Liberal friends, I have terrible news for you. Your “everybody-I-disagree-with-is-a-racist” superpower doesn’t work anymore. Its power has been waining for some time now. It began when Hilary Clinton warned us all of the dangers of a racist cartoon frog nearly three years ago, but it finally lost the last of its magic when Justin Trudeau was discovered to be a serial black-face-wearer, and you did nothing.

Most readers will be familiar with the saga that ensued when photos surfaced from Time magazine featuring the woke PM in the darkest hue possible in his impersonation of Aladdin. Soon afterward, two other cases emerged in which the social justice crusader had changed the colour of his skin -and other appendages – all in good fun.

This was easily dismissed by the Toronto Star’s Heather Malick as no big deal. “The French are like that,” as she put it.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

The theatrics of an urbane, privileged, French Canadian Liberal might not be so easily dismissed if the same act was committed by a rough, working-class Anglo hockey commentator with an Ottawa Valley country twang.

You don’t even need to know about the latest dust up to know that I’m talking about Don Cherry.

On Saturday, he made some poorly constructed remarks about how he sees people in some areas (big city downtowns) and some people (new comers) wearing poppies less frequently than others.

It’s hard to comment on the veracity of his observations as it relates to newcomers, but in my own anecdotal experience, folks in small communities by-and-large tend to wear the poppy more frequently and attend Remembrance Day ceremonies in greater numbers, than those in large metropolitan centres. I’m doubtful that Statistics Canada keeps any data on who wears poppies most enthusiastically, so it’s an anecdotal argument either way.

Nonetheless, Cherry’s comments were less than careful and not respectful of newcomers and big-city dwellers that do don the poppy.

But the reaction of Liberals and Laurentians everywhere has been wildly out of proportion. The usual Twitter mob demanded his head on a pike and his contract in the shredder. No allowance for Cherry being a man known for speaking off the cuff and not caring about the PC rules of engagement. No consideration that he most likely was not taking a shot at settled immigrants, but at encouraging newcomers not yet steeped in Canadian tradition to adopt it. No benefit of the doubt.

But just a month ago when their wunderkind was exposed committing some of the most wildly racist acts on the books in modern North America? Well, “the French are like that.”

Longtime Liberal MP Judy Sgro was even better.

“Those in the Black community have told me how much more love they have for the prime minister that he wanted to have a black face.”

Trudeau’s blackface career was repeated, and deliberate, every time he did it. It was not an off-the-cuff, spur of the moment accident that he was in black face. Three times. He planned it. Executed it. And pranced about in it for the cameras. Three times. That we know of.

Liberals accepted his crocodile apology, and promptly set about re-electing him to a second term.

In white-washing Trudeau’s blackface vocation, Liberals set a new bar for “gotcha” racial and sensitivity crimes justifying the termination of a career.

Unfortunately for them, Don Cherry’s comments are a very, very far ways away from the new standard they themselves have set.

Until we can find photos of Don Cherry wearing blackface on four separate occasions, he isn’t just fit to be a hockey commentator. He’s more fit than the incumbent to be prime minister.