Posted on 07/08/2020 6:00:22 PM PDT by Kaslin
For those of you unfamiliar with cancel culture, it’s speech that speaks out against other speech that may be speaking speakings that other speakers find offensive.
The organizers of the recent Harper’s Magazine letter against cancel culture didn’t ask me to participate in their project, despite the fact that my Uncle, T. Gore Pollack III, was that magazine’s founding editor. They neglected to include me because they’re afraid of my ideas. Also, I’ve either divorced, broken up with, or participated in a conscious friendship uncoupling with at least a dozen of the signatories. Such is the price of profligacy and greatness.
Nevertheless, as the leading American thinker of my time, or any time, I feel a burning erotic need to speak out against cancel culture right now. For those of you unfamiliar with cancel culture, it’s speech that speaks out against other speech that may be speaking speakings that other speakers find offensive. Though I’m as immune to cancellation as I am to COVID-19, I’ve still felt the hot breath of the culture on my neck in recent years.
The Internet has met certain recent ideas of mine, such as the fact that Black men are actually white women, The Virus Is From Space, and Tom Brady is a TERF denier, with a fury usually reserved for people who are less handsome than I am. Emily Wallace-Wells, a staff writer from Voxios, released a three-paragraph statement that said my words decrying the desecration of the Dr. Seuss sculpture garden in Springfield, Massachusetts, made her feel “unsafe”, despite the fact that I’ve never met her and also the fact that she doesn’t actually exist. These are the sorts of nightmares that cancel culture has created.
In my 80-year career as The Greatest Living American Writer, I’ve covered up the Ukrainian famine, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Argentinian desaparecidos, and the secret plot to destroy Major League Baseball by making it boring. So I know something about restriction of speech. We must, as a body politic that thinks about bodies and politics, not lose our collective nerve to say what we think, no matter how uncomfortable it makes other people from whom we are socially distancing at the grocery store.
The free exchange of information, ideas, and money, the lifeblood of a liberal society, are daily becoming more constricted by both liberalism and by society. While we have come to expect this from the evil radical right, which proposes pernicious ideas like racism and flags, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our liberal culture, at least among people who know how to read. This, to put it bluntly, sucks donkey turds.
Intolerance of dissent and public shaming have come into vogue, even as voguing itself has fallen out of vogue in favor of more subtle and complex forms of self-expression. We must not allow ourselves to ostracize the ostracizers, lest we become like Ostra the Grouch. Let us not bind dissolving issues in complex moral certainties, whatever the hell that means.
We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters, dimes and nickels. Also, we uphold the value of a robust sandwich as long as it does not contain mayonnaise. Angry jerks must not face retribution just because they’re saying something you don’t like. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought, especially when those transgressions come from David Brooks, who, let’s face it, deserves everything that’s coming his way. I’m watching you, Brooks. I know where you live, even though I don’t.
Along with my co-signatories to this letter, Dr. Drew, Dr. Oz, Dr. Dre, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Jessica Alba, Camille Paglia, Fabio, Joe Rogan, Paris Hilton, Jonathan Lethem, Gritty, and my beleaguered manservant, Roger, I stand firmly in the corner of free speech against cancel culture, unless that speech puts my book advances, or speaking fees at risk. In that case, I’m willing to negotiate.
In sum, please don’t be mad at me. I’ll do anything to avoid going to the re-education camps. It’s cold there. For everything I’ve said, thought, or will say or think in the future, I’m so, so sorry.
Resist we much!
WTH is *cancel culture*?
I’ve been hearing that term and don’t know what it is.
fact is even stranger that satire!
8 Jul: WaPo: Facebook’s own civil rights auditors say its policy decisions are a ‘tremendous setback’
They faulted the social network for making choices that undermine civil rights progress
By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Cat Zakrzewski
The report criticized Facebook’s choice to leave several posts by President Trump untouched, including three in May that the auditors said “clearly violated” the company’s policies prohibiting voter suppression, hate speech and incitement of violence. The report also found that Facebook provides a forum for white supremacy and white nationalism...
“When you put free expression on top of every other consideration, I think civil rights considerations take more of a back seat,” said Laura Murphy, a civil rights lawyer and independent consultant who led the two-year audit. Murphy worked with a team from civil rights law firm Relman Colfax, led by partner Megan Cacace...
Facebook’s counterparts in Silicon Valley — including Snapchat, Reddit and Twitch — are taking a tougher tack when policing Trump and his most extreme supporters...
