Many in the crowd at the U.S.-Finland 4 Nations game in Montreal on Feb. 13 booed the singing of The Star Spangled Banner before the game.Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images
At Euro 2012, organizers had the misfortune of drawing Russia in the same group as the co-host, Poland.
The path to the arena in Warsaw on that game day was a preapocalyptic film set. Urban tanks. Hundreds of cops in riot gear. They even had barking German shepherds straining at leashes. Once inside, you knew something bad was going to happen. The hatred was ambient.
The Russian fans somehow sneaked in an enormous banner – it stretched from the top of the upper bowl to the lower – that read, in English, ‘This is Russia.’ They unfurled it during the anthems.
That was a booing.
Compared to that, what Canada is doing right now is not booing. It’s an act of kindness. We are helping the average American understand that nobody likes them any more. I’d want to know, and I’m guessing you would too.
On Thursday, the Montreal crowd booed The Star Spangled Banner before the U.S.-Finland game. The American players, who’d been trying hard to avoid the topic, were forced to address it.
“I don’t like it,” the most American American on Team America, Matthew Tkachuk, told reporters afterward.
You think we do? You think we’re doing this because we’re bored? Canada is trying to tell you something.
Strict respect for another country’s anthem is reserved for high affairs of state and friendly relations. Neither of those scenarios applies at the moment.
You insult us. You threaten us. You break your promises to us. You dangle us along. Then you think you’re going to come up here and play your national fight song and we’re going to just, what, smile and nod?
I get that America thinks we’re chumps. If there’s a takeaway from the last few weeks, that’s it. They don’t respect us. Any of us. They think we are weak and soft and dependent on them.
They’ve made up their minds on that score. Now we have to make up ours.
Are we the sort of people that let you walk up, poke us in the forehead and laugh, and do nothing in response? That’s what the anti-booing faction is endorsing.
There are only so many non-violent, non-self-immolating ways we can express our strength at the moment. The first move is to make our displeasure obvious, and to do so unceasingly until it has evoked a satisfactory reaction.
In current circumstances, the question isn’t ‘Is it wrong to boo another country’s anthem?’
It’s ‘How can I lodge a complaint before this thing gets completely out of hand?’
You can write your MP, you can stop vacationing in Florida and you can boo. Only one of those things makes news that night.
Booing is your patriotic duty right now. It’s not very Canadian, and that’s the point. We’ve let this whole polite northerner shtick exist for too long. Some rudeness is in order. You know what rude people get? Service. They squeak, but they also get the oil.
Every refusenik in our ranks, every person worried about causing offence, everyone who tries to clap over the booers gives America the impression that we’re okay with how we’re being treated: ‘It’s Canada. They’re fine. Don’t worry about them. Look. They still like us.’
Booing is the most effective way to make clear that we don’t.
I would go further – we have a duty as global citizens to boo.
Everywhere else, if you want to voice your displeasure with American interference, you have to go to the U.S. Embassy. You do a bit of chanting, burn a flag, maybe get tear gassed. Doing so makes you look hysterical, and therefore easy to ignore.
Here, you can go to a sports contest most nights and, for no extra charge, you are provided with an opportunity to do the most basic sort of politics. Someone sings. You boo.
It is a harmless, but meaningful, gesture. Mexico, Panama and Greenland don’t have this luxury. Just us. We are exercising it on their behalf, as well as our own.
The main argument against booing seems to be that it’s not nice. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly called it “unfortunate,” the limpest adjective in the English language.
It’s also unfortunate that our manufacturing sector is going to be burned to the ground because America made a deal with us and no longer feels like keeping its word. I’d say one of those things is more unfortunate than the other.
Back in Warsaw, the Polish fans booed the Russian anthem. Later, they threw a few Russians in the Vistula River, but they didn’t kill anyone. I thought they showed commendable restraint.
Later in that tournament I flew from Kyiv back to Warsaw. A couple of Russian tourists jumped in front of me in the non-EU customs line. The Polish border guard spent a half-hour slowly flipping back and forth through their passports while boring his eyes into them. Then he let them go. No words had been exchanged. Small, meaningful gestures.
Sadly, Russia doesn’t seem to have picked up what Poland was putting down there.
America and Canada don’t have that same history of ugly antagonism. The Americans aren’t our enemy (yet), but they have become a bad friend.
The uncharitable thing to do would be to sit up here and seethe. Keep pretending that things are okay, when they aren’t. They won’t know it, and we won’t say it, and things keep getting worse. That’s how friendships die. The useful thing to do is to let your bad friend know you’re upset with them. Give them a chance make amends. That’s what real friends do.
If they don’t want to be friends any more, then that’s okay, too. Then you can stop booing, because there won’t be any point to it.
Until then, all we can do is keep telling America that we have a problem, and hope that they aren’t so far gone that they no longer care about having friends.