Cancel “Cancel ‘Cancel Culture’” Culture
Got that?
Boy, there has been quite a debate lately about “Cancel Culture”. If you don’t know what that is, CAN WE PLEASE SWAP LIVES? TELL ME YOUR SECRETS! But seriously folks…
The most recent dust-up in this sector of the Culture War our country is engaged in has to do with a couple of things. There’s the idiotic op-ed the NY Times published by Tom Cotton. There’s the online reaction to JK Rowling speaking about trans issues. I’m sure there are others. As a reaction/response to this, Harper’s Magazine (they’re still a thing?) published a letter signed by a number of literary dignitaries and artists condemning “Cancel Culture”. Though they fail to speak it by name, that’s what they are talking about. There’s a lot of pearl-clutching about the long term harm it will do to our society. Let’s find out if they’re right.
Tom Cotton
First, let’s talk about the op-ed that set this latest round of “canceling” off. Its title isn’t subtle. "SEND IN THE TROOPS”. That’s what HE called it, just so we’re clear. A little context: this was published on June 3rd, a few days after the protests against police brutality and the murder of George Floyd. You remember that time, right? When all the white people got a-scared that their towns and cities would be burned down by ANTIFA!? Of course, none of this happened. Things were mostly fine. ANTIFA! didn’t loot billions of dollars from the federal government. That was the rich white guys. As always with Trump and his cronies, it’s projection.
So Tommy C here writes his big boy op-ed. He’s gonna lick Trump’s boots but good. And he’s also going to quell the fears of white folk in his home state: Arkansas. See, he’s got a solution for all this protesting, sorry, “rioting” as he likes to call it. In it, he makes a number of false or completely unsupported claims like the infiltration of ANTIFA! at the protests (there’s no evidence there was any kind of coordinated attack), or saying that the police “bore the brunt” of the violence. This is just ridiculous since most of the violence went from the boys in blue to unarmed, peaceful protestors.
One thing he also advocated for was using our military, the one that you and I fund, to help out. You know, just walk around and give out free hugs and face masks. Just kidding, he wants to use them to kill American citizens! Now, does Tommy ever come out and say “murder them”. No. Of course not. This is 2020. Most people (not Trump) have figured out how to say the quiet part quiet. No, no, Tommy wants them to help “subdue” the protesters. Remind me again how our military subdues adversaries?
Right. He doesn’t explicitly state it but he really wants to send in the troops to kill protesters, most of whom are either minorities or their sympathetic allies. Fun!
On its face, you can see why the Times would publish this. We might want to know what a sitting congressman has to say about the state-sponsored murder of its citizens. And of course, the Times would read what he had to say, do a little fact-checking to make sure he wasn’t just talking out his ass or scaremongering. Right? RIGHT? Nope. The motherfuckers DIDN’T EVEN READ IT!!! That’s right. They published an unread, unedited, unverified op-ed from a sitting congressman that advocated for the murder of Americans
This might be a good time to note that they have since added some context to the piece and apologized. Thanks, guys! No worries on our end. You can see why people were upset. And not just because of the obvious laziness demonstrated by the editorial staff. Maybe if they had bothered to do their jobs they would have realized they were giving a massive platform to not only the lies and half-truths the actual piece contained but also a completely ridiculous idea that we should USE THE MILITARY TO KILL AMERICAN CIVILIANS. It’s unconstitutional at best and not something we should be giving amplification to.
Not All Ideas Are Good
If the notion that the free exchange of ideas is under threat, then yes, they would be correct. We do not need a completely free exchange of ideas. The Times may want to say they “encourage” discussion and want to offer alternate viewpoints, but they must have a line somewhere. I mean, and not to get too carried away to prove a point, I doubt if Tom Cotton had written an op-ed on the benefits of child rape, they would have published it.
