On "Cancel Culture"

Chris Hayes↱, via Twitter:

It remains bizarre to me that the entire discourse around speech, offense, taboos, accountability etc seems to completely ignore that we had an *extremely* similar set of debates about this in 1990s around "political correctness." It was a whole thing!

Not that the lesson there is dispositive in any particular direction or for any particular case but it's very strange to me that no one ever seems to reference these (very similar) debates in this conversation.​

____________________

Notes

@chrislhayes. "It remains bizarre to me that the entire discourse around speech, offense, taboos, accountability etc seems to completely ignore that we had an *extremely* similar set of debates about this in 1990s around 'political correctness.' It was a whole thing!" Twitter. (Thread) 25 February 2021. Twitter.com. 25 February 2021. https://bit.ly/3qUjYgN

 

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I have given this problem a lot of thought over the period, James. What was it you said↗ to someone, not so long ago? "You shouldn't tell lies," you told someone. "Didn't your Mom teach you not to tell lies?" you taunted, even advising, "Be aware that if you keep telling lies, there might be consequences," and, sure, whatever. But tell us, James, what consequences would you face for lying?

So, after this time, let's take a moment to rewind: See #130↑ and 139↑ for background; I responded to the latter, including in my consideration what you posted in the former, and advised nobody says you have to coddle, nurture, protect, or encourage "evil speech". And then I went on with a comparison, observing that, as a practical matter, it's not exactly funny watching you hand out infractions for use of this word or that while going out of your way to cover for white supremacism.

So, here we go:

Tiassa: Like, as a practical matter, it's not exactly funny watching you hand out infractions for use of this word or that while going out of your way to cover for white supremacism. (#149↑)

James R: As usual, you make false allegations and you provide no evidence. Those kinds of personal attacks are why I have lost respect for you. (#151↑)

Tiassa: Infraction for this or that word: See #3616722↗. (#157↑)

James R: It's kind of ironic that you're complaining about my asterisking out of the word "n****r" in reported post, given the exchange I've just had with Bells. (#162↑)​

What stands out, even these weeks later, is the stupid blatancy of it. The question was handing out infractions for this word or that. You put on a moralizing complaint about a lack of evidence, adding, "Those kinds of personal attacks are why I have lost respect for you." But there was evidence, so I handed it to you. And then you went and made believe in order to hide behind someone else.

Quite clearly, the record shows it wasn't about "asterisking out". It was about infractions. And when you were handed evidence, you raised a straw man and then whined, "I don't know what your complaint is about that, exactly."

Your dishonesty is disruptive James.

Additionally, it is worth observing #139↑, which had a lot to say about words, because you carried it over from a mod discussion, and no, I don't actually object that you did so. However, I would remind what you were responding to in the mod lounge, which was a recollection of your pretense that, in the usual course of things, the members here are adults, capable for the most part of having a discussion or debate without having to be specially shielded from the possibility of being triggered and suffering lasting emotional harm. You, James, are ostensibly an adult, and in the usual course of things ought not need to be specially shielded against the emotional harm of countenancing reality; don't go hiding behind other people like that; Bells is not your shield.

So, yeah, what was it you said to someone, not so long ago? "You're supposed to be an adult. Grow up."

 

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Substack and Complaint

Last year, several prominent journalists publicly broke away from their news media outlets, pursuing independence by publishing a Substack newsletter. Some prominent examples stand out: Glenn↑ Greenwald↑ left The Intercept, last year, in melodramatic style, and went to Substack; Bari↑ Weiss↑ quit the New York Times, apparently because she perceived excess disapprobation from colleagues about her pro-Nazi articles, and published a Substack newsletter; Andrew Sullivan quit New York magazaine because his staff and management, in his words, "no longer want to associate with me". None of these notorious victims of "cancel culture" were actually cancelled; they pre-emptively cancelled themselves.

Meanwhile, over at Substack, Analee Newitz↱ reflects on "why Substack's scam worked so well". Part of the answer is pretty straightforward: "They paid a secret group of writers to make newsletter authorship seem lucrative."

As you may already know, Substack is a tool for publishing email newsletters like this one. The idea is that anyone can start a newsletter, using Substack's (very nice) interface, and we have the option to charge subscribers. Substack advertises itself as a tool, an app, that functions like a marketplace. Using the app, readers can find topics of interest, and creators can get compensated for the labor we put into our creations. All that Substack asks is for a percentage of our subscription income, to pay for maintaining the site, support, etc. Honestly, a fair deal.

Except Substack is not merely an app. It's actually a publication. Why do I say that? Because Substack's leadership pays a secret, select group of people to write for the platform. They call this group of writers the "Substack Pro" group, and they are rewarded with "advances" that Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie calls "an upfront sum to cover their first year on the platform [that's] more attractive to a writer than a salary, so they don't have to stay in a job (or take one) that's less interesting to them than being independent." In other words, it's enough money to quit their day jobs. They also get exposure through Substack's now-considerable online reach.

By doing this, Substack is creating a de facto editorial policy. Their leadership—let's call them editors—are deciding what kinds of writing and writers are worthy of financial compensation. And you don't know who those people are. That's right—Substack is taking an editorial stance, paying writers who fit that stance, and refusing to be transparent about who those people are. Hamish writes:

We don't disclose the names of the writers with whom we've done deals because it is their private information and up to them whether or not they want it publicly known.​

He makes it sound like this is about protecting writers' anonymity, but it's not. Substack could easily allow their writers to publish anonymously, but still identify them by the names of their publications​

Here is a contrast from American history: In my lifetime, the idea that women should be allowed to have jobs, own property, or have a say in when they have sex with whom, has resulted in high-profile public denunciations of "feminazis". And while our cultural history includes rules like the Godwin Corrolary, which denounces specious Nazi rhetoric, those rules never really applied to how we treat women. And if part of our societal response was to tell feminists to not be so bitchy, demanding, bossy, or otherwise unladylike, that is what it is, and neither has our American culture escaped that territory. Still, though, we might consider the contemporary juxtaposition: A Jewish woman writing propaganda sympathizing with Nazis is distressed that friends and colleagues, Jewish or otherwise, criticize and wonder why, and this time our hearts are supposed to bleed? Look, it's not that anyone needs to call her names; that's still as wrong as it ever was, but the juxtaposition really is that straightforward: Our society has sympathized with denouncing the human rights of women as some manner of Nazi terror, and is also expected to feel sorry for the Jewish writer who is upset that the people might criticize her Nazi sympathies. What stands out is the underlying traditionalist expectation: The complaint against feminazis would put women back in their proverbial place°, while the complaint on behalf of the Nazi sympathizer would sympathize with white—and, inherently, male—supremacism, including the genocidal. This is what stands out about the complaint against cancel culture: Its functional role in the discussion of censorship is to empower traditional authority, including censorship.

And that last would be a messy enough discussion, any day, but as we learn that some prominent promotion of the cancel culture complaint might have been paid, something about that prospect just isn't surprising.

As Zack Beauchamp↱ considered, last year, of high-profile self-cancellations:

Both Weiss and Sullivan are frequent critics of the modern left's position on identity issues; in their departure letters, they both describe their publications as in thrall to a rising tide of left-wing censorship sweeping the country's media.

"A critical mass of the staff and management at New York magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me," Sullivan wrote on Friday. "They seem to believe, and this is increasingly the orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same virtual space."

Sullivan and Weiss are hardly the only ones concerned about this problem. Before them, there was the now-infamous letter in Harper's defending free speech, signed by figures ranging from Salman Rushdie to Margaret Atwood to Noam Chomsky (Weiss was also a signatory, as was Vox's Matt Yglesias). Before the Harper's letter, there was Hopkins professor Yascha Mounk's creation of a new publication, called Persuasion, that stands against what Mounk sees as rising left-wing illiberalism.

These critics are, in general, very sloppy with their terms.

Abstract appeals to "free speech" and "liberal values" obscure the fact that what's being debated is not anyone's right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times without fear of social backlash.​

The next sentence really does go, "Yet virtually everyone agrees that certain speakers—neo-Nazis, for example—do not deserve a column in the paper of record." And there it is. This is what Weiss' complaint against cancel culture serves. Jacob Hamburger↱ noted, in 2018, in considering the "Intellectual Dark Web" of self-described "renegades": "According to the Times writer Bari Weiss, most emphasize the biological differences between men and women, a feeling that free speech is 'under siege,' and a fear that 'identity politics' is a threat to the United States's social fabric." There was nothing new about it a then, nor when, "Mathematician and financier Eric Weinstein coined the term intellectual dark web, and he meant to point out not that this group is obscure—it isn't—but that its figures all pride themselves on upturning conventional beliefs."

And it is, in its proverbial way, always heroic language: "The movement," Hamburger explained, "sees itself as an alliance that defies established political categories in order to defend [certain controversial] ideas against the creeping influence of thought control". But it is in resolving that variable that we come back to a question of function: What controversial ideas? In its moment, the list included bellcurve IQ racism, the evils of "postmodern neo-Marxism" in universities, and transgender exclusion. Politically, as Hamburger considers, a comparison of old and new "suggests that the 'iconoclastic' ideas of [IDW] figures are actually a well-established institution in American discourse: an institution whose home is on the political right".

But even more than the political label, the underlying function of these renegades for freedom is to disrupt the progress of equality and freedom.

Compared to an abstract appeal to free speech, what is the purpose of which avenue for expression? A newspaper of record, for instance, is not necessarily in the business of promoting crackpottery widely known to be dangerous. Even a book publisher is generally a business first, and subordinates its other priorities accordingly. Compared to a basic right of free speech, the demand for prestige and praise seems fundamental to the complaint against cancel culture. And inasmuch as we're discussing business and convoluted pretenses of free speech, no, the idea that last year's cancel culture dustup resulting in high-profile migrations to Substack turned out to be a calculated PR stunt ought not surprise anyone.
____________________

° Or, as Nazis put it, KKK, "Kinder, Küche, Kirche"; that is, children, kitchen, church.​

 

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Works Cited for #203↑ Above

Beauchamp, Zack. "The 'free speech debate' isn't really about free speech". Vox. 22 July 2020. Vox.com. 25 March 2021. http://bit.ly/2NtYlp9

Hamburger, Jacob. "The 'Intellectual Dark Web' Is Nothing New". Los Angeles Review of Books. 18 July 2018. LAReviewOfBooks. 25 March 2021. http://bit.ly/2zP6VXX

Newitz, Annalee. "Here's why Substack's scam worked so well". The Hypothesis. 17 March 2021. TheHypothesis.Substack.com. 25 March 2021. http://bit.ly/3r65UjS

 

[1/2]​

Journalist Elizabeth Spiers↱ observes via Twitter that the "only cancel culture example anyone produces" keeps coming up "because cancel culture is not a real thing." If we wish to be particular, she continues, "There is no systemic overreaction."

There is an article↱ to go with that, arising from the Seuss cacophony. The actual "cancel" question about six Seuss titles is easily enough resolved: "I would hope that my literary executor," Spiers writes, "would work to pull anything I wrote that would make me look like a giant asshole in the face of changing norms, particularly if what I wrote was somehow helping small children to internalize racist stereotypes."

However:

There is a second discussion, and one that I think is legitimate and not more disingenuous whining about "cancel culture" (which is now apparently defined as any sort of consequences for displays of bigotry that happen to be driven by social opprobrium) about the extent to which monopolistic distribution of speech determines what acceptable speech is.​

The parenthetic note does not observe any innovative realization, but, rather, describes a fairly normalized circumstance: There is a longstanding complaint, reaching back through cancellation, deplatforming, silencing, intellectual renegades relegated to a dark web, and other lamentations on back at least to the bigots' bawl against political correctness. While Spiers would hope to focus on questions of platform distribution, we first "have to walk through the 'cancel culture' hysteria because I think the two issues are politically correlated."

Spiers walks through three questions: "First: what is actually happening to these books?"

The chain of events is not really in dispute: the Seuss Estate decided to discontinue its publication of six (6) books out of the sixty plus Seuss wrote because they contained images that would now be understood to be racist. Seuss/Geisel himself regretted them in later years and said so, so the estate is presumably respecting the wishes of the author as they understand them, and also making a rational business decision not to publish six very minor titles that could alienate Seuss audiences.

In the wake of this, eBay decided to delist re-sales of the six offending titles, and Amazon will no longer distribute them, either.​

This telling contrasts with dramatic right-wing and anti-liberal complaints, but the histrionics of the whining about cancel culture often, even prevailingly, overstate the circumstance.

But the next question runs, "Is this 'cancellation'?" What follows are three important paragraphs:

I'm on record saying … that "cancel culture" is not a thing that exists. I think this is true because "culture" implies some sort of systemic phenomenon where being cancelled (which is also apparently defined primarily as losing one's employment or dominant revenue stream) is happening regularly and universally.

The now infamous Anti Cancel Culture Letter of 2020 alleged that this was a systemic problem and a threat to free speech (in the colloquial sense, not in the First Amendment sense, which is about state intervention) but could not offer any systemic evidence that it was. In the wake of it, people pointed to everything from Bari Weiss's voluntary resignation from The New York Times to a white woman's Internet virality because she called the police on a Black man … knowing it would put him at risk for police violence as "evidence", but none of these cases are about inexplicable firing to stifle speech. The was only one situation that seemed even remotely to fit the supposed definition of suffering unjust professional consequences for reasonable, if unpopular speech. The only example that seemed to fit was the firing of David Shor from Civis Analytics, and I'll admit, I still don't understand what happened there. It does seem unreasonable to me.

But there's a reason people keep bringing up Shor's case: it's the only one that really matches the criteria. It's not even anecdata; it's anecdatum. Which is a pretty heavy indictment of the idea that this phenomenon is systemic in any way. If something is systemic, it's something that happens with some regularity, not such a rarity that you can only think of one example that fits the supposed parameters.​

The murky details of the Shor case are the reason why Spiers uses a modifier like "remotely", or describes what "seemed" to fit certain criteria; it could be straightforward, or it could be a mess. Without the details, we have an abstract question of free speech juxtaposed against what seems some manner of question about professionalism and the company.

Spiers, in moving on to consider the question of self-cancellation—

I think it goes without saying that self-cancellation doesn't happen. (Unless you count resigning from your job in a huff because your colleagues think you're a jerk and have said so, and then claiming that it's because you have radically conservative views even though you're to the left of some of your colleagues who have not experienced this problem, not that I'm thinking of anyone in particular.) Cancellation is involuntary, and if you decide to discontinue distribution of your own speech, well, that's a decision you make.

