OKAY THIS STORY MAKES ME REALLY MAD. I just found out about it from visiting some Canadian blogs — if it’s been covered in American media much, it must have been on the sports pages, which I generally don’t read:
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. – A crowd of American basketball fans booed O Canada last night before the Detroit Pistons and Toronto Raptors played Game 1 of their first-round NBA playoff series.
When the Canadian anthem was played before the tipoff, it was met with a steady stream of boos from the sold-out crowd.
Among the crowd in this Detroit suburb were several thousand Toronto fans, who were decked out in Raptors gear and waving Canadian flags.
When Toronto, which trailed through almost the entire game, put together a run of points toward the end of the first half, the crowd began chanting: “U.S.A., U.S.A.!”
The anger at Canada might have been fuelled by dismay at the Detroit Red Wings losing the first two games of their NHL playoff series against the Vancouver Canucks.
The guys who did this are world-class assholes, and completely unAmerican in my opinion.
UPDATE: Reader Javier Gonzalez writes:
Don’t overreact. This goes on all the time. I go to hockey games here in Washington against Canadian teams and in the middle of their anthem some guy screams, “Canada sucks!”, and everybody cheers. It goes on all the time and its only a sport. One is not really booing Canada, just trying to psyche out their players. I was reading the Pearl Jam message boards and a Canadian there made the comment that in the Vancouver game against Detroit, Vancouver fans booed the Star-Spangled Banner. I am sure you’ve got some readers from Vancouver or from any of the other six Canadian cities that have NHL teams. Ask them if they heard booing of the Star Spangled Banner at any of their games, particularly during playoff time (four of their teams are in the playoffs).
Uh, if you say so. It sounds pretty rotten to me, though. Maybe I’m just more sensitive to such things nowadays.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jason Yoder writes:
This sort of thing does happen fairly often, in Canada as well. The shameful thing about the booing is that those of us in Detroit should know better. Most of us watch the Red Wing playoff games on the CBC affiliate in Windsor, which has been consistently running stories and news briefs about the Canadian Forces killed by US friendly fire in Afghanistan. What would normally be considered borderline rivalry behavior is now an insult, and will be gleefully portrayed as that by many Canadian media outlets.
Yeah.