Hockey Night at City Hall

Look what you've done now, Rob Ford. You've made us take Don Cherry seriously.

In the wake of his “pinko” speech at Rob Ford’s inauguration as Toronto mayor yesterday, Don Cherry is being accused of setting a fractious tone for the next four years at City Hall, which the National Post’s Chris Selley says is “quite the feat for someone who can't string a sentence together.” Selley’s not mad at Cherry (who he’s repeatedly defended from critics recently) but at Ford, because the incoming mayor allowed his fairly conciliatory speech to be hijacked by not distancing himself from Cherry’s wild remarks. “How can Mr. Ford just shrug when his invited guest spoke at such insulting cross-purposes to his own?” Selley asks.

Cherry and Ford’s supporters will applaud his speech as due retribution for mayor David Miller’s tendency to freeze out right-wingers. But the Post's John Moore counters that “[t]here may be plenty of satisfaction in payback but there is no virtue in it. You can’t lay claim to a new kind of leadership if your style is merely a mirror of the last guy’s crony partisanship.”

The Post’s Kelly McParland comes to Cherry’s defence, writing, “The difference between anti-Cherry people and pro-Cherry people (like me), seems to be in how seriously you take him.” True, but it’s a lot easier to not take him seriously when the guy at the head of the sixth largest government in Canada doesn't invite him to speak at his inauguration.

The prospect of writing anti-Ford editorials every day for the next four years appears to be weighing heavily on the Toronto Star, which could only muster this half-hearted warning against “the perils of unbridled populism” in response to Cherry’s screed.

The Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy says Cherry’s speech was “like music to my ears” because it was evidence that the new administration has begun “sweeping City Hall clean of elitist B.S. and nonsense.” Terrific! We’re getting “populist” B.S. and nonsense instead. Levy writes that by saying things like, "I'm wearing pinko for all the pinkos out there that ride bicycles," Cherry helped usher in a new era of “respect for taxpayers.” Well, cyclists must not be taxpayers then. All the more money to buy lattes with.