There are some people who believe that this is not okay either if they think your ideas still have some value. This idea was expressed indirectly by Conor Friedersdorf, a writer for The Atlantic who is part of a constellation of writers I've begun to think of as IDW-adjacent anti-"cancel culture" specialists who believe that progressive pushback on bigotries of all stripes is a de facto stifling of speech ....​

—hits the mark, as any observant and thoughtful consideration of this history will, the "anti-'cancel culture'" argument that "progressive pushback on bigotries of all stripes is a de facto stifling of speech". Friedersdorf (qtd. in Spiers), "would like publishers to suffer a reputational hit when they remove problematic titles … because if the latter standard prevails many thousands of novels are going to be taken out of print, and I'm against that". Spiers observes:

Some irony here: Friedersdorf thinks publishers who decide to discontinue publication of books (which they do all the time, in the course of normal business, which is why backlist titles are sometimes hard to find in print) should face… professionally damaging social opprobrium. Even though he typically opposes professionally damaging social opprobrium.​

To be clear: I would like to think Conor Friedersdorf capable of discerning certain basic differences. Which many thousands of novels will be going out of print because they are problematic, compared to the many thousands not in print because publishers don't project a profit? Spiers is not alone in perceiving a problem about "helping small children to internalize racist stereotypes". Seuss, on eyes at a slant, is a far different question than any number of those novels Friedersdorf fears for. There is a difference between If I Ran the Zoo, and a Mack Bolan novel.

It's much akin to a fallacy that runs, approximately: Suppose we ban all discussion of [_____]. Then how are we going to meaningfully discuss [related] matters? Are we just going to ignore an important facet because we've decided that [_____] is unmentionable?

Because if you press the people who shovel such fallacies, they say something like: It would be one way to solve the problem of anything with a whiff of [_____]. And maybe it's a blunt instrument that someone wouldn't advocate, but why raise the question in the first place? I would like to think such advocates are actually capable of discerning certain basic differences. But then there arises a question of why they would push a fallacy they don't actually support.

Which brings us back around to Spiers on Friedersdorf:

Friedersdorf is also making an argument (maybe unintentionally) that publishers have an obligation to keep books like the six Seuss titles in print, even to the potential detriment of their business, given evolving social norms and correlative consumer demand. A kind of socialist program for the distribution of bigoted literature, I guess.​

There is something here both strange and not, but has to do with the advancement of harm, a notion that everything we do need somehow advance a certain range of harm, or else someone is somehow harmed.

It even comes up as Spiers considers Amazon, the marketplace, and the libertarian politics of monopoly, "as another example of the right twisting itself into pretzels to justify the continued distribution of bigoted speech in particular, at the expense of other principles they supposedly hold dear". Moreover, she explains, "the only consistent application of principle I've seen is the basic essence of conservatism: a determination to conserve a particular value or institution."

What they want to conserve in the case of Dr. Seuss is not unrelated: they do not want social norms around race to be more stringent than what they were in the past. If If I Ran The Zoo was okay fifty years ago, what does it mean that it's not now?

Deep down conservatives know the answer to this and don't fully object to it. You don't see them arguing anymore that publishers resurrect Little Black Sambo. They know there's a line somewhere.

They just don't like that other people might determine where that line is.​

 

[2/2]​

The thing about that line is conservatives would argue for Little Black Sambo if they thought there was votes in it; it's a pseudocapitalistic consideration. They observe such lines that challenge their aesthetics, but seem angry at any whiff of obligation or wisdom about doing so.

A summary drawn per Spiers:

• "Cancel culture is not a real thing … There is no systemic overreaction."

• "'cancel culture' … apparently defined as any sort of consequences for displays of bigotry that happen to be driven by social opprobrium"

• "'Cancel culture' is not a thing that exists … because 'culture' implies some sort of systemic phenomenon where being cancelled (which is also apparently defined primarily as losing one's employment or dominant revenue stream) is happening regularly and universally".

• "a constellation of writers … IDW-adjacent anti-'cancel culture' specialists who believe that progressive pushback on bigotries of all stripes is a de facto stifling of speech"

• "an argument … that publishers have an obligation to keep [controversial] titles in print"

• "another example of the right twisting itself into pretzels to justify the continued distribution of bigoted speech in particular, at the expense of other principles they supposedly hold dear"

• "the only consistent application of principle … is the basic essence of conservatism: a determination to conserve a particular value or institution"

• "[Conservatives] do not want social norms around race to be more stringent than what they were in the past … They know there's a line somewhere. They just don't like that other people might determine where that line is."​

To the one, it's an impressive heap; to the other, there isn't actually a lot new about it, because discussion of cancel culture is going to keep coming back to these points until they are reasonably and functionally addressed. Look at #203↑ above, in order to add Hamburger, 2018—IDW arguments "actually a well-established institution in American discourse: an institution whose home is on the political right"—and Beauchamp, 2021—"Abstract appeals to 'free speech' and 'liberal values' obscure the fact that what's being debated is not anyone's right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times without fear of social backlash."

I've even had discussions like this in my own circles. This guy I know once went off about ... well, actually, see #12↑ above. It's one thing to describe his screed being at more at home on the American right, but he has spent years reciting the rightist-libertarian litany, and still puts up a pretense of resenting any whiff of the most obvious implications. And there are actually a few ways to tell that story, and on this occasion, it's true the sum effect—not really being about just one word, or even interpreting in the worst possible context, or the coincidence of circumstances—really does read like the right to freedom from social backlash or disapprobation; that is to say, the right to say bigoted and stupid things in public without anyone criticizing the bigotry.

I have a joke that says there is a reason the left doesn't complain about cancel culture; we just call it censorship. The reason Beauchamp, Hamburger, Spiers, or any number of others see conservatism, rightism, and anti-liberalism in the complaint against cancel culture, and its station in the history of this discourse over a period of at least several decades, is this is where the argument goes. What these appeals against political correctness, lamentations of silencing, and complaints against cancel culture have in common is their institutional, traditionalist sympathies; they are counter-revolutionary at best. What this implies of their function is that they perpetuate oppression and suppression; what they complain is curtailed is actually the power to silence or harm others.
____________________

Notes:

@espiers. "I wrote here about why David Shor is the only convincing example anyone produces because cancel culture is not a thing. There is no systemic overreaction." Twitter. 21 March 2021. Twitter.com. 28 March 2021. https://bit.ly/3vURLJG

Beauchamp, Zack. "The 'free speech debate' isn't really about free speech". Vox. 22 July 2020. Vox.com. 28 March 2021. http://bit.ly/2NtYlp9

Hamburger, Jacob. "The 'Intellectual Dark Web' Is Nothing New". Los Angeles Review of Books. 18 July 2018. LAReviewOfBooks. 28 March 2021. http://bit.ly/2zP6VXX

Spiers, Elizabeth. "Selectively Fettered Capitalism". My New Band Is. 11 March 2021. MyNewBandIs.Substack.com. 28 March 2021. http://bit.ly/3ceNxEV

Yglesias, Matthew. "The real stakes in the David Shor saga". Vox. 29 July 2020. Vox.com. 28 March 2021. http://bit.ly/2Pjws3V

 

Cancel Question in Real Time

So, the one and only Rick Santorum, former U.S. Senator, Republican from Pennsylvania, now a media pundit for CNN, got up in front of a right-wing youth outreach and said↱, "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture."

And as the reactions murmur and mumble about, twitterati cannot help but remind he is a paid CNN hand.

The implication seems clear, but actual questions of cancellation should not presume all else is equal. To wit, there are plenty of former members of Congress we don't hear from as part of our everyday news and information discussion, and Santorum's continued relevance, influence, and even pretense of decency, depend in significant part on his celebrity. The question seems clear: At what point does empowering Santorum's celebrity mean CNN is taking a side?

And if CNN is okay with that, it's not like they haven't taken sides before. But the next question, then, would be what it means. And let's be clear: This a former U.S. Senator, given a comparatively rare platform of voice and influence; he's also someone who uses his celebrity to stand in front of youth organizations and recite white supremacist disinformation; and now there is a seemingly obvious question of whether CNN wants to be seen empowering his celebrity and pretense of credibility.

But the question is afoot right now, and, frankly, it seems unlikely this bit of frothy excrement will be what finally stains Santorum so badly that CNN would scrub him from the roster. He was crazy and hateful when they signed him, so they can't really say they didn't know what they were getting into.°

Additionally, we should forestall certain sniffy pretenses about making a living; Santorum runs a political consultancy, and far from discouraging his clients, spreading racist propaganda is the kind of thing some of them actually want him to do, so he'll keep getting paid reasonably well to do just that. After all, it wasn't just his CNN celebrity that got him the YAF gig; there are plenty of famous people on CNN we don't see getting inivited to stoke right-wing youth with white supremacist lies. Rick Santorum is well-known to be both supremacist and batshit, and he still built a lucrative career after the Senate.

And, for the moment, it's the kind of thing CNN wants around as part of its brand.
____________________

Notes:

° Right? I mean, it's not like Santorum's excremental rhetoric passed muster because it was somehow rude to call hate, supremacism, and bigotry by their names. I mean, everyone knew he was that awful the whole time, right? And that's why he was voted into the U.S. Senate, because enough people liked it, right, so it would be rude to call all them supremacists just because they share those hateful, bigoted, supremacist beliefs, because no intelligent, professionally trained reporter, or anyone else, for that matter, could possibly have figured out that he really was a hateful, bigoted supremacist?​

@JasonSCampbell. "CNN's Rick Santorum: 'We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture'". Twitter. 26 April 2021. Twitter.com. 26 April 2021. https://bit.ly/3ewsPjT

 

One reason I admire mathematics is that words like cancel are well-defined; you don't get to kick the meaning of cancel around.

Just sayin'

 

At some point—

Ken Buck: "Liz didn't agree with President Trump's narrative and she was cancelled."

(Matt Fuller↱)​

—it occurs to wonder if the Distinguished Gentleman from Colorado Four, Mr. Buck, actually understands what he just said.

Or, as Shiner↱ explained, "These people are truly the most idiotic idiots."
____________________

Notes:

@MEPFuller. "Ken Buck: 'Liz didn't agree with President Trump's narrative and she was cancelled.'" Twitter. 12 May 2021. Twitter.com. 12 May 2021. https://bit.ly/3o9Cnpk

@meredithshiner. "These people are truly the most idiotic idiots." Twitter. 12 May 2021. Twitter.com. 12 May 2021. https://bit.ly/33AG3ag

 

What It's Not

If, for instance, a room just feels so hostile that I don't want to do my white-supremacist revolutionary anthem joke, it's not cancel culture. See, in comedy, timing is everything, and if you're in a room with such slender chance that anyone will actually get the joke, there just isn't going to be a right time. This isn't cancel culture; it's just a shitbrick stupid audience.

(See what I did, there?)

Moreover, we might also say it's not really cancel culture if an obscure joke based on something the audience just doesn't understand does not make any sort of useful political argument.

 

You're right. That's not cancel culture. Cancel culture is people trying to deprive you of your livelihood, even if they aren't your audience at all.

 

Unless those people are Republicans, in which case an entirely different vocabulary is brought in to describe depriving fellow citizens of their livelihoods for not having the politically correct (corporate rightwing authoritarian, race and gender bigotries favored but optional) attitude.

Such as by kneeling down at the wrong time and with the wrong skin color, during a football game.

Or hadn't you noticed that the libertarian left (the majority ideology of the US citizenry, the ideology of the US Constitution) has all but vanished from the news and analysis TV shows, or that more recently a pack of Republican fringe pundits has been hired and paid big bucks to present a carefully edited and authoritarian-compatible version of some of the views and analyses the lefties and liberals have been trying to get on TV for decades. The lefty and liberal pundits have not been paid, of course, despite decades of demonstrated superiority in analysis and ability to draw audience (the reasons they are being plagiarized now): they have been deprived of their livelihood by the influence of the American must-not-be-named political movement that we have seen filibustering its own proposed legislation for incremental gains in personal power - talk about hardcore cancelling - - -.

 

The fact that Colin kapernick got ran out of the league and Tim Tebow got another shot at the nfl is one of the barest examples of the privilege white straight Christian rightwing people are given in the us.

 

Really? Can you give us all a comparison of Kaepernick's and Tebow's career accomplishments?

 

https://stathead.com/football/pcm_finder.cgi?player_id2=TeboTi00&player_id1=KaepCo00&sum=0&request=1

this basically sums it up along with the Tim Tebow tightend experience.

speaking to the triple t experience for tebow to get his shot to embarrass himself some other guy who may have actually made the jags roster didn't get a chance. the only reason tebow got his tightend fantasy was because urban meyer is a dumbass and the jags orginization loved all the rightwing christian morons who would buy his jersey because they've convinced themselves he got ran out of the league for his faith and not that he was dogshit at the nfl level.

 

Cancel Culture Strikes Again: "Russia is being canceled"

Of all the rightist appeals against "cancel culture", former Trump administration public affairs hand and career Fox News talker Monica Crowley sets the latest low bar, lamenting that "Russia is being canceled."

Look, Russia is now being canceled. Right? I mean, between the fierce Ukranian resistance, and the widespread international financial sanctions and boycotts, and Russian teams being barred from international competitions, Russia is being canceled.

(qtd. in @NikkiMcR↱)​

The thing is, she's not joking. It's not irony. She really is arguing that the Ukranian resistance is an example of cancellation.

Even more, this comes shortly after white supremacist Republican candidate Wendy Rogers↱ complained that, "The West is trying to deplatform and debank Russia. This is just as wrong as invading Ukraine."

What, you don't remember "deplatforming"? It was an almost immediate predecessor to "cancel culture", when rightist personalities like Milo, or Sargon, lost monetization access to particular websites like YouTube.

After hearing so much about "cancel culture" over the last couple years, we might wonder if those who complained are even a little bit embarrassed about what they decided to be a part of.

I mean, come on, it's not like we couldn't see it back then. It's been this way for thirty years, at least.
____________________

Notes:

@NikkiMcR. "'Russia is being canceled'". Twitter. 1 March 2022. Twitter.com. 1 March 2022. https://bit.ly/3ICbNic

@WendyRogersAZ. "The West is trying to deplatform and debank Russia. This is just as wrong as invading Ukraine." Twitter. 27 February 2022. Twitter.com. 1 March 2022. https://bit.ly/3K9xPsV

 

You're damn right. You come to my house and try to take it from me, I'll cancel you right quick.

 

(hightlight mine)

Now that was a perfect example of Cancelling an entire 6000 year old culture.

I bet Santorum doesn't even know that parts of the US Constitution are based on The Great Law of the 5 Iroquois Nation Confederacy.

from "IROQUOIS GREAT LAW OF PEACE" Pre-history Translated by Arthur C. Parker

.....more
https://p12cdn4static.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_520401/File/Departments/Curriculum & Instruction/ELA/Non-Fiction Texts/Iroquois Great Law of Peace.pdf

 

Quiet Part Loud (Proudfoolery)

A local tale:

On Saturday afternoon KOMO poverty porn reporter Jonathan Choe tweeted out a soft-focus montage of a Proud Boys rally in Olympia and advertised a Q&A session the hate group planned to hold afterward as if he were talking about some kind of humanitarian organization ....

.... He added to the montage's recruitment energy when he — or whoever made the video — decided to set it to a ballad called "We'll Have Our Home Again," which was written and recorded by a member of the The Mannerbund, a group The Jewish News of Northern California described as “a white separatist, ethno-nationalist men’s club.” In the YouTube comments for the song, the writer describes himself as a "nationalist," and I'm sure he's got a real nuanced explanation for what he means by that. (A sample of the lyrics: "In our own towns, we’re foreigners now, our names are spat and cursed.") For the last couple years, some Proud Boys have appropriated the song for use as an anthem at their rallies, because blasting out a tune that sounds like it could be a KKK b-side is exactly the kind of shit these violent trolls live for.