The report comes on the heels of a meeting Facebook held with the organizers of a fast-growing boycott of over 1,000 advertisers, who have several demands of Facebook, including hiring a top-level executive who will ensure the global platform does not fuel racism and radicalization...
On Wednesday the company said it had taken down accounts tied to longtime Trump friend and former campaign adviser Roger Stone...
The company (FACEBOOK) is also funding an independent external oversight board, which will be able to make decisions about whether content should be removed from Facebook and play a key role in setting precedent about content policy at Facebook. The board is expected to launch this summer.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/08/facebook-civil-rights-audit/
journOlist founder, Ezra Klein, is out and about!
8 Jul: ReclaimTheNet: Vox journalist Matthew Yglesias publicly shamed by colleague for daring to sign anti-cancel culture letter
By Cindy Harper
Fellow Vox co-founder Ezra Klein has yet to comment on the incident directly but did tweet a vague musing about free speech, doing little to quell the notion that supporting free speech at Vox will get you rebuked:
Tweet: Ezra Klein
A lot of debates that sell themselves as being about free speech are actually about power. And there’s *a lot* of power in being able to claim, and hold, the mantle of free speech defender.
8 Jul 2020...
https://reclaimthenet.org/vox-anti-cancel-culture-letter-public-shaming/
8 Jul: Hotair: Vox’s Ezra Klein Has Thoughts On That Harper’s Letter Criticizing Cancel Culture (Update)
by JOHN SEXTON
I also noted yesterday that in the wake of this backlash, Yglesias had apparently deleted all of his tweets. Today we learned why. Vox founder Ezra Klein posted this subtweet about the situation a short time ago:...
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/07/08/voxs-ezra-klein-thoughts-letter-defending-free-speech/
8 Jul: RedState: Ezra Klein’s Bizarre View On Free Speech Gives Us Frightening Insight to the Left
by Brandon Morse
Vox co-founder Ezra Klein has rarely ever presented me a reason to take him seriously. His website is a hub for everything society is learning to despise, be it mistruths, half-baked philosophy, and some of the worst takes humanity has to offer about any particular subject.
Recently, there’s been trouble in paradise at Vox. Vox writer Matt Yglesias signed his name onto a letter put out by Harper’s Magazine that promoted the idea of free speech, which is a huge scandal on the left...
He’s not mentioning the Harper’s letter or Yglesias directly, but it’s clear what he’s talking about. In fact, Yglesias responded to this tweet by asking if he was allowed to respond. It’s clear he’d previously promised Klein not to make any more controversial statements on Twitter which explains why he deleted everything yesterday. Yglesias has already deleted his tweet but not before several people got a screenshot of it...
Update: Ezra Klein says he would never try to get his buddy Matt Yglesias fired...
https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2020/07/08/ezra-klein-free-speech/
VIDEO (GREG GUTFELD): 8 Jul: Fox News: Tensions among Vox employees erupt on Twitter after journalist signs ‘cancel culture’ letter
by Joseph A. Wulfsohn
https://www.foxnews.com/media/tensions-vox-employees-journalist-cancel-culture
oh...another conservative banned by FB!
9 Jul: Business Insider: Facebook just banned a series of disinformation networks linked to Brazil’s president that downplayed the severity of COVID-19
by Jeff Elder
In a sweep of disinformation networks in five nations, Facebook on Wednesday removed accounts linked to Brazil’s president...
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/facebook-bans-accounts-covid-brazil-president-2020-7?r=US&IR=T
Cancel culture is shaming people for their (typically, politically incorrect) ideas and using the mob to intimidate their employers into firing them.
The fascistic impulse of political correctness using social media to attack and slander anything the mob disagrees with. Guided by algorithms and censorship approved/ funded by soros/obozo commi types. Goal is power and submission. At least thats my take. Im sure VDH would have a better answer.
This guy reads like an American Douglas Adams.
CC
Cancel the facilitators: Comcast, Disney, ATT
Facebook should change their name to Wokebook.
According to Urban Dictionary, cancelled is “to dismiss something or somebody; to reject an individual or an idea.” Essentially, this practice encourages a community to blackball, isolate and shun an individual from society.
The term has been credited to black users of Twitter, where it has been used as a hashtag. As troubling information comes to light regarding celebrities who were once popular, such as Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, Roseanne Barr, and Louis C.K. —so come calls to cancel such figures. Merriam-Webster
Basically, it is the text version of the electronic bullhorn so popular with “protesters”. “Discuss ideas and differences of opinon? We don’t need no stinkin discussion! When we say JUMP, you ask ‘How High?’ on the way UP!”
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