The Unbearable Whiteness of Being Ron MacLean

Ron breathes the clean, white, air of the country.

I'm usually good for only one sports-related blog post every year, so there must be a great disturbance in the force for me to dash off my second on the subject this year. The disturbance is the news that George Stroumboulopoulos, after only two seasons as the host of Sportsnet's Hockey Night in Canada, has been dumped for the muppet man he originally replaced: Ron MacLean. The perceived reason for the change is that ratings for HNIC have gone down in the last two seasons. Sportsnet figured Strombo was just the young, hip, urban, cool cat who'd pull in a different, and broader, demographic. Apparently the fact that Canadian hockey teams have largely sucked over the last two seasons (I'm looking at you, Toronto) and that the game itself has become progressively less entertaining didn't factor into Sportnet's understanding of the ratings slip. Nor did they pay attention to the fact that although they changed the host, the supporting cast of dull, witless, cranky, reactionary, inarticulate colour commentators and analysts has never been tampered with. No, it was all George's fault. But I don't want this to be a blog about what's wrong with HNIC (you can read my post on that here), or why I think Ron MacLean is a puerile, narcissistic, self-important twat and a craven, simpering, enabler of Don Cherry's bigotry. No, what I want talk about here is that by canning GS and resurrecting RM, Scott Moore, President of Sportsnet, has effectively stuck a big sign on the metaphorical front door of Sportsnet that says, "Whites Only."

A bold statement, I know, but bear with me. The Golden Horseshoe area of Ontario, which encompasses Toronto, and the cities of Vancouver and Montreal (and their suburbs) represent the bulk of the population of Canada. These areas are highly urbanized and very multicultural, especially Toronto and Vancouver. These three areas drive hockey viewership in Canada, and their essential makeup is enthusiastically unrepresented on HNIC. Look at the faces on HNIC and it's pretty much wall-to-wall middle-aged white guys. There are two token women, and two visible minority men who get even less airtime than the women. Compare and contrast with any local TV news crew in any of Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver; diversity, diversity, diversity.

The resolute whiteness of HNIC (and this also applies to every other hockey broadcast in Canada) is, on one level, simply a reflection of hockey culture in North America. The cost of playing hockey for kids and teens is now so prohibitive it's become difficult for anyone but the overwhelmingly white middle and upper-middle classes to participate in it. Look around the NHL today and you see only a bare handful of visible minorities playing the game. Sportsnet isn't responsible for who is or isn't playing the game, but through their choices in on-air personalities and the editorial tone of the hockey broadcasts, Sportsnet is sending a clear message about who they think the game is for and about. And that brings us back to Ron MacLean.

MacLean might be a crap host, but he's the perfect choice if, as it would seem, Sportsnet is only interested in going after the suburban/rural, conservative, white male in the age range of 40 to dead. Ron launches into a bromantic paean whenever he gets to talk about the small-town roots of this or that player. The gushing gets even more torrid if the player is from the Prairies, which, in the minds of Ron and his on-camera cohorts, seems to be the abode of the gods. If a player is from Saskatchewan or Alberta, Ron is sure to mention that "They raise them tough out there" or "He's a good Saskatchewan boy" or "Those long western bus rides build character." Players from the cities don't get any extra praise, unless, of course, they have an Irish last name, which means we're bound to hear either "He's a tough Irishman" or "He's a fine broth of a lad." It's enough to make you gag on your soda bread. And if you're a visible minority the message is clear: don't bother playing or watching hockey...we don't want you.

As though to underline its commitment to an aging, white demographic, two years ago Sportsnet gave MacLean his own show, Hometown Hockey, which saw him hosting NHL games from a different suburb or small town each Sunday. The idea of celebrating places where the vast majority of people don't live seems odd and/or foolish when you're in the business of pulling in viewers. Sportsnet markets the show as a celebration of Canada and Canadians, but the sub-text of the show is that white, non-urban Canadians is who hockey is for. Visible minorities are in the majority in both Vancouver and Toronto, but  good luck seeing any on Sportsnet hockey broadcasts. Too bad they didn't have the foresight to move to a Newfoundland fishing village or a Manitoba farming community.

