Ron, Ron, Ron, Ron, Ron, Ron.....

Monday April 23 8 PM

I Love Ron Fournier. I think he's a great showman. I 've never asked him but I wonder if he really believes half of what he says. If not, I give him credit, able to fake outrage to the point of foaming at the mouth.

He's also part of a very small group of media types in this city who literally went to bat for Terry Haig and myself at a time when the Montreal Expos were trying their best to get rid us. I'll tell the whole story in my next post but this much I'll share right now. The Expos were doing their best to bully Haig & I when we were on the air at CIQC and Rejean Tremblay (whom I barely knew at the time) wrote a scathing column in La Presse revealing the Expos at their paranoid worst. Fournier followed up that night by interviewing Haig. Blackman and Farber spent a few minutes discussing our plight the next morning on the Balcan show. Jeff Blair wrote a piece in The Gazette the next day. And that was it. Nobody else in the city, as far as we knew, found it important enough to back a couple of guys who were simply doing their jobs. And who's livelihood was now being threatened.

So I'll always have a soft spot for both Fournier and Tremblay no matter how outrageous their commentary might get. (Their lack of humanity in attacking Koivu & Gainey is most disturbing. They're not alone.)

But when I suggest, based on their public comments since the elimination of the Canadiens, that Fournier and Company ought to be hauled away in a straitjacket, I'm reminded of a not-so-old clip that aired during the on-going Jose Theodore saga:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4EhYrt_zjM

Check out Ron about fifty seconds into the clip and tell me the man in the white suit isn't getting ready....

...And so it goes...

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/kurt_vonnegut/index.html?inline=nyt-per