Allow me to preface this entry by saying that I have a pretty good sense of humor (I think anyway), and am usually pretty tolerant of "fake" accounts, parodies or whatever else you want to call them.
Over the past few days, exactly when this happened I cannot say since it's not easy to follow the WHL on the East Coast of the US, someone made a fake account of LA Kings prospect, and current Saskatoon Blades player Brayden Schenn, and proceeded to make some racist and inflammatory remarks about the First Nations people. Now obviously these comments have caused a flare up of anti-Schenn controversy and worse, death threats.
First things first, and just to get it out there, just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's true. There are a ton of fake accounts of professional athletes, coaches, politicians, you name it. Most of these accounts are meant to be funny (personal favorites are Coach Ron Wilson and Bruce effin Boudreau), and you should enjoy them. In no way shape or form am I saying that the internet has to be super serious all the time. Hell, this blog is here, so there's proof that it's not.
What I can't abide (who am I, the dude?) is people who take this way too far. The page has since been removed, but supposedly one of things that "Brayden" said was "if the First Nations people don't want to pay taxes, they should leave Canada." Two things are wrong with this, one is the obvious fact that you have to pay taxes wherever you go, well except maybe Antarctica, which is probably similar to Canada...at least climate wise. Secondly, and really the main point of this is, whoever this is clearly has some racist/xenophobic hatred towards people who are arguably more Canadian than the person saying it. Please insert the cliche about opinions being assholes here. It's true. Whoever wrote this won't listen to reason anyway, so it's not like you can change his or her mind anyway. Why drag an innocent kid into this?
Maybe I'm missing some report about the Schenn's being white power or something, but I doubt it. Could it all be that the Ed Chynoweth Cup is that coveted of a prize that opposing team/fans will sink to seemingly endless lows to win? I know that junior hockey is pretty competitive and the Memorial Cup playoffs are no joke, but at what point do you say, "yeah, let's really cause a raucous, so our team will win it all?" I'm just not getting this at all. Apparently the Saskatoon Blades have asked for some type of criminal investigation, and rightfully so. Sure you could argue that he's a professional and they'll get death threats from now until the end of his career, and that's certainly a possibility. Is it worth it not to look into it, if god forbid, he does get hurt? The NHL has certainly come under fire in the past few weeks/months about protecting their players, and certainly the Chara/Pachiorety incident exacerbated the situation on the professional level, do we need a potential murder at the junior level to take anything seriously?
Ok, maybe I'm sounding a little bit paranoid, and to a point I am. These two incidents are two-sides of a ridiculous coin. On ice violence is one thing, threats from the public against players is another. Please, enjoy the internet. Hell make a parody account if you want, just keep it funny. We all need to lighten up sometimes, but whoever this fake Brayden Schenn was, clearly has no idea how to do it. Well that or they really, really REALLY like the Prince Albert Raiders.
for quotes from the Blades, as well as another take on this situation, check out WHL from Above.
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