What has become of free speech and our ability to agree to disagree with one another? What happened to “I don’t like what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”?
That used to be the liberal standard.
Now, if you depart from the ever-changing requirements of the woke scolds, the mob attacks you and you lose your livelihood.
This has degraded our public institutions. Newspapers, according to Bari Weiss, choose and tell stories “in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences.”
How does this help the culture?
[Admin note: going forward, most P&C episodes will be private, and not available through libsyn. When they are available on libsyn, I’ll post them in this format.]
I think cancel culture is sort of an American tradition, but the level it is at now is ridiculous.
I have seen the news stories, HDL might remember, of John Lennon saying something like it seemed to him that the Beatles were bigger or more popular than Jesus at the time, and then all these people went nuts and started burning Beatles records and making threats on the lives of the Fab Four.
I remember the so called Moral Majority protesting 7-11 because they had Playboy behind the counter, and I remember a whole bunch of people protesting the Last Temptation of Christ movie.
But, whatever strain of cancel culture going around now is pretty sick. It’s why I post with a pseudonym on twitter and I try to limit any information that would identify me. The mob is out for blood. It’s nuts but you could lose your job for saying women don’t have penises. I attend an Orthodox parish. If I thought same sex marriage was permissible in the church, I’d become Episcopalian. I can’t even have conversations about it with some aunts. On the job, I only care if someone can do their job. We have had two gay guys in my office. One, I never even knew about until like 10 years later. I like the guy. He left two years ago but I’d recommend re-hiring him because he’s good at his job. But again, if I said I’m not in favor of same sex relations/marriage, I’d lose my job.
I guess you’ve probably lost two jobs for even less. It’s crazy.
The cancellations shift back and forth. Now they’re initiated by the right, now by the left. I totally remember when Americans, especially in the South, were burning Beatle records because John Lennon delivered the painful message that God is dead in the only way he knew how. Just a few years after that, Jim Morrison allegedly exposed himself at a concert in Miami, and as a result scheduled concerts by the Doors were being cancelled all over the country. Now we are getting abundant cancellations from the left. You can lose your job if you say that same-sex marriage is an abomination, but don’t forget that there was a time when you could lose more than job if it became known that you were gay. Cancel culture is definitely here to stay, but it can once again change its direction.
Indeed liberals have pushed the boundaries of “cancel culture”. Yet, I’d say the same applies to conservatives. For instance, we’ve had patrons destroying Keurig coffee machines after the company pulled ads from Hannity’s show. Fans destroyed Nike merchandise after they named Colin Kaepernick as a spokesperson, even having the POTUS weigh in on a failed attempt to disrupt their business. Trump encouraged NFL owners to fire players who took a knee. Twitter’s “Baked Alaska” urged their 123,000 followers to harass Starbucks baristas by writing “Trump” on their cups. Republicans who were not Trump supporters were labeled as the latest iteration of RINO. #DumpKellogg, sponsored by Breitbart, became a thing when Kellogg pulled ads from Breitbart. Oh yeah, who can forget all the uproar relative to Beyonce’s 2016 Superbowl halftime performance. Seems there was a bit of a kerfuffle after this year’s halftime show featuring J-Lo and Sakira.
That said, I feel liberals and conservatives should be free to express themselves as long as it doesn’t go to extremes. Yet, if “cancel culture” is to end, then conservatives will need to abide by the same rules they apply to liberals.
It’s not a liberal or a conservative thing. It’s intolerance, and both sides can be intolerant.
To get rid of cancel culture we need to re-establish the basic tolerance that a free, open and diverse society requires.
It’s indeed intolerance but it’s expressed and consumed through liberal and conservative means. For instance, if I go to The Daily Wire on ANY day, there’s sure to be “stories” about some “liberal” thing they are upset about versus general news without such political bias. The inverse is true when going to The Young Turks(TYT). They will be extremely focused on some “conservative” things and ranting incessantly about them.
I’m not sure how you get rid of cancel culture when much of the public gets their information within echo chambers that are bent on reinforcing liberal and conservative “mob” mentality. Case in point, we are in the midst of a global pandemic that has killed over 600,000 people globally and over 140,000 in the US. You’d think that would bring more tolerance and common focus. Nope. I guarantee if you spend a day consuming conservative views it will be substantially different than liberal views. Oddly, somehow the “other side” has become the intolerable thing, instead of the virus (which is the true threat). As long as that type of behavior is valued, cancel culture will remain….with the right blaming the left and vice-versa.
Fox News was born from a mentality that was cancelling the liberal media.
From what I see on Youtube, Fox is continues with its attack on liberals. But liberal outlets are more and more concentrating their attacks on Trump, sometimes with some support from disgruntled conservatives who don’t regard him as a true conservative. The old opposition of liberal vs. conservative seems to be replaced with anti-Trump vs. pro-Trump. Who the hell knows where that will go? But cancel culture will remain, whatever changes arise in the near future.
*Fox continues with its attack
QUOTE: Fox News was born from a mentality that was cancelling the liberal media. From what I see on Youtube, Fox continues with its attack on liberals.