In any event, Choe's little commercial was too much even for KOMO, a formerly reputable outlet that Sinclair red-pilled a while ago. His montage tweet drew a number of complaints to the station's news desk, and he was asked to delete it for not conforming to KOMO's standards for "objectivity and professionalism." He obliged.​

Rich Smith↱ goes on to note, "Choe did not respond to a couple requests for comment and then he blocked me on Twitter", but "no one at the station told him to drive down to Olympia to cover the march". A station insider said photographers have filed letters with the news director refusing to work with Choe, and describes Choe as "rogue".

The latest development may have been brewing for weeks; earlier this month, Choe turned up on a right-wing radio show for a local competitor, leading to a staff email reminding that they needed permission to provide to any other platform; over the next several days, Choe's tweets led to a reminder of social media policy. Smith notes the insider "also said Choe was 'candid about telling people he wants to get fired'."

If that's right, then it looks like Choe is setting himself on an extremely familiar trajectory. In recent months, national right-wing commenters and outlets have amplified his exploitative coverage of poor people living in tents, garnering lots of views for his videos and increasing his profile around town. It's hard to see his breathless, shallow coverage of homelessness and this Proud Boys PR as anything other than audition tapes for OAN or Newsmax. And if he can cash in on a cancel culture narrative, it could even jettison him up to the Fox News mothership.​

What stands out is that compared to approved party-line news, including European anti-immigration pieces and must-run commentary from Trump's friends, Choe had to work to bring this about. Had he been more careful, he might have been able to find some backers at Sinclair for a cheesecloth series on Proud Boys and other right-wingers.

And in that way there really is a genuinely empathetic question we might wonder at, having to do with various demonstrations of self-destruction. This is more severe, to be certain, than episodes we might see in our own community, or elsewhere in social media, though time and tide have offered far more spectacular socmed self-immolation. Nor, necessarily is it quite like quitting NYT or The Atlantic in order to complain of being canceled. In the strange cosmos of American newsmaking, Choe's end at KOMO looks more like an episode of rightist transgression, saying the quiet part out loud in just the wrong way at just the wrong time, than anything else. It's one thing if people recognize Sinclair, and Choe is known to be soulless, or some such, but that particular proudfoolery just makes it too obvious.

But the idea of getting fired by Sinclair in order to complain about liberal cancel culture seems almost facially dysfunctional. And while it is not impossible that Choe really does plan to ride some wave to prestige for conceit against cancel culture, there is also a possibility that he spiraled after having been corrected on behalf of the cause by people who are supposed to be on his side. With rightists in transition, it can be difficult to tell the difference.

Still, it takes some effort to force a Sinclair hand on rightist propaganda. Maybe he's secretly a communist, and going crazy because he can't make his "poverty porn" pieces any more farcically, obviously absurd, yet the audience still doesn't get it.

It's just strange.
____________________

Notes:

Smith, Rich. "KOMO Journalist Blasts Out Proud Boys Propaganda — UPDATE: He's Out". Slog. 21 March 2022. TheStranger.com. 21 March 2022. https://bit.ly/36aHVeV

 

Cancellation Contrast

An unsurprising tale:

In early January, a day before students returned from winter break, Jeremy Glenn, the superintendent of the Granbury Independent School District in North Texas, told a group of librarians he'd summoned to a district meeting room that he needed to speak from his heart.

“I want to talk about our community,” Glenn said, according to a recording of the Jan. 10 meeting obtained and verified by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Glenn explained that Granbury, the largest city in a county where 81 percent of residents voted for then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, is “very, very conservative.”

He noted that members of Granbury's school board — his bosses — were also very conservative. And to any school employees who might have different political beliefs, Glenn said, “You better hide it,” adding, “Here in this community, we're going to be conservative.”

That's why, he said, he needed to talk to them about some of the books available in the school district's libraries.

(Hixenbaugh and Schwartz↱)​

And this goes about where you might expect: While censors "repeatedly said they are concerned only with sex and vulgarity, not with suppressing the views of LGBTQ students and authors", this is never really how it works out, and while Mr. Glenn doesn't want children "reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries",

He also made it clear that his concerns specifically included books with LGBTQ themes, even if they do not describe sex. Those comments, according to legal experts, raise concerns about possible violations of the First Amendment and federal civil rights laws that protect students from discrimination based on their gender and sexuality.

“And I'm going to take it a step further with you,” he said, according to the recording. “There are two genders. There's male, and there's female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they're women. And there are women that think they're men. And again, I don't have any issues with what people want to believe, but there's no place for it in our libraries.”​

Three brief notes: This is pretty straightforward, classic American political censorship, and traditionally oriented. It is also different from the complaint against cancel culture, which would concern itself more with objecting to any objections or disapprobation Mr. Glenn might encounter. Additionally, it is as blatant an example as we might find of what a particular range of seething anti-liberalism has advanced with its equivocations and bawling complaints.

