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Former Co-worker Torches Don Cherry, 'Stop with the deification'


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Jon
October 16, 2022  (8:00 PM)
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Don Cherry is a figure as polarizing as they come, and these days it is impossible to escape the cross-fire between sides. Cherry's unapologetically conservative opinions saw him ousted from the mainstream spotlight after he was fired in 2019 for the infamous 'Poppy' rant.


Cherry's comments echoed throughout the hockey world, and he has since been relegated to hosting his own podcast, The Grape Vine. Probably the best case for the controversial pundit.
Many of Cherry's past colleagues have condemned his comments since then. Ron McLean is the most prominent, but Tara Slone, who worked with the two on Rogers' 'Hometown Hockey,' recently published a Twitter thread on Cherry and had lots to say.
''Thread:

I see Don Cherry is trending yet again. I have never weighed in, but I want to now.

I like(d) Don as a person, because like many of us, he wasn't just one thing. But I loathed his perspective, more and more as the years went by.

He sort of tolerated Hometown Hockey, but was jealous of Ron's other job/co-host. He thought we were soft and woke and focussed on too much outside of hockey. HTH wasn't for everyone, so that didn't bother me.

He had some good points, probably, once upon a time. He has tons of charisma, which is why he stayed on air for so long. But this incessant and nostalgic elevating of Don as some figure who we should look to as a hockey and political leader? Come ON.

I like him, I really do. I hope he is healthy and doing well. But he is a bigot and had no place on national television with a national platform. It wasn't the poppy incident, it was everything he proclaimed over 3 decades. Come. On. Stop with the deification.''

Yikes.
Slone clearly does not align with Cherry's perspective, which is relatively unsurprising; male baby-boomer and a female Gen-Xer. Not exactly cut from the same cloth.
Nevertheless, Cherry's former co-host submitted a scathing review but for some reason felt the need to include that she likes him? Not sure what that was about, but you can add one more person to the list of enemies of Don Cherry.

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