Hey, wait where are you going? Hear him out. I mean, children are so weak. You can hold them down with one arm. And they’re dumb, they believe anything. And with enough motivation, they can keep a secret. They really make ideal targets for rape. Probably why it happens so often. He’s just saying, we have a lot of horny people out there.
Now, is any of that stuff you needed to hear? Did this contribute anything to the discussion? No, of course not. It’s ridiculous to advocate for such a position. And if the Times published a piece about child rape, they would be getting the same heapings of (rightfully deserved) shit. Do you remember how mad you felt while you were reading Tom Cotton’s fake child rape piece? That’s how a lot of us felt when we read about a sitting congressman who wants to use the military to kill us. SEEMS LIKE A BAD IDEA.
And we let the Times know. We canceled our subscriptions (although new subscriber Batt Marnsley has been enjoying the latest meltdown). We wrote angry letters. We took to social media to criticize them. And they responded by stepping on their dicks, numerous times. It was great.
Dammit JK, Shut Up
I don’t say this to silence her. She can say whatever she wants. She is a free woman (as she loves to point out). I also don’t give a shit about your inability to let go of a fantasy story. She doesn’t owe you people anything. Good for you (and especially her) that you love and bought her work. I’m glad it meant a lot to you and helped you understand the world in a new way. That’s the beauty of art. But the artist doesn’t owe you shit. No, I tell JK to shut up because SHE’S BLOWING BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND IF SHE DOESN’T WANT THEM I WILL TAKE THEM THANK YOU.
I say this to you now. If my fiction ever gets as big as Harry Potter (unlikely), expect me to dis-a-fucking-pear from the planet. Not because things don’t matter to me. Not because I won’t still be an under the radar ally. But because when you create something like HP and it becomes its own cottage industry, there are literally thousands of people who depend upon you not fucking it up for them. Everything, from the movies and books to the endless number of tchotchkes they sell, all power an enterprising engine. And if that isn’t a good enough reason, here’s another: YOU CAN MAKE MONEY BY DOING NOTHING. Go to France and have wine. Smoke weed down under. (Filed to Later: why do all my ideas of a good time involve substance abuse?) My point is, she was on the gravy train. And here she is throwing steel beams in front of it.
Of course, she is entitled to say or do whatever she wants. I’m questioning the wisdom in terms of risk vs. reward. Ok, so she got her “hilarious” joke about how trans women aren’t real women out there. Good job. At best, you managed to alienate some of your fans. At worse, you’ve given credence to every bigot out there who hates on trans women because they aren’t “real”. Then, she doubled down on it, again and again, compounding her first mistake: not shutting the fuck up. You got it made, baby! Just live life. Is this issue really so so so so fucking important to you that you make jokes about it?
The Harper’s Letter
We’ll have to wait for October to see the letter in print, but Harper’s was gracious enough to post it on their website for free. You can go read it if you want. It’s only three paragraphs long and has more signatures than letters (maybe, I didn’t count). Some folks have since withdrawn their support of the letter, usually after facing intense backlash online or finding out who else signed onto it. Most signatories stood by their support. In a vacuum, there isn’t anything shocking or particularly offensive about the letter. If you read it, you might have some mild feelings one way or another. But given the climate we’re in, there is plenty of combustible material to light.
As we already covered, not all ideas are good ones. And in spite of the letter advocating for “the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters” they happen to leave out that there are, without a doubt, some things that do not need public debate. The whole thing smacks of supremacy. Both white and classist supremacy. And that is part of the problem. From the letter:
While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.
I’m not sure that the right is any more censorious than the left. I mean, this is the party of the n-word and they don’t mind sharing their racial opinions, jokes, thoughts, etc. The first people I remember in my life wanting to censor people was Al Gore and his useless wife, Tipper. They even made an afterschool club about it. That’s a pretty judgmental position to take for people who are advocating for not judging positions.
They also bemoan the “public shaming” that takes place. Well, my dudes, what would you have people do? Shall they be given a platform in Harper’s to address the stupