Don Cherry’s firing from The Social after CTV host Jessica Allen called him a "sexist, racist, bigot" sparked outrage when her own "white boys" hockey remark exposed hypocrisy. Cherry clarified his poppy comment as inclusive, but SportsNet’s Ron McClain falsely amplified it to protect his job. A Toronto protest drew few dozen supporters, with many conservatives avoiding public backlash. The 75K+ signatures at supportdoncherry.com reflect widespread discontent over "cancel culture," while Cherry’s Coach’s Corner remains Canada’s top seven-minute TV segment weekly. Allen’s credibility crumbles under her potty-humor Instagram and manufactured racial grievances, proving media double standards—Cherry’s patriotism and assimilationist message got him fired, while divisive narratives thrive unchecked. [Automatically generated summary]
I make you listen to about a minute from this awful awful show called The Social on CTV.
I'm sorry about that.
But you just have to watch.
You can have a shower and scrub yourself off and rinse your mouth and brush your teeth and get a haircut afterwards just to get all that off of you.
It's the social's take on Don Cherry and it is so stupid you will lose IQ points.
All right, I'm not even making sense.
It'll all come clear in about a minute.
I really want you to see the video version of this too because of course the social is a TV show.
You can do that by becoming a premium member.
Go to premium.rebelnews.com.
It's eight bucks a month to become a premium member.
You also get access to a couple other shows.
It's basically the podcast, but with video.
Okay, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a CTV host attacks Dawn Cherry and makes a racist comment while she does it.
Should she be fired too?
It's November 13th and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
The mainstream media is in a conflict of interest when they talk about Don Cherry.
I suppose that's nothing new for the mainstream media.
I mean, most news reporters in Canada are members of the Unifor Union that had a super PAC style campaign against Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives in the last election, but they didn't disclose that in their reporting.
They didn't end their reports by saying, by the way, I'm taking my own personal money to campaign against Andrew Scheer.
They pretended they were neutral.
Same thing with Don Cherry.
I mean, for years, Peter Mansbridge chafed at the fact that Don Cherry earned more money than he did at CBC and had a way larger audience.
So when Mansbridge attacked Cherry over the weekend, claiming that Cherry said things he never did, it was really gross, but it was obviously just an old personal vendetta.
So many journalists have some skin in the game with Don Cherry that they just didn't disclose.
For example, it was a CTV Rogers consortium that bought the rights to Hockey Nut in Canada a few years back, bought it away from, outbid the CBC.
And then yesterday, CTV was bashing Don Cherry after the Rogers-owned SportsNet fired him.
Was that the true point of view of the CTV hosts?
Or was that some corporate memo they were just reading as if it was there?
I mean, you simply can't believe a word any of these people say.
Ron McClain, worst example.
He just lied on TV right before our very eyes.
On Saturday, I showed this to you twice yesterday.
He actually gave Don Cherry a thumbs up and said, that's why we love you, member.
Love you for it.
That's why we love you.
But the next day, Ron McClain claimed he didn't hear it or he didn't react and he should have or something.
I sat there, did not catch it, did not respond.
Yeah, so he's a liar.
He lied to save his own job.
He lied, obviously, at the direction of his producers at SportsNet.
He threw his friend Don Cherry under the bus.
Now we know what kind of man Ron McClain is.
But what about the gals on The Social, which is the poor woman's version of The View?
I've never watched it before.
Of course not.
I work for a living and I'm a man.
The social is for women who don't work and who aren't focused on their kids.
If they have any, they're more focused on drinking wine in the middle of the day.
It's Justin Trudeau's core demographic for sure.
Anyways, the show is owned by CTV, which was part of the original consortium that hired Don Cherry.
And so maybe they're attacking him as real, or maybe it's just a sponsored comment like a corporate memo.
But these wine moms thought they'd weigh in on Don Cherry.
And really, I think most of them know about as much about Don Cherry as I know about the social.
Not a lot of audience overlap between the social and hockey night in Canada.
Look at this.
This woman's name is Jessica Allen.
She admits right off the bat she has no idea that Don Cherry is a hockey icon, but she knows she hates him and that he's a sexist, racist, bigot because this is amazing.
When she was a kid in small town, Ontario, apparently someone who played hockey, which is everyone, was mean to her or something.
Watch this and watch the casual and weird racist reference.
I think it struck a nerve because I'm told he's a Canadian icon and he's a symbol of the great sport of hockey, which is the sport that unites us across this country.
