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Bruce Dowbiggin

Sports Fatwa: There Are No Innocent Questions

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We’ve written in the past about the relentless radicalizing of the sports press box. There is no segment of today’s journalism that squeaks more than the people who cover games for a living. As we suggested then, something about trying to step up in class seems to have made The Wide World of Woke into a thing.

“There are days where ESPN’s reporting sounds more like corrective seminar on white entitlement than a news item. Sports, always an escape from reality, has been to turned into a re-education camp for viewers.”

But we never really expected the rest of the sports industry to get all “Kaitlyn Jenner ESPN Sports Woman of the Year” on us. When Colin Kaepernick, raised by white parents, decided to explore his blackness by kneeling for the national anthem in 2017 he was met by a solid wall of criticism from president Donald Trump on down.

“The football field is not the place to exercise your political takes” was the mildest comment directed at Kaepernick, who’d gone 2-16 as a starter in San Francisco before finding his inner BLM. Good riddance was another common sentiment after Kaepernick turned down a contract from the 49ers and slunk off to find a willing team that would come to his rescue.

It never happened. Kaepernick had to console himself with uber-Woke Nike giving him a multi-year contract for a series of commercial opportunities about what a hellhole America is unless Barack Obama is president. Or something like that.

But that dynamic has changed since Kaepernick’s knee hit the turf. The people running pro sports have received an inoculation of white liberal guilt and a bracing seminar on Marxist persuasion. From being the last island of sanity in a sea of derangement sports is now a cancel-culture paradise— where everyone is entitled to an opinion. So long as that opinion agrees with Around The Horn on ESPN.

Fighting for free speech has just gotten too hard. The latest example of radicals trying to eliminate NFL voices they can’t abide came when the Washington New Names defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio had the temerity to juxtapose the January 6/ 2021 riot with the two years off BLM rioting in 2020-21.

Del Rio (who’s been a head coach in Oakland and Jacksonville) tweeted he’d “love to understand … why the summer of riots, looting, burning and the destruction of personal property is never discussed but [the Jan. 6th riot] is.” The next day he elaborated, saying that “businesses are being burned down, no problem… and then we have a dust-up at the Capitol, nothing burned down… and we’re gonna make that a major deal.”

He also posited that it was just his opinion, and everyone has the right to an opinion in America. That, apparently is now a toxic hate screed under the Nancy Pelosi rules of speech in the sports world. Twitter jackals quickly demanded Del Rio’s scalp, and the NFL obligingly caved. Del Rio’s coach in DC, Ron Rivera, put a $100 K price on Del Rio’s free speech, mumbling something about hate and insensitivity. He grovelled and scraped to appease the locals from whom his owner is now trying to extort a new stadium.

Sensing blood, the BLM faction of the NFL declared this infringement of Del Rio’s speech rights was not enough. NFL HOF member Ed Reed, who made too many tackles with his head, demanded harsher justice (if not grammar) for Del Rio. “Today, (sic) im sick and tired! A dust up! 100,000 is not enough, money ain’t nothing to a person who is recycled through coaching. Its always one, first it was Saban now its Jack to just remind US what it is! Man if u coached by him put your pants on! Its simple right and wrong, Wrong,”

While the NFL itself hasn’t fired Del Rio (yet) it wasn’t for lack of AOC wannabes trying to jack him up. The Washington coach has had to shut down his Twitter account and issue an apology to people who live to be offended by anything not articulated by Joy Reid on MSNBC.

The arbitrary cancellation brought FOX News firebrand Tucker Carlson into the ring. “He thought he had a right to respectfully express himself in the land of the free, but it turns out no. Just hours ago the coach of the Washington Commanders, a fascist moron called Ron Rivera, announced that Jack Del Rio has no right to talk, and he’s being fined $100,000 for doing it.”

The major change in this fatwa on free speech is not the grievances of BLM or other minority groups. Their voices have been loud and clear for decades on what they see as a racist America. The real pinch-point has come not from the real victims of historic wrongs but from the white liberal class that has never experienced anything remotely resembling hardship outside of an uncharged Tesla battery.

Robin D’Angelo’s White Fragility is their bible. Faced with their hollow Tik Tok existence they’ve taken to adopting the pain of others to legitimize their pointless existences. From the Rockefeller Foundation to the harpies of The View, acquired pain is the new aphrodisiac.

Take Del Rio’s own team, formerly known as the Redskins, as an example. The name had over 90 percent approval from American Indians  in polling done by the Woke Washington Post. But because white liberals wanted to acquire Ibrahim X Kendi’s pain the team name was changed. To Commanders. (Yes, it’s okay to puke now.)

Because this demographic and its “influencers” have the ear of everyone from Disney to network execs to political hacks they have a disproportionate effect on which show trials go forward (Jan. 6/ 2021) and which (Hillary Clinton’s perversion of the 2016 election and the Trump administration) do not.

Apparently this group of Karens and Neils now has standing with sports leagues, which are turning themselves inside-out to apologize for the slave trade and the poll tax. Doing a public shaming of Del Rio for his opinion is just the latest example of Mao’s Cultural Revolution returned to life in North America.

