Canadiens fan, lemme show you where to put that banana

The BBQ Pit
1

http://cbs.sportsline.com/u/ce/multi/0,1329,5319258_60,00.html

Weekes has been a hero of the team, and we 'Canes fans are very proud of his performance during the post-season.

He’s showing true character by shrugging this incident off, but a lot of us fans are mightily pissed, especially since we hear the occasional self-congratulatory crap about how progressive Canada is compared to the US. People of Montreal ought to be ashamed. Don’t get smug until you’ve completely cleaned all the bigoted racist trash out of your own yard.

I know this isn’t much of a Pit-worthy rant – my furor has cooled in the interim – but for me a hearty “Fuck you” of satifaction is going out to a special Montreal fan, along with the ass-whipping Carolina gave your team.

2

Ya know what Tygr? This may be a bit over confrontational, but fuck you.

I have lived in Montreal all my life, and I can assure you, at least from what I have seen, racism is not common here. Heck, I don’t even understand what’s offensive about the banana!

What I do find offensive, however, is how you have made every citizen of Montreal responisible for this one jack-ass.

I would never even think to blame you from something a fellow citizen of yours did.

I will, therefore, not be ashamed of the city I am proud of and love.

3

So proud that at least one playoff game had less people (hard to imagine) than the average regular season attendance?

**

True enough. Where is yours? If he could let it go, how come you can’t?
**

Why are you picking on the entire city of Montreal in this line…

**

When you only needed to single out the one moron?

BTW, even if the toiletbowls win the conference final they will not beat the Red Wings ( team most likely to come out of the west).

4

http://espn.go.com/nhl/playoffs2002/s/hradek0510.html

A member of the team from my home town is a guest in the opposing team’s city, and he get’s viciously insulted while there. Should we all just shrug it off? Do we not have a right to be pissed?

Character from a victim of an insult can be demonstrated by not letting the insult phase him. People around the victim of an insult can show character by standing up for him against it.

I’ve not been a major-league sports fan for very long, so tell me - is this behavior just accepted? Is it okay because it’s a playoff game? Is it okay because it’s Canada?

LaurAnge - Tell you what. You give me a link to any sort of printed apology to Weekes - a Montreal op/ed piece expessing regret for the incident, something from your team, hell, even a letter to the editor (not written by you) - I’ll offer a retraction of my comments about your city.

And does someone here want to explain to her why calling black people “monkeys” is insulting?

5

Tygr, as a former resident of Montreal (for six of the best years of my life) let me say that this inbred espece de con fuckwit is in no way representative of Montrealers. Unfortunately, there are idjits everywhere, and Quebec is no exception.
LaurAnge, the banana alone may be a bit cryptic, but throwing a banana and calling someone a monkey - that seems a bit clearer, I think?

6

First Don Cherry, and now this banana hurling racist.

My apologies to the world. Unfortunately, Canada has its share of dimwits.

7

Well, there was Parizeau…

8

Frankly, I’m appalled and disgusted that a Montreal fan would do that to Weekes (a perceptive and classy guy, as well as a first class goaltender).

However, I’m also appalled and disgusted that a Philedelphia fan hit Buffalo Sabres’ Coach, Lindy Ruff, in the head with a beer can (a couple of years ago) and that a whole shitload of NY Islanders fans booed the Canadian National Anthem (a couple of weeks ago). It seems that there’re no shortage of goons in attendance at NHL hockey games. And for that, I weep.

But, I also have hope, because I can’t disount the heartening things that have happened this year. For instance, the tremendous ovation given to Sakku Koivu when he made his return to the Canadiens after his battle with cancer shows the true heart of Montreal fans. Not to mention the fact that a rather large chunk of them stuck around to the bitter end of an 8-2 rout and still found the energy to cheer Jose Theodore for his wonderful performance in previous games. In other words, don’t let one dickhead colour your perceptions.