I'm part of that aging, white demographic, but I work in Toronto with a very diverse group of people, many of whom are young. They talk a lot about basketball and soccer, even baseball, but the subject of hockey is pretty much left to us old guys. Is this what Sportsnet wants? For some of these young Canadians hockey is as remote and irrelevant as jai alai or Australian football. Hockey broadcasting bears a large part of the blame for this situation. Instead of reaching out to the next generation of sports fans, they have turned their backs on them, almost thumbed their nose at them, with their ceaseless and mawkish love affair with a Canada that hasn't existed for at least a generation. Strombo was a weak choice to pull in new viewers, but bringing back MacLean to front Sportsnet's marquee hockey broadcast probably puts HNIC on the black diamond slope to ratings oblivion. And it's what they deserve.

Labour Disruption Night In Canada

Bettmann and Fehr; not quite as exciting as Gretzky and Kurri

On September 15, 2012, the NHL lockout began. Since that date the Canadian sports media has almost exhausted itself covering the issues that divide the players and the owners. This kind of high-profile labour dispute is interesting because it brings into the open a lot of the prejudices, misconceptions, and poorly thought out opinions that are common to any strike or lockout. The nadir in opinion pieces arrived yesterday in a piece by Damien Cox for the Toronto Star. The gist of the article is that fans will no longer be able to take "pride" in being a fan of the NHL, and that fans who are inclined to buy a ticket will feel "dirty" and "ashamed" and will "want to take a shower" afterwards. And the reason for this unhygienic state of affairs? According to Cox's murky logic it's because the two sides have not apologized to the fans for the interruption in service, and because players and management have waged a tough, tactical battle at the negotiating table.

Let's begin with the issue of "pride." Simply put, it makes no sense. No one takes pride in being a passive viewer of entertainment. Are there proud game show viewers? Proud listeners to golden oldies radio? Do fans of James Patterson swell with pride as they read his latest novel? Attaching the concept of pride to watching NHL hockey is just plain silly, but it's not unknown for commentators to try and put a moral or emotional spin on labour disputes, especially when the service being denied is deemed essential. If firemen or nurses or teachers are off the job they're commonly branded as heartless or uncaring or selfish. And even striking workers in fields that aren't seen as critical are sure to hear remarks of the those-ungrateful-bastards-should-just-be-happy-to-have-jobs variety.

What's amusing about sports fans and writers dragging emotion into this labour stoppage is that what they're really annoyed with, but probably wouldn't acknowledge, is that this is what the cold, hard face of capitalism looks like. Capitalists constantly strive to control and lower the cost of labour: it's basically the main pillar of capitalist ideology. It's ironic that the same sports media personalities who have been falling over themselves to congratulate the Toronto Blue Jays on spending tens of millions in the past few months to acquire better players and thereby make more money, then find it offensive that another group of capitalists want to lower costs to enhance profits or trim losses. The two actions represent opposite sides of the same coin: to make a profit you either lower costs or increase market share. To rail against NHL owners for acting in this manner is like complaining that night always follows day. And it's equally foolish to take issue with the trench warfare of a prolonged negotiation process. These are two competing teams of capitalists who, in our free market world, are bound by the profit principle to fight, scratch and claw for every tactical advantage at the bargaining table. To do less than that would be to announce yourself as an incompetent capitalist.

The Cox article, like scores of others written about the lockout, takes a plague-on-both-their-houses approach. Spice is added to this position by the fact that this is a contest between millionaires and billionaires. Yes, indeed, the workers in this dispute are often part of the 1%, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this lockout, like those in any other field, is all about workers trying to safeguard wages and benefits. The one certainty going into this lockout was that NHL players would be making less in the future for doing the same job. The NHLPA's job was, and is, to minimize the pain. Commentary that takes a neutral or hostile view of both parties is effectively taking a pro-management stance. For a very long time now unions of all kinds have been fighting a rearguard action to prevent the erosion of both jobs and earning power. Capitalists hold all the cards, and commentators who like to pretend that there is some kind of equivalency between unions and management are being wilfully ignorant.

