Jeff Douglas and the lesson of renown.

• Author: ATKINS, MICHAEL
• Position: Brief Article

I note Jeff Douglas has decamped for Hollywood. This would normally be about as newsworthy as paint drying. Actually it is as newsworthy as paint drying, but there is no accounting for the paucity of news in Canada in February.

The National Post, with increasingly desperate attempts to find readers and e-mail addresses, has turned Jeff's pilgrimage into a Web convergence strategy not unlike Stock Day (speaking of paint drying) of Doris Day fame.

You see, little Jeff Douglas is of the famous Molson commercial "My name is Joe, and I am Canadian."

You might recall Jeff getting worked up into a frenzy talking about peacekeeping, not policing, the beaver as a "noble" animal, (yep that's what it said) a toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch, zeds not zees and of course the bit about being the "first nation of hockey" which it seems is wearing a little thin. All in aid of selling a little beer.

In any event, it turns out that before the royalties are dry Jeff is off to seek his fortune in what he believes to be the second best part of North

America where the beavers are a little less noble, a couch is a couch, policing is an everyday thing and your first right is to own a hand gun, not a puck.

Speaking of Canadians, we learn this week that Molson is thinking of selling the Canadiens to the Americans. My guess is they will be yanking the old "I am Canadian Commercial" pretty quickly if successful in unloading this money-losing Canadian institution, no matter what Jeff is doing.

So is there anything to learn for all of this?

Yea.

The first lesson of course is that business is business, and a professional sport is all business, and don't you forget it.

Molson doesn't care any more about Canada than the next commercial. Their mission is to sell beer. Beer is beer. We drink marketing, not taste. All the same, even though I thought the commercial was pathetic, I find it irksome that a company that would trade on our nationalistic sentiments one minute and contemplate selling the Canadiens hockey club to an American the next minute to be, well, hypocritical.

Molson will pay a price for the sale if they go through with it, but on the other hand, they might consider a new ad campaign across the border called I am from Rochester, and I am an American" - which of course would only mean something to real hockey fans.

But I digress.

Does any of this matter...