Some other cool things I’ve seen:
-Leafs fans applauding the American anthem just one game after the Canadian anthem was booed.
-A diehard Leafs fan fretting that Ron Francis may not get a Stanley Cup ring because, well, Toronto just has to win. Seriously, the man was conflicted.

cheers,
Hodge[sub](who wanted Alfredson strung up by his balls for that bullshit hit from behind on Tucker but who’s going to shut up about it now because everyone he knows is sick-to-death of hearing about it and the point is moot anyways because Ottawa rolled over and played dead in Game 7 thus clearing the way for a Leafs/Red Wings Stanley Cup final (after Toronto walks all over Carolina, that is)[/sub]

9

Kind of an arbitrary request Tygr, but here ya go. Plus, the security at the Moslon Centre has vowed to crack down on this kind of behaviour.

I didn’t understand the monkey/banana thing until it was explained to me.

I just don’t get it. If I were to say:

“Matthew Sheppard was killed! All you Americans should be ashamed!” you’d think I was a loon. I am no more responsible for this stupid racist’s actions than you are for any murder or racist act that happens in your country or city. Do you hunt all the perpertators down and give them a stern talking to?

10

Whoever threw the banana wasn’t necessarily making a racist statement. Maybe he/she just threw a banana.

They weren’t necessarily Montréalers either.

I saw all the press apologies refer to this “egregious act of racism” without explaining why and like LaurAnge I had to have it explained to me. Penis thing? Oh wait, Black guy=monkey=monkey eat banana=monkey less evolved than white people who are not at the same stage of evolution as black people (?), quite a stretch. People in the Carolinas may have such complex semiological systems but they need them because, let’s face it, they’re racists!

I like a banana after a big game BTW, they have potassium and all kinds of good stuff, good for the brain, and Weekes has plenty more brains than you do from what I can see.

11

Tygr, as for 48 years a resident of a city less than 100 miles from Montreal, I was offended by the behavior of that one retard but never took it as something a typical Montrealer would do. (For one thing, it had no Gallic wit, as a Montreal insult normally would. ;))

Eunoia, why it is not a far stretch was ably pointed out by Timchik above:

12

Poly, you live close by? (unless 100 miles is far… I’m no good at your wacky non-metric system)

Ya know, there are several dopefests happenin round these parts this summer…

And yeah, I didn’t get the banana=monkey=less evolved thing. Ya wanna hear something about Montreal attitude? Here’s a story for you:

When I was telling my boyfriend about this thread, I told him that a fan threw a banana at Weekes. My boyfriend is much more aware of racism and stuff like this, so I was not surprised when he responded “Oh!” after I said that Weekes was black. It was a misunderstanding though, the truth was that he (an avid hockey fan) had forgotten that Weekes was black, and he didn’t get the banana thing either.

So there! :slight_smile:

13

Used to (100 miles = 160 KM, more or less). We were about 40 miles due east of Kingston (across the border), making us something like 95 miles southwest of Montreal as the crow flies.

I may end up going up to visit sometime soon, and if there’s a fest, you can be sure that I will attend. There’s a bunch of you Montrealers I want to meet in person!

14

Alright, first things first.

LaurAnge, thanks for the link. That’s exactly what I was looking for. Despite thrashing around in Google the other day, I had not come across anything similar. On that note:

I sincerely apologize for inferring that the people of Montreal are, or ought to be assumed to be, tolerant of or indifferent to this sort of racist act.

Now, I’m about to attempt to expound upon my OP without further digging myself a hole.

Yes, the bulk of my ire was directed at the scheissekopf that perpetrated the act (sorry, Timchik, je ne parle pas, tho’ I do love the phrase “espece de con fuckwit”).

The remaining ire that fell upon the city of Montreal resulted from my inability to find substantial referrence to expressed regret on the part of anyone from there. Basically, I’m of the mind that if someone from my home insults a guest in my home, I feel responsible for issuing my guest an apology. I became irate when I could not find any evidence of Montrealers with a similar philosophy. Perhaps, rather than spouting off and risking offending an entire city, I should have asked for help from Dopers. Lesson learned, mea culpa.

As for the admonition to Montreal to clean out it’s own yard, well, it comes as a result of living my entire life in the South and having to continually deal with

…low-brain-mass types who are certain that bigotry exists nowhere except here, and also having to deal with the attitude of moral superiority that accompanies this certainty.

eunoia, you’re a pinhead.