Many sports people have also been saying things along the lines of, "What the players have to understand is that the economics of the league have changed." This line of reasoning argues that because some teams are suffering losses (allegedly), the players should share the pain. When teams or leagues are doing well one rarely hears an argument that players should get more. The NFL's recent labour dispute revolved around the league wanting a greater share of the profits. It wasn't because the teams are making less money, it was simply a question of the league wanting more money at the expense of the players. The same holds true in the wider economic world: corporations that report hefty profits typically don't at the same time raise worker's wages; they continue to outsource, "trim the fat", or ship production overseas, and whatever else it was that made them profitable. In a nutshell, when times are good capitalists reward themselves via stock options, dividends, performance bonuses, and so on; when times are bad it's workers who take the first hit. In the case of the NHL, the players are expected to pay for the foolishness of sticking franchises in places like Phoenix and Florida. Basically, workers in any industry, from cars to coal mines, are expected to pay for the mistakes and greed of management

One last point: There's little argument that the mainstream media has become more capitalist-friendly as it's become concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations. This phenomenon has been taken to the next level in Canada by the purchase of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (owners of the Leafs, Raptors, and Toronto FC) by the parent companies of TSN and Sportsnet. A host of print journalists, including Damien Cox, appear regularly on, and draw a paycheque from, the two sports media giants. What we have here is a conflict of interest. Cox and the others are commenting on a labour dispute while in the pay of ownership. Has this produced any obvious cases of bias? Not so far, but the bland neutrality of the both-sides-are-in-the-wrong stance is really just de facto support for the NHL. Cox's main employer is the Toronto Star. If one of that paper's full-time political commentators took a part-time job with the Liberal or Conservative Party they'd be shown the door pretty quickly. For whatever reason, the same standards don't seem to apply to the sports department.

Related post:

Peanuts, Popcorn & Anti-Capitalism 

A Five Minute Major For Boredom

Yet another player nods off during a playoff game

Well, the NHL playoffs have reached the halfway mark and, once again, the game has been reduced to the sporting equivalent of trench warfare: bloody, slow-moving, and painful to watch. What's worse is that the game's stars, the ones who haven't been eliminated by series losses or headshots, have disappeared from view. Skill players such as Ovechkin and Gaborik have either been checked into irrelevance or have purposely dumbed their games down to satisfy the backcheck first, score later philosopy of, well, all the remaining playoff coaches. Add in goalies who seem to get bigger and more agile every year, and referees who leave their whistles in the dressing room, and you have some diabolically dull hockey.

Not that the hockey media has had much to say about the poor entertainment value of the playoffs. The talking heads on Hockey Night In Canada, Sportsnet and TSN toss out terms like grittiness, playing responsibly, the 200 foot game, fininshing your check, sacrificing yourself, which are all, it would seem, synonyms for not attempting to put the puck in the net. The vast majority of commentators seem delighted with this kind of hockey. Partly this is down to the fact that so many on-air hockey pundits are ex-goalies and ex-fourth-liners, all people whose hockey life consisted of preventing goals. The other reason is that the networks have far too much invested in playoff hockey to dare mention that what they're broadcasting is akin to rugby on ice.

In addition to the cheerleading for no-offence hockey, there's been a not so subtle delight expressed in the the failure of elite players to perform. The reason for the disappearance of skilled play is that everything about playoff hockey (the ferocious hitting and checking, the clutching and grabbing) is designed to diminish the talents of players like Crosby and the Sedins, and the ex-grinders who comment on the games are often thrilled that their kind of player is grabbing the limelight instead of the guys making the big money. It's a situation that's entirely unique to hockey. A crude analogy would be the NBA ordering its top players to switch to lead sneakers during the playoffs. There's also been a whiff of bigotry coming from the ranks of the hockey media when it comes to Russian players. The ineffectiveness and reduced ice time of Alexander Ovechkin, and the one-game suspensions handed out to Radulov and Kostitsyn in Nashville, have been met with mutterings about Russians not being emotionally committed to playing hard in the playoffs. These comments once again point out the apartheid that exists in hockey broadcasting. European players have been a big part of the NHL for nearly forty years, but, as far as I can tell, there has yet to be a European commentator hired by any sports media outlet in all that time. Any mumble-mouthed ex-goon who wants to spout cliches about hockey gets his shot on TV or radio as long as he's from Moose Jaw or Minnesota, but God forbid that a European should appear on the airwaves. Maybe if one of the networks was employing a Russian ex-player he could talk to Ovechkin or Radulov in their native tongue and get some kind of inside information.

Being the degenerate hockey fan that I am, I will continue to watch the playoffs, but, be warned hockey gods, lately I've found myself switching briefly to Blue Jays baseball. The fact that I'm willing to risk slipping into a coma by watching baseball is an indication that playoff hockey is pushing me to the limits of sanity.