With yet another display of despicable behaviour, the “fans” at the New York Islanders game booed the Canadian national anthem at the beginning of tonight’s Game 6 in the Leaf-Islander playoff series. I wonder if anyone has explained to them that at least half of all NHL players, including their own team, are Canadian.
I won’t dignify the fans’ contemptible conduct by trying to discuss the merits of the controversies involved. There is nothing that can justify the disrespect and disgrace the Islander fans have just shown.
There was some booing of the American national anthem at the Montreal game too, but that was after Zednick and the whole bombing thinng, and there were many angry letters to the editor of the city’s paper from other Montrealers about it.
Definitely a bad way to show disrespect for the teams.
They booed the US anthem in Toronto? How rude. I like to think that Canadians are raised better than that; they are, after all, guests when they play here, and I personally was raised not to treat a guest like that.
(Oh, to respond to the OP - Canadians just shrug off Americans doing that kind of thing. Americans have flown our flag upside down and ruthlessly butchered our anthem at major sporting events. We’ve learned to take it in stride.)
Not to doubt Minor Irritant’s word, but I watched Friday’s game from beginning to end, including the national anthems, and I didn’t hear any indication of booing. A search of the three Toronto daily newspapers, and a Google on the web failed to turn up any mention of it either. I’m not suggesting it couldn’t happen, but I can’t find any evidence that it did.
Regardless of who does it, I think it’s simply a demonstration of utter classlessness.
There is no excuse for the disrespect being shown by sports fans over the last three weeks.
However, this point
does need to be addressed.
The only time that I can recall any hoopla over the Canadian flag being inverted was a couple of years ago when an honor guard marched out to an event. I remember great wailing and gnashing of teeth over the “typical” American disrespect for our Canadian neighbors. However, the honor guard had been handed cased colors and told to uncase and march at a specific moment (to make an impression for the TV cameras), so they were not given the opportunity to examine the flags before they began marching. It was surely a stupid error on someone’s part, but it was hardly a matter of a “bunch of Yanks” dishonoring the Canadian flag.
(Of course, some smart-ass went back through archival footage of a then-recent presidential visit to Canada and found two separate shots–in one the U.S. flag had been inverted (and the U.S. had not gone off crying about it for days); in the other, a walkway was flanked by a dozen Canadian flags, and one of them had been flying inverted.)
Mistakes happen. They really should not be compared to deliberate rudeness.
Actually, tom, as I recall the reaction here was pretty good natured when the Marines got the Canadian flag upside down at one of the Atlanta/Toronto World Series games. The newspaper coverage was very much of the how-embarrassing-for-that-guy kind.
The strongest statement I can find from a mainstream news-source is from USA Today:
Perhaps those out on the prairies took it a little more to heart.
I realize this is no excuse, but (unconfimed) rumor has it “I’m a Loser’s” 4Q America rant was re-published in the local Newsday the day after it showed up on the SDMB. No one has dibs on idiocy, lunacy, stupidity or ignorance…there’s enough on this planet to spread evenly across all nationalities
