Cherry hasn't used those terms for quite some time.
And you're correct, with him its the environment and culture, not the nationality.
when i said "chickens swedes" and "heartless russians," i wasn't referring only to cherry but to the larger canadian hockey establishment, for which these terms were once very prevalent. less so now, but then the hockey cultures that many european born and trained NHLers come from have significantly changed since the 80s and 90s. now cherry (among others) says "sweetheart," and that could just as easily refer to tim connolly as nik zherdev (i know connolly is american, but i can't think of a better example off the top of my head). not to say cherry doesn't still instinctively favour canadian players and give them the benefit of the doubt, but it's much less pronounced than it was fifteen years ago, during the alpo suhonen era (and yes, as someone above said, a lot of the anti-euro stuff was definitely related to "foreigners" coming in an stealing "our" jobs).
to be fair to cherry, he has backed off a lot. i've only lived in canada for two of the last 12 years, one of those was the lockout season, the other was last year. i was actually pretty surprised at how much cherry has toned the BS down since the last time i had watched coach's corner regularly, which was in 1999. he will say things like, "finnish players are more canadian than canadians," which seems to imply that when he says "canadian," it is no longer totally about the country itself, but about a way of playing hockey that he decided to call "canadian" somewhere along the way. yes, environment and culture, not (necessarily) nationality.
that said, the troops stuff still bugs me to an extent. honoring soldiers who gave their lives is one thing (though i'd argue that HNIC is neither the time nor the place), but he often goes much farther than that. certain things he said re: the war on terror is why they put him on a seven second delay ten years ago, right? i think in the end, cherry is a very nationalistic guy. his "with us or against us" rhetoric in relation to conservative politics and the armed forces strongly suggests this.
dennis bonvie rightly mentions above that with cherry a lot of the BS actually had a grounding in observable hockey facts, though i would add that the conclusions he used to draw from them weren't always necessarily fair or accurate. 2011 cherry, i think, has wisely learned to cut down on conflating his nationalism with hockey analysis, though in his political rants and "salt of the earth troops" stuff he has shown himself to be no less nationalistic.
so it's an objective fact that he's a great personality?
well, assuming that poster meant "cherry's a great personality
for tv whether you like him or not," then yes it is an objective fact. his ratings and unbelievable popularity among a huge sector of the canadian populace prove it.
i'd also add that strictly as a hockey guy, i enjoy and respect a good deal of cherry's insights. there is just a lot of baggage that goes along with it.