The hypocrisy is that these cringing sports leagues are now in the habit of saying they want themselves to represent the Real America or Real Canada. Showing the diversity of the land. Just don’t ask the NFL or NBA why, in a land where blacks constitute 12 percent of the population, their workforce is over 70 percent black.

Then the Ed Reeds and Colin Kaepernicks want to talk about a meritocracy, where the best get the cheese. Because @CNN and the New York Times won’t call them on their bullshit. Too bad no one explained that to Jack Del Rio. Might have saved him some grief.

 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

The Game That Let Canadians Forgive The Liberals — Again

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With the Americans winning the first game 3-1, a sense of panic crept over Canada as it headed to Game 2 in Boston. Losing a political battle with Trump was bad enough, but losing hockey bragging rights heading into a federal election was catastrophic for the Family Compact.

“It’s also more political than the (1972) Summit Series was, because Canada’s existence wasn’t on the line then, and it may be now. You’re damn right Canadians should boo the (U.S.) anthem.” Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur before Gm. 1 of USA/ Canada in The 4 Nations Cup.

The year 2025 is barely half over on Canada Day. There is much to go before we start assembling Best Of Lists for the year. But as Palestinian flags duel with the Maple Leaf for prominence on the 158th anniversary of Canada’s becoming a sovereign country it’s a fair guess that we will settle on Febuary 21 as the pivotal date of the year— and Canada’s destiny as well.

That was the date of Game 2 in the U.S./Canada rivalry at the Four Nations Tournament. Ostensibly created by the NHL to replace the moribund All Star format, the showdown of hockey nations in Boston became much more. Jolted by non-sports factors it became a pivotal moment in modern Canadian history.

Set against U.S. president Donald Trump’s bellicose talk of Canada as a U.S. state and the Mike Myers/ Mark Carney Elbows Up ad campaign, the gold-medal game evoked, for those of a certain age, memories of the famous 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the USSR. And somehow produced an unprecedented political reversal in Canadian elections.

As we wrote on Feb. 16 after Gm. 1 in Montreal, the Four Nations had been meant to be something far less incendiary.  “Expecting a guys’ weekend like the concurrent NBA All Star game, the fraternal folks instead got a Pier Six brawl. It was the most stunning beginning to a game most could remember in 50 years. (Not least of all the rabid Canadian fanbase urging patriotism in the home of Quebec separation) Considering this Four Nations event was the NHL’s idea to replace the tame midseason All Star Game where players apologize for bumping into each other during a casual skate, the tumult as referees tried to start the game was shocking.

“Despite public calls for mutual respect, the sustained booing of the American national anthem and the Team Canada invocation by MMA legend Georges St. Pierre was answered by the Tkachuck brothers, Matthew and Brady, with a series of fights in the first nine seconds of the game. Three fights to be exact ,when former Canuck J.T. Miller squared up with Brandon Hagel. (All three U.S. players have either played on or now play for Canadian NHL teams.)  

“Premeditated and nasty. To say nothing of the vicious mugging of Canada’s legend Sidney Crosby behind the U.S. net moments later by Charlie McEvoy.”

With the Americans winning the game 3-1 on Feb. 15, a sense of panic crept over Canada as it headed to Game 2 in Boston. Losing a political battle with Trump was bad enough, but losing hockey bragging rights heading into a federal election was catastrophic for the Family Compact. As we wrote in the aftermath, a slaughter was avoided.

“In the rematch for a title created just weeks before by the NHL the boys stuck to hockey. Anthem booing was restrained. Outside of an ill-advised appearance by Wayne Gretzky— now loathed for his Trump support— the emphasis was on skill. Playing largely without injured Matthew and Brady Tkachuk and McAvoy, the U.S. forced the game to OT where beleaguered goalie Craig Binnington held Canada in the game until Connor McDavid scored the game winner. “

The stunning turnaround in the series produced a similar turnaround in the Canadian federal election. Galvanized by Trump’s 51st State disrespect and exhilarated by the hockey team’s comeback, voters switched their votes in huge numbers to Carney, ignoring the abysmal record of the Liberals and their pathetic polling. From Pierre Poilievre having a 20-point lead in polls, hockey-besotted Canada flipped to award Carney a near-majority in the April 28 election.

The result stunned the Canadian political class and international critics who questioned how a single sporting event could have miraculously rescued the Liberals from themselves in such a short time.

While Canada soared because of the four Nations, a Canadian icon crashed to earth. “Perhaps the most public outcome was the now-demonization of Gretzky in Canada. Just as they had with Bobby Orr, another Canadian superstar living in America, Canadians wiped their hands of No. 99 over politics. Despite appeals from Orr, Don Cherry and others, the chance to make Gretzky a Trump proxy was too tempting.

We have been in several arguments on the subject among friends: Does Gretzky owe Canada something after carrying its hockey burden for so long? Could he have worn a Team Canada jersey? Shouldn’t he have made a statement that he backs Canada in its showdown with Trump? For now 99 is 0 in his homeland.”