Albeit both sides play this game, Fox and their Opinion Klan (e.g., Pirro, Ingram, Hannity, Carlson) seem toxically tribal. For instance:
* Ingram indicated sports figures LeBron James and Kevin Durant should “shut up and dribble”, when it comes to expressing political views. Yet, relative to sports figure Drew Brees said…“well, he’s allowed to have his view about what kneeling and the flag means to him. I mean, he’s a person. He has some worth, I imagine. I mean, this is beyond football, though. This is totalitarian conduct. This is Stalinist.” Was she being totalitarian and/or Stalinist when she directed James and Durant to “shut up and dribble”?
* Hannity promulgated a false narrative about a murdered DNC staffer, Seth Rich, who was alleged to be responsible for hacking DNC servers and sharing info with Wikileaks. Fox News issued a retraction to the story saying it didn’t meet their network standards. Hannity did not apologize or say the story was wrong. Imagine having a slain relative being the subject of such “fake news”. Seems a Federal appeals court ruled Seth Rich’s family could sue Fox News for emotional distress and other harm.
*Carlson’s former head writer, Blake Neff, was involved in some nasty online shenanigans that was described by Fox executives like this…“We want to make absolutely clear that Fox News Media strongly condemns this horrific racist, misogynistic, and homophobic behavior…” Yet, Carlson in his review, didn’t have such strong condemnation. In fact, he went after those who felt Neff’s “resignation” was justified. Interestingly, he began a “long-planned” vacation after this kerfuffle started. Hmmm.
*Pirro was suspended after she questioned Rep. Ilhan Omar’s patriotism because she wears a hijab. Seems executive management wasn’t too happy with her. They said…“We strongly condemn Jeanine Pirro’s comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar. They do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly.”
*Trish Regan was pulled from her prime-time slot on Fox Business Network after calling Covid-19 an “impeachment scam”.
Given this and other issues, I guess it made sense for Fox News to drop the “fair and balance” tag line.
Most of these outrageous behaviors that we have seen from Fox stem from their relentless support of Trump. The net effect of such support could be very damaging to that network, just as the criticism of Trump could ultimately enhance the credibility to the liberal media. After all, they do not have to make stuff up against him. He constantly provides them with rich material for their critique. If Trump gets cancelled, Fox runs the risk of getting cancelled too.
These days, Fox’s problem is apparently relentless support of Trump. Before, it was reflexive opposition to Obama. Before that, I seem to remember people claiming it was their support of Bush. During all this time, Fox has seemed to, you know, somehow struggle along.
> The net effect of such support could be very damaging to that network, just as the criticism of Trump could ultimately enhance the credibility to the liberal media.
“Ultimately” in the sense that maybe ultimately the realization that letting your hatred drive you to believe in even the manifestly silliest conspiracy theories is a bad thing, leading to the saner members of the centre-left reevaluating their journalistic policies? Maybe, but I suspect that will require a whole chair of happy events to occur, none of which seems likely in themselves, much less combined.
I am only talking about the trajectory that is now presenting itself. I am not saying that the outcome will be good or bad in the final analysis, as I have no particular attachment to any of the media outlets and certainly not to any of outlandish conspiracy theories. The events that are unfolding before us will in fact be unhappy for the people at large, given almost any plausible configuration, but definitely bad for Fox. Of course it can reinvent itself, as it has in the past (by dropping such clowns as Beck and O’Reilly, for instance). As things stand at the moment, however, they need to scrape the bottom of the barrel to defend Trump. Their so-called “conservativism” is morphing into something else, which they will no doubt still call “conservative,” while the liberal media will not have any need to become something else.
PS Please note that I am dealing in hypotheses. I have noticed on Facebook that people of a lower intellectual order (like my redneck cousins amid all their word salad) cannot distinguish between a hypothesis and a prophecy.
Hmm…if cancel culture can play a part in reforming the likes of the “Opinion Klan” at Fox News, then maybe it can have “some” positive utility within the culture. Somewhat like #metoo. Albeit the movement ran amuck from its initial stated purpose, it served to expose and bring to justice creeps like Harvey Weinstein and Dr. Larry Nassar. Maybe there is a silver lining in some dark clouds?
This is interesting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/opinion/sunday/harpers-letter-free-speech.html
Good article! Kudos to NYT for publishing an article that could potentially offend many of their constituents. Some outlets might not take such an approach.
The article aptly called out the offenses of liberals, relative to cancel culture and free speech. It’s getting to the point, in some circles, that the idea of “thought police” is more than a metaphor. Also notable was the article’s honest critique of conservative offenses. For example, the author stated… The same is happening today; the president throws tantrums about “cancel culture” while regularly trying to use the power of the state to quash speech he dislikes. Because Trump poisons everything he touches, his movement’s hypocritical embrace of the mantle of free speech threatens to devalue it, turning it into the rhetorical equivalent of “All Lives Matter.” As I said previously, both sides play this game and then accuse the other of being the guilty party.
That said, the author made a relevant point in stating…None of this is an argument for a totally laissez-faire approach to speech; some ideas should be stigmatized.