And that narrative is the one that strikes a nerve with me because I don't worship at the altar of hockey.
I never have.
And maybe it's because of where I grew up, but there's a, and going to a couple different universities, there's a certain type of person in my mind, in my experience, who does.
And they all tended to be white boys who weren't, let's say, very nice.
They were not generally thoughtful.
They were often bullies.
Their parents were able to afford to put them, you know, spend $5,000 a year on minor hockey instead of $5,000, a lot of money.
You can do other things besides spending your time in an arena.
You can go on a trip and learn about the world, see other things, eh?
You know, like it's the place is a, the world is a big place, maybe get side out of that bubble.
And for me, Don Cherry is the walking and talking representative of that type.
And he's the type of person that now people want to like, and I know he's done some good things, but at the same time, when someone good is also able to make fun of people who believe in climate science, who's also able to be like, whether he's charming or not, but he's still a bigot and a misogynist when you're, you know, to have those two things.
Like, I dismissed those people.
I find it embarrassing.
I find it embarrassing that there's a big chunk of the country that is so upset about this.
Hockey doesn't mean anything to me.
I'm sorry.
It's not a problem.
You're still a great Canadian.
And I'm still a great.
You're still a great Canadian.
I'm tired.
Who is that low testosterone guy in the crowd?
That's great.
That's exactly what I was saying.
Who dragged him along?
And what bet did he lose?
Or holy moly, I wonder what his story is.
There's a lot going on there.
She's not a fan of hockey.
She says she suggests, and I don't quite believe her, that she didn't know exactly who Don Cherry was.
So what she lacks in understanding, she'll make up for with certainty and enthusiasm.
He's a bigot and a sexist.
Oh, and he actually, he made fun of global warming.
And that's really his worst sin, it sounds like.
I don't know if you caught it.
Don Cherry used the word you people.
She said that type.
Did you hear her say that a couple times?
What's the difference, by the way?
There was a level of snobbery there, too, and it was really noticeable.
Those families, those hockey families who spend money playing hockey, why don't they travel to exotic places instead?
I mean, she does.
Her Instagram page is full of pictures of her living it up.
She wants you to know that even though she's from a small town, she's really sophisticated and very successful.
And by the way, did you hear her say it?
She went to not just one university, but several universities, she'll have you know.
And she travels.
She's no small towner guys.
Now, she's in her 40s.
I'm guessing that growing up in a small town, Ontario in the 70s and 80s, most people were white, like she is.
But what's that got to do with anything?
Let's grant for a moment that her story was true about mean hockey kids and not just cooked up by CTV's public relations or some producers trying to make her sound more interesting than she really is.
But is she saying that the entire white race is to blame because some kids 30 years ago were mean to her?
And what would race have to do with it anyways?
She's white.
They, if they really did exist, were white.
What does race have to do with the quarrel between kids who bullied her?
What a weird, weird thing to say.
What a racist thing to say.
But it was a tool because she wanted to paint not only Don Cherry as racist, but really anyone who likes him, anyone who likes hockey.
She wanted to call them bigots too.
And she was playing a race card, even though she's white.
That's weird.
And this is how she shows he's morally superior than Don Cherry for his sin of saying, you people.
She said, that type.
As Don Cherry told our own David Menzies yesterday, he didn't mean for it to come out that way.
When he said everybody, he wanted to say everybody should wear a poppy.
It just came out wrong.
Here's how Cherry corrected it yesterday.
Well, David, I think if I had it to do over again, I would have said everybody.
And that's what I meant.
Everybody should wear a poppy.
Beautiful guys that we see 27 years old, 25, sometimes 18 years old, died for our way of life.
Everybody should wear a poppy.
And that's what I meant.
And it was taken out of context.
So the answer to that, you people, which was a malapropism, that's Don Cherry's signature.
He says funny words.
The answer to that, says the social on CTV, is to go on a weird rant about how racist hockey is because she's white and some white kids were mean to her 30 years ago or whatever.
Sorry, who's the bigot?
Well, I see that Fire Jesse Allen is trending on Twitter.
I mean, why not, right?
If those are the rules now, Twitter mobs get you fired for saying the wrong thing, right?
Except that's actually not how it works.
Outrage didn't get Justin Trudeau fired for doing blackface so many times, he forgot how many times.
But you see, that's different.
When it comes to Justin Trudeau, a lot of people are saying no one was outraged.
Actually, there was a lot of outrage, I would say.
