After not being in the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup playoffs since 2021 and lingering near the bottom of the table in the interval, the Montreal Canadiens have been facing off against the Washington Capitals in the first round of this year’s post-season. In order to support the home team, the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) had its buses display the exhorting sign “Go! Canadiens Go!” Until, that is, Quebec's French-language office received a complaint about the use of the anglicism “go.”
This despite the fact that
[t]he expression "Go Habs Go!" is used extensively in Quebec to support the Montreal hockey team. It is also used widely by the team itself, including on social media. The hashtag #GoHabsGo appears in oversized letters outside the Bell Centre in Montreal, the home arena of the Canadiens.(1)
The buses now sport signs that say “Allez! Canadiens Allez!”
The change has not improved the lot of the team, which trails (as of this writing) two games to none in the best of seven series.
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If the English language, a la Rodney Dangerfield, can’t get no respect north of the border, spare a thought for the six participants in the all-women Blue Origin flight. A New York Times newsletter asked, “Was the backlash against the all-women Blue Origin flight fair?”
Unfair, argued Vanessa O’Brien (Britain’s Times Radio):
The public is jealous of these women’s success and ignores the representation the flight offers to a younger generation. “The women are part of a generation that are breaking the norm, that are changing the traditional pathway to space.”
Yes, it was fair, claimed Kimberley Richards (HuffPost):
The event, framed as female empowerment, felt tone deaf as rich celebrities celebrated themselves in a climate where women’s rights are attacked. “White billionaire men using women to showcase their technological prowess … is completely cringe.”
Jenny G. Zhang in slate.com sides with Richards:
[T]he “historic” all-female Blue Origin space flight . . . took a crew of six women—including three very famous ladies—to suborbital space and back in less than 11 minutes on Monday.
The rocket trip has been the subject of criticism and ridicule this past week, particularly aimed at philanthropist Lauren Sánchez (better known as Jeff Bezos’ fiancée), journalist Gayle King (better known as Oprah’s best friend—sorry, Gayle, it’s true), and singer Katy Perry (better known as a current-day flop) for exhibiting astronomical levels of out-of-touchness in times that are best described as “troubled.” Even their fellow richies, including such celebrities as Olivia Munn, Olivia Wilde, and Emily Ratajkowski, have piled on calling the event “gluttonous” and “end times shit.”(2)
As for me, I have to ask, “How does 11 minutes in a metal tube, in which the women had no more agency than sardines in a can, represent a giant step for female empowerment?”
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Another woman who was disrespected this week was Charlie Javice, described as
the young, charismatic founder behind Frank, a fintech startup that promised to revolutionize the then-daunting student financial aid process.(3)
Javice sold her startup to JPMorgan Chase for $175 million. But beneath Javice’s business model were “fake user accounts and falsified data.” Eventually, the feds caught up to her, and in late March, Javice was convicted of fraud and conspiracy.
Poor fraudster Javice was so disrespected by the court that she has to wear an ankle monitor that, her attorney attempted to argue, “would prevent Javice from doing her current job: teaching Pilates in South Florida.”
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While we’re on the subject of financial miscreants, let’s note the following from The Economist: Pantelis Kazakis of the University of Glasgow “found that more intense nationalistic language is associated with greater levels of tax avoidance.”(4)
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(2) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/32-old-pilates-instructor-told-131500719.html
(3) https://slate.com/culture/2025/04/katy-perry-blue-origin-space-flight-gayle-king-lauren-sanchez.html
(4) https://www.economist.com/business/2025/04/03/does-it-pay-for-bosses-to-embrace-nationalism