Even now, months later, the events of late February have an air of disbelief around them, a shift so dramatic and so impactful on the nation that many still shake their heads. Sure, hockey wasn’t the device that blew up Canada’s politics. But it was the fuse that created a crater in the country.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Don & Rick: Canadian Icons, Mixed Messages, Lasting Impacts

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“Well, Tim, this is our last show. . . . Thanks everybody for listening and toodaloo,” 91-year old Don Cherry allegedly on his final podcast episode.

Once upon a time in a public broadcaster far, far away there was an identity crisis. Who should we be as we enter the 21st century? We depend on government for our financing, but our audience relies on people who hate government.

At CBC that argument could be summed up by two figures on the TV network. Rick Mercer. Don Cherry. Both were brilliant communicators, masters of the craft of holding eyeballs. But they represented diametrically opposed audiences. Mercer was the glib political voice of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Cherry was the bombastic voice of Hockey Night in Canada, as Canadian as the brown beer stubby.

Mercer was worshipped by the folks in the C suite and liberal media. With his searing walking shots he lanced egos and asked uncomfortable questions. He called out sacred cows. Yet there was never any doubt in CBC’s upper reaches about whose side he was on in the culture war at CBC. He was safe.

Cherry was the unpredictable occupant of Coach’s Corner, the bombastic voice of white anglo hockey culture. He was abrasive and unforgiving. His first-period rants beside his Topo Gigio Ron Maclean were must-watch for the demographic. They also, it seemed, constituted must watching for his critics.

[Confession: I was one of his critics, paid to be so. We tangled often over his act. He ripped me in the 2004 NHL playoffs, alleging I said he was insincere about kids with cancer. During the infamous 1987 World Junior brawl he said I was a coward who wouldn’t defend his own kids in a fight. etc. He sicced his bots on me. While I disagreed with much of what he said, I defended his right to say such things. My beef was mostly with HNIC which refused to allow any dissent to Cherry’s act on the show . It was a noisy one-note symphony.

Don was durable, holding his prime position for decades, putting himself above the title many Saturdays with headline material. In the sea of pearl clutchers at CBC he stood out. While the suits above recoiled at his Canadian Legion catechism, they also knew he was an asset they could play when they went for funding in Ottawa. “See, we have all sorts of political views on the network.”

When CBC lost its HNIC franchise to Sportsnet Cherry became someone else’s problem. Eventually the Woke folk at Rogers tired of telling him to knock off the politics and cultural stuff. He was let go in 2019 for saying what he’d always said. Maclean then put in the knife to save his own hide.

Mercer’s highly rated act continued unabated till 2018. One of his most popular gigs— the one most likely to appeal to posh Canadians— was talking to Americans about Canada. It was brilliant in its simplicity. Go to famous colleges and universities to plumb the depths of their Canadian knowledge. Likewise, buttonhole well-known American politicians.

The topics were many and ridiculous. Should Canada protect the famous location Joe Clark’s Hole? What should Canada do about its melting national igloo? Could they congratulate Jean Chretien on a rare political feat called a “Double Double” in which he received support from both sides of the Canadian parliament.

He asked Al Gore about Canada moving the capital city from Kingston, Ontario to Toronto (Gore thought it smart). He convinced tourists at Mount Rushmore that the mineral rights to the mountain had been sold to a Canadian firm that was getting ready to drill for oil in Lincoln’s forehead.

He asked Americans to condemn Canada’s practice of euthanizing senior citizens by setting them adrift on Northern ice floes. In a famous moment, future President George W. Bush failed to correct Mercer when he referred to Chrétien as “Jean Poutine”

Mercer always said he didn’t think Americans were ignorant. Eighty percent had the right responses and those never made it to air. For the rest it was just that they couldn’t resist an open mike and having a take on things they knew nothing about. He had affection for them.

For Canada’s Left, insecure in its northern faculty-lounge, that subtlety was lost. Mercer’s routines reinforced a smug anti-American attitude in the Liberals and NDP base. All they saw was a nation of nitwits. “Look, what bozos!” The orientation of the fashionistas turned away from the U.S. to supposed European sophistication and societal controls for climate, population growth and Covid. Hello, Mark Carney.

This bias was reinforced by the increasingly self-loathing voices on the cable news of the American Left. Every GOP figure from George W. Bush till Trump today became  a comic character. Canadian lefties adored it. As we’ve written often the snide attitude allowed Canadians to ignore that Americans were protecting them for free and keeping them rich.  And taking the overflow from Canadian’s prized healthcare system.

This arrogance culminated in the March election where the mere mention of Trump sent Canadians fleeing back to a Liberal administration that was moribund after a decade of incompetence. It has an echo in Toronto’s Hockey Hall of Fame again declining to award Cherry the Foster Hewitt award as a legendary TV journalist. Love him or hate him he’s earned it. It’s arguable whether the aging Cherry will even be around to be chosen next year.

For sure his political impact will resonate for long after he’s gone in the populist resurgence in western Canada and elsewhere. If only Rick Mercer were allowed back on CBC to cover it.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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