Children’s entertainer Raffi wants you to mute Don Cherry

Yahoo! Sports

Sun Dec 18 05:10pm EST

Children’s entertainer Raffi wants you to mute Don Cherry

Don Cherry and Raffi (children's entertainer Cavoukian, not Torres) aren't so different. Both are Canadian icons whose words resound from coast to coast, albeit one as a demagogue, the other as a troubadour. Both sing the praises of one in the deep blue, although Raffi's subject is Baby Beluga, not Doug Gilmour.

And both have a vested interest in shaping "Good Canadian kids," although Raffi would prefer those kids were a little nicer to one another.

Like most Canadians, Raffi is a hockey fan, and unsurprisingly, considering his famously gentle demeanour, he's anti-fighting. That in mind, Raffi has started a Twitter campaign to mute Cherry's Coach's Corner segments. From the Vancouver Sun:

Cavoukian said he hopes people tune out Cherry's first-intermission segment during [Saturday's] Leafs-Canucks tilt as a statement to try to stop the current rash of concussions and eliminate fighting from the game.

"He was a colourful guy, he was a great coach — there's much to say about what he gave the game," Cavoukian told The Sun. "But today you got head concussions, you got fights that the referees don't even step in to [break up].

This is awesome and hilarious.

Before you scream "pansification," consider that it's Raffi. If I ever saw him cheering a fight, my whole world would crumble. I'd have no choice but to drown myself down by the bay.

But Raffi's issue with Cherry isn't just the fighting. Raffi is also a strong proponent of the indoor voice, and Cherry offends this sensibility as well. All that yelling sets a bad example for the children:

"Do we have a responsibility to set a good example from our kids?" Cavoukian asked. "His professional style is loud, dismissive, bordering on boorish - this is not the way to be in public."

It's worth noting that Raffi is a Canucks fan, so it's not just the kids who should take heed of his words. His passive protest, which involves little more than muting the television, should also serve as an example to some of Vancouver's more "riot-y" individuals.