And also, what he did wasn't two days ago or three days ago.
It was 15 years ago.
That's not a full excuse.
What he did was horrible.
What Justin Trudeau did was ridiculous.
But he didn't do it as prime minister.
He didn't do it at a time when he was a leader of a country.
Had that platform.
And had that platform.
And yes.
Outrage vs. Hypocrisy00:03:14
I got it.
What?
He ate when he apologized.
He apologized not once.
Not twice, but several times.
He came up, he was very contrite, he acknowledged what he did, he had no excuse for it, he acknowledged his privilege, he acknowledged all of it.
What has Don Cherry done?
He has doubled down.
I feel dumber for having watched that last minute there.
Imagine listening to that show for half an hour.
That doesn't really make sense, does it?
But what?
Did you think CTV would criticize Justin Trudeau, let alone their Trudeau demographic, who surely voted for Trudeau despite the blackface?
Look, I think this Jessica Allen is really gross.
I think that's actually her sort of shtick.
It's her place on the show.
I was trying to figure out who she was.
I'd never heard of her until today.
And I think her specialty is, sorry to say it, I think it's being gross.
It's being the gross one, the dirty one.
I think that's her shtick.
I mean, this is sort of funny.
That's a funny picture.
You got to admit, that's funny.
But this one, this is sort of gross.
I don't really want to look at people sitting on the toilet.
She posted this to Instagram.
Now, lucky her, she found a man who loves her for who she is.
And apparently he is totally into toilet photos that she publishes too.
So they really have a lot in common.
That's her sense of humor shining through.
She sure likes bathrooms and she likes using the word shit.
I think that's her thing.
She's the shit girl on the social.
Look, what do I know about daytime TV for wine moms?
I guess they have the pretty girls, the fashion girls, and then they got this shit girl.
I don't even really think she's a racist, by the way.
She just says what the rest of the corporate mainstream media says, the mainstream culture.
She's white from a small town.
I think her strenuous attempts to show how worldly she is just sort of underlines that she's got an inferiority complex.
No problem.
I mean, I like white people.
I had small towns.
I'm not racist or placeist.
I think she's fine.
Some people who didn't like being insulted by her, whether they're white or they just like hockey, they couldn't help but see her hypocrisy using a racial insult deliberately to criticize Don Cherry who didn't make a racial insult and certainly didn't mean it that way.
So here's her reply on Twitter.
I never said every white boy, okay?
Just the ones whose unsavory behavior, which didn't feel very Canadian, I witnessed because of this.
I'm guilty of having conflicted feelings about hockey being so closely linked to our national identity.
Yeah, well, you didn't say every white boy, and Don Cherry didn't say every minority either.
In fact, he didn't even say the word minority or race at all.
Toronto Protest for Don Cherry00:13:38
He just said people who come to our country should learn about the sacrifices made by earlier generations to keep us free and make us a great country.
And he's right.
And he's a hero.
And I'm not sure how many exotic places he's been on his Instagram.
He's been to exotic places, but not to drink wine.
He went to Afghanistan to stand with our troops, troops of every race and background.
In the meantime, Jessica Allen was taking photos on the toilet and calling other people's names.
I don't think Jessica Allen should be fired.
I think she's a perfect fit for CTV.
I just think she's gross.
And I look forward to never watching her or giving her a minute's thought again, which is the proper way to deal with someone you don't like, as opposed to smearing them and hounding them out of their job.
Stay with us for more.
You people out there, if you're listening and you're doing it, you should get involved in this too.
Because what they want to do, they want to take what our guys, when they come back, you know, they need the jobs.
Everybody needs jobs.
They want to put them in the construction business.
So they're going to train them.
So you people should get involved.
I'm going to be involved.
Helmets, the hard hats, the greatest people in the world next to our troops.
So come on, get involved in this.
It's the Canadian way.
You people out there.
You hear him say you people.
That's how Don Cherry talks.
Hey, you people, you people, you people.
It's an idiom.
It's a mannerism.
It's a turn of phrase.
Everyone's got him.
You people, it's one of his.
You know, if he's from the South, he'd be saying y'all or all y'all.
He says, you people.
And for that phrase, he was fired and called a racist.
He is not a racist.
Frankly, I think he's exposed some racism in other parts of the media, including, as I showed you on CTV.
Well, there was a group of Canadians who held a protest despite the chilly weather in Toronto in support of Don Cherry and possibly, though I don't think it's probable, his reinstatement on Hockey Night in Canada.