I know there were some big words in it, but if you’d bothered to read the last paragraph of the first article I linked, you would have seen that banana-throwing is a European/Canadian phenomenon.

Throwing a banana is equivalent to calling someone a monkey, and therefore racist, but this particular form of racist expression is not used here, to my knowledge.

Now that the grown-ups here have fully explained the issues (I hope we spoke slowly enough for you), be a good kid and go play in the traffic.

15

You’re quick to make assumptions and generalizations Tygr, beware, that’s the root of racism.

I was not aware that anyone was called a monkey. I remember Howard Cosell calling Alvin Garrett “that little monkey” in 1983. A bunch of people were ready to call Cosell a racist too. Clearly these people were hysterical nutbars too.

16

I am quite suprised that some people are professing ignorance as to what throwing a banana at a black person means, even to the point of accusing Tygr of being a racist for understanding it. I’m also from Canada and I knew immediately what it implied when it was written about in the national newspapers and condemned. Just because you understand a racial slur doesn’t mean you yourself are a racist, that’s kind of like a “takes one to know one” defense.

I am pleased that the player brushed the incident off, that goes to show he is a bigger man than the pinhead who threw the banana. That doesn’t mean that we should brush it off. Society must condemn these sorts of things and not feign ignorance. I am happy it was condemned by the media and most of the people in this thread.

But maybe some of this was a bit of a reaction for Tygr coming on a little strong. But hey, that’s what happens in rants and he/she apologized for it.

17

And perhaps some people wear white sheets because all of their other clothes are in the wash.

Although I do see where you’re coming from with the bananas-are-nutritious aspect. Like all those guys who threw orange slices on the ice. You don’t see any one calling them racists.

18

Thank you.

19

Are you kidding? The Protestants had a field day! What papers do you read?
For the record, I do not believe all Carolinians to be racists. I apologize to those who read this into my illustration, partly because you frighten me.

20

God damn.

The brain said “implying” but the hands typed “inferring”.

See? I’m common, I make common mistakes.
[sub]“Speaker implies, listener infers. Repeat that, Mr. Tygr, until your brain goes spongy or the lesson is learned.” - my 6th grade English nazi, er, teacher.
[/sub]
(Thankfully, LaurAnge understood, despite my FUBAR-ing the grammar…)

Well, now that, thanks to fred death, this thread includes mentions of racism, white linens, and laundry, I figger I’ll tie all those elements together into a somewhat true story.

I grew up in the (very) rural mountain country in the western side of NC. My family was not well thought of by some of our neighbors, because my mother is a Yankee.

[sub](She was born & raised in Hartford, Conn. Yes, our house was once egged to the calls of “Damn Yankee!” because of it. God only knows what they would have done if they’d found out that I’d actually been born in Los Angeles, California!! They’d prolly have treated me like three-headed alien spawn.)
[/sub]
Anyway, Mom must have thought we weren’t different enough, because when we started regularly attending church, she took us to the sole Episcopal church in the county (the one constructed along with the Biltmore Estate).

Nope, no good, solid, God-fearin’ Baptist churchin’ for this family! (Episcopal is awfully close to Catholic, and Catholics, as you know, are All Going to Hell™)**

But then came the week my mom volunteered to wash the acolyte robes…

Acolytes wear floor-length white robes.

The white robes have hoods.

The hoods have pointed tips.

My mom hung the robes outside on the line to dry.

After that, our neighbors started treating us better.

:wink:

See? Us open-minded intellectual types can fit in amongst the bigoted trash - we just gotta find a common element.

Like wardrobe.

**
[sup]Actually, my lone experience with the Baptist church was during my 10th summer, when mom sent me to vacation bible school (to this day I don’t know what I did to deserve that - I certainly don’t recall setting fire to the living room drapes…). The experience scarred - and scared - me for years: the preacher kept me after one day and painted a vivid and terrifying picture of Hell, simply because I let it slip that I didn’t remember being baptized. (Episcopalians are among the God-less that see nothing wrong with baptizing infants.)[/sup]