Consider, to the one, a prospect of liberal elitism. And then pay attention to Superintendent Glenn, who wants to "call it what it is" when he explains, "It's the transgender, LGBTQ, and the sex—sexuality—in books. That's what the governor has said he will prosecute people for."

And then think it through. How is it elitist, or supremacist, or even victimizing, to refuse censorship? They're conservatives, and so will censor because the conservative government will prosecute them if they don't, yet it's somehow wrong to object to censorship.

This is a basic example of rhetorical dysfunction. This is what it means to pay attention to the function of someone's words. It makes a powerful slogan to posture against authoritarianism and exclusion, but what does such an argument actually do in application? I tell a book-banning story out of Oregon, in which the Christian argues their First Amendment right to free religion is violated as long as another's First Amendment right to free speech and press remains intact. How has that ever been a confusing notion? When someone complains that they are being silenced because they are not allowed to silence someone else, we can only wonder who looks at it and does not see the difference before lending their voice in support.

Basic function:

Conservative: We are going to censor because our political allies will prosecute if we don't.

Liberal: Censorship violates the First Amendment.

"Independent"/"Libertarian"/Antiliberal: You see, this liberal elitism, in silencing others, is the kind of paternalism and condescension that forces people to oppose you.​

The weird thing is that on other days, you might be able to get all three of them to agree that censorship is wrong. It's why the complaint against cancel culture is so easily viewed as a rightist invention. And it's easy, too; inasmuch as we are all born into sin, some arguments only lead deeper into our harmful frailty, but there is also an easy attraction, a temptation.

And censorship has a certain basic appeal; pretty much everyone will eventually want to tell someone else to shut up. That's why it's so easy to get people to play along; that's why it's so easy to find people who say they support a cause, but need it to stop doing what it is doing because the prospect of equality hurts someone else's feelings.

That is, sure, we get it, but look at what is being rejected: If you can't censor someone, that apparently is censorship; if you can't exclude someone, that apparently is exclusion; if you can't have privilege over another, i.e., if you're equal to another, apparently that other has unacceptable privilege over you; such advocacy never really justifies its argument, but just keeps piling on cheap fallacies and desperate pretenses of indignance. And, yes, it is an easy swindle to fall for, especially if one is somehow sympathetically predisposed.

More directly, we might think of the hullaballoo surrounding a recent board editorial from a major newspaper: In the name of free speech, keep your feelings to yourself. Yes, really, that's how stupid the discussion can get: An alleged liberal bastion has taken its cue from the right, and objects to the idea that anyone might shift in their seat as someone else speaks. One no longer need say a damn thing in order to cancel another, but merely change their posture in the way another perceives as expressing or reflecting discomfort. They might silence themselves if they think anyone hearing them disapproves. Meanwhile, in Texas—

In his recorded comments to librarians, Glenn described the review of 130 titles as the first step in a broader appraisal of library content, and a new policy approved by the school board later in January grants him and other administrators broad authority to unilaterally remove additional titles they deem inappropriate, with no formal review and no way for the public to easily find out what has been pulled from shelves ....

.... In a written statement, Glenn said the district was committed to supporting students of all backgrounds. And although he said the district's primary focus is educating students, “the values of our community will always be reflected in our schools.”

“In Granbury and across Texas we are seeing parents push back and demand elected officials put safeguards in place to protect their children from materials that serve no academic purpose, but rather push a political narrative,” Glenn said in the statement. “As a result, classrooms and libraries have turned schools into battle grounds for partisan politics.”​

—actual censorship and persecution is occurring. Once upon a time, a headline ran, "The 'free speech debate' isn't really about free speech"↱, and while the headline still fares well enough, Zack Beauchamp's consideration of employment and cancel culture now seems a sort of overstated handwinging. Still, though, let us try two versions of a sentence. First, "what's being debated is not anyone's right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times", which touches on the question of workplace silencing and cancelation, as well as the role of a newspaper of record. We can also try it this way: "what's being debated is not anyone's right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech … without fear of social backlash". The actual sentence runs, "right to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times without fear of social backlash".

As for the New York Times, the Editorial Board↱ has declared the fundamental right of all Americans to "speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned", and, the irony of an alleged liberal conspirator making such a rightist stand really is extraordinary. As Emma Camp↱ explained for the Times, "We keep our voices lowered, as if someone might overhear us", especially after "the ostracizing of a student who said something well-meaning but mildly offensive during a student club's diversity training", and, moreover, a friend "shuts his bedroom door when I mention a lecture defending Thomas Jefferson from contemporary criticism" because, "His roommate might hear us, he explains." One time, "The room felt tense", and Camp "saw people shift in their seats." Throughout, certain details remain unresolved, yet the nearest point to specificity, "defending Thomas Jefferson from contepmorary criticism", lacks any nuance, e.g., what criticism, and what defense. Moreover, how, exactly, does one explain to a self-righteous college student what it means that timing is everything. The details can be important; to some degree Camp's omission is unsurprising.

It seems a striking contrast between the "cancel culture" complaint and reality.