May 31, 2009. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

AP

If there’s one thing you can always count of out of CBC hockey man and former NHL head coach Don Cherry it’s that he’ll never pull his punches on his opinions. Whether you like them or not is another story completely, of course, and while many fans will remember him for his rants against European players and always doing his part to stick up for a “good Canadian boy” during Coach’s Corner on Hockey Night In Canada.

One side of Cherry that you may not know all that well is his politics. We don’t enjoy discussing politics here and we’ll always save that action for our friends at MSNBC. They’re a lot better at it than we are anyhow. Cherry was an invited guest to speak at Toronto city council today on behalf of Toronto mayor Rob Ford. Ford is the source of controversy in Toronto (what elected official isn’t?) and happens to fall on the right side of the political spectrum. If you think Cherry is one to mince words when it comes to politics, then you don’t know Don Cherry very well.

The Torontoist has the transcript of Cherry’s speech, of which there’s just too much stuff to make you shake your head and wonder what in the hell he’s even saying. If these first three paragraphs don’t sell you on reading the rest, well, that’s just your fault.

“Actually I’m wearing pink for all the pinkos out there that ride bicycles and everything. I thought I’d get it in. What’d ya expect, Ron MacLean, here? To come here?

“You know, I am befuddled, because I thought I was just doing a good thing, coming down with Ron—Rob—and I was gonna do this here, and it was gonna be nice and the whole deal.

I’ve been bein’ ripped to shreds by the left-wing pinko newspapers out there. It’s unbelievable. One guy called me a pink...a jerk in a pink suit, so I thought I’d wear that for him too, today.”

So to sum things up, just from this snippet, Cherry fires off against:

  • Left-wingers (presumably not those on the ice)
  • Pinkos
  • Bicycle riders
  • Newspaper writers

Further into the speech he also declared his war on old trees. A crazy, old man on a rant? Perhaps. Puck Daddy was happy to break things down a little more simply as to what we learned from this.

As a person in the media at all times, Cherry probably knows better than to go off like this knowing full well that it’s going to cause a stir. Then again, Cherry has that role on television where he’s like your cranky grandfather. You get him going about something, all of a sudden you’re transported to another era where the language was more colorful (in this case, literally) and definitely less politically correct. It makes you blush, it makes you want to keep him quiet and depending on your political take on things it might even make you want to shout right back at him.

Are we going to get up in arms over him rambling on and on? No, it’s one man’s opinion and whether you like it or not, Cherry doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him or what he’s saying. Besides, how do you get mad at a guy that wears a flamboyant pink suit like that? It’s impossible.