And down there at the protest is our very own David Manzies, who joins us via Skype.
David, give us a report from on the ground there.
Where are you?
How many people are there?
And is there any chance?
Ezra, I can tell you, at the height of the protest, there was about a few dozen people here, very passionate people.
Now, a lot of people might say, well, that's a fail.
I think it speaks to something bigger here, Ezra.
Everyone knows that this is more than merely a sports program or an icon being canceled.
This speaks to canceled culture.
And we know Don Cherry has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of fans.
Coach's Corner is the most watched seven minutes of TV in Canada every week.
And I think the low term out speaks to the fact, Ezra, that so many people just don't want to be caught on camera going to bat for their hero, Don Cherry, because you know what, Ezra?
That might mean tomorrow they get a call from human resources at their place of employment.
And guess what?
This isn't good for our brand.
This isn't good for our image.
And they too walk the plank.
I think that's downright scary, to tell you the truth.
You know what?
I find that a very credible explanation.
If Don Cherry can get fired for saying you people, which as I showed in that clip, he says all the time.
And he clearly clarified with you yesterday when you went to his house.
He didn't mean it in a bigoted, racist way.
Only someone taking a deliberate and malicious approach would possibly think that.
But that's the point.
It is deliberate and malicious.
So if they sack Don Cherry, they'll sack anyone.
If they could go after someone that big, surely they could go after someone smaller.
It is cold out and it is in the middle of a workday.
And most conservatives actually work.
don't sit at home watching the social or some other wine mums TV show.
Did you talk to anyone there?
I saw someone with a poster that said free speech.
Do people there actually think Rogers will reconsider their decision?
Or is everyone pretty much resigned to the fact that Don Cherry is never coming back?
That's a great question, Ezra.
Obviously, the point of this protest is to get Rogers to change their minds.
And I spoke to our good friend and really the point man on this story, the guy that broke the firing story, Joe Warmington, the scrawler at the Toronto Sun.
And his opinion, Ezra, is that right now as we speak, Ron McClain is at a meeting at the CBC headquarters building on Front Street.
And Joe says that if Ron takes a stand, if Ron says you have to bring Don back, if Ron goes to bat for Don's job as Don Cherry went to bat for Ron's job twice, then yes, something can be salvaged.
But it's, at least according to Joe Warmington, Ezra, it's in Ron McClain's hands whether we're going to get traction on this or not.
I'm not sure if Joe's accurate or not.
I mean, we live in a culture where executives are hypersensitive about their company's image, about what advertisers might say.
But my goodness, Ezra, again, to go back to how chilling this is, that if an icon, if a guy that's known as Mr. Canada in some circles, a guy that had an almost 40-year career on Hockey Night in Canada, if he can be deplatformed, anybody can.
Yeah, well, listen, if anyone has to rely on Ron McClain, then there is no hope.
He's a man without shoulders, as they say.
He's a man without a chest, as they say.
We saw what he's made of on Sunday when he threw Don Cherry under the bus, lied about Don Cherry, blamed John Cherry, and then arrogated unto himself the right to apologize for Don Cherry when Don Cherry did no such thing.
Ron McClain is a disgrace.
And, you know, there's an insult.
I'm sure all our viewers have heard it.
I wouldn't pee on him if he was on fire.
Well, I mean, that's taken as an insult.
That is how Ron McClain is towards Don Cherry, his old friend.
Ezra, I agree.
So many people online are calling him Ron Judas, and there's a lot of merit to that slur.
But this could be a moment of redemption for him if he can grow a spine and do the right thing and do Don a good turn as Don has done him twice to save his job in the past.
Well, like I said, that's in Ron's corner, and we'll just have to see if he's going to man up, if I can use that language these days.
Yeah.
Well, it's unleashed a torrent of reverse racism.
We showed earlier, CTV's The Social, bizarrely rolling out some anti-white racism, which I didn't even understand.
And the whole sport of hockey is being smeared as being too white, which is a racist thing to say.
It's bizarre.
No one would ever say the NBA is too black.
That's just a bizarre and racist thing to say.
I think it's a combination of, like, that's not even the Canadian way.
We didn't have Jim Crow laws.
We didn't have slavery here.
We just don't have that U.S. experience or foreign experience.
We're a harmonious place importing that racial grievance culture, that Black Lives Matter extremism.
That's just un-Canadian, but that seems to be the official line in all the official media.
I guess the question, David, is, is that real life in Canada, or is that just anyone like the official people, the fancy people, people who work for TV networks?
That's not Canada yet, is it?
Ezra, the silent majority isn't buying into this.
This is manufactured.
As you know, Ron McClain himself was giving the thumbs up and nodding his head when Don made those comments.
I believe the Coach's Corner segment was aired in three other time zones.
So no producer at SportsNet said this was too hot a potato.
And when it comes to, you know, race and sports, what I always remember, Ezra, is about, I might have the dates wrong, but a good 12 or 13 years ago, the Toronto Star ran a front page Saturday Star report entitled the Toronto White Jays.
And it was in a reference to the Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Club.
Why are there so many white players on this team?
That was the thrust of the article.
The story blew up in their faces, Ezra, because when somebody looked at the number of Hispanic residents in Toronto, the number of black residents in Toronto, they were actually overrepresented on the Toronto Blue Jays.
So it was more than, I guess, the diversity quotant of Toronto itself.
There is this obsession with liberals in the media when it comes to race, so much so, Ezra, that they can't even get the facts right when they try to portray our society as being racist.
Yeah, it's just bizarre.
It's not even a Canadian way to look at the world.
That's just not our history.
Well, last question to you.
I mean, you were up there at his house and he seemed pretty calm about the whole thing.
I guess an 85-year-old guy is almost 86, had a good run, put a few bucks away.
He knows he did nothing wrong.
He knows the people are with him.
Do you think he's done?
Or do you think he'll get another?
Do you think he likes to opine on the world, not just hockey, but on the world in general?
Do you think, I mean, obviously he'd be welcome here at the Rebel.
I just don't think we could muster the money to compete with what he was making in the past.
But who knows?
If he's persona on granite with all the fancy people, maybe he'll come hang out with us rebels here.
He is a rebel in his own way.
What do you think is next for him?
Well, Ezra, I might be dreaming in Technicolor, but I understand there's a leadership review for the Conservative Party of Canada early next year.
But I guess at Don's age, that ship has sailed.
I'll just say this, because I know we've got to wrap it very quickly.
If I was a competing sports network, I'd be at Don Cherry's Mississauga house right now with a contract with a blank amount for his salary.
Because, like I said, this guy's responsible for the most watched seven minutes of TV every week in Canada.
He's entertaining.
He's still relevant.
How can you possibly leave an asset like that on the table?
Let's see what happens in the days ahead.
Yeah, very interesting.
Well, I'm glad you're down there.
And I haven't checked in the last couple hours, but when I checked earlier this morning, our petition at supportdoncherry.com had over 75,000 names.
So that's just a small hint of his support.
David, thanks for covering this story so well.
And congratulations again on your exclusive interview with him last night.
Thank you so much, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
David the Menzoid Menzies downtown in Toronto outside the Rogers headquarters, which owns SportsNet.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back to my monologue yesterday about Don Cherry.
Ron writes, Don Cherry is a Canadian patriot of the highest caliber.
Asking new immigrants and Canadians in general to wear poppies is literally a staple of Canadian assimilation.
Well, you said the word assimilation.
I don't even think you're allowed to say that anymore.
I'm not just musing.
There was a fellow recently who wanted assimilate as his license plate, and it was like a Star Trek word or something, but the government wouldn't let him use it because that's apparently a bigoted word in Canada.
True story.
John Carpe of the Justice Center took his case and I think they actually lost.
Mitchell writes, I am an immigrant, and what he said was true.
We love freedom here and we should participate in remembering the sacrifice of those who came before.
Cherry was fired by politically correct cannibals.
Absolutely.
Yasmin Mohamed's Brave Stand00:01:04
Absolutely.
It was a mob.
You saw the two reactions.
Don Cherry said, I'm not bending the knee.
And Ron McLean said, yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
I'll throw my friend.
I'll inform on my friend.
I'll denounce my friend if you spare me.
That's exactly how it worked in the denunciations and the struggle sessions in authoritarian regimes like Mao's Cultural Revolution.
That's just how it was.
On my interview with Yasmin Mohamed, Jen writes, Yasmin Mohamed is incredible.
She's a very brave and heroic woman.
Can you imagine the social interviewing her?
They'd want to tear her apart for being racist.
Hey, that's a very good point.
Well, first of all, she's a lot smarter than them.
Second of all, that Jess Allen or whatever her name was, wouldn't be able to play the race card against Yasmin Mohammed.
But they would never have her on because they want those comfortable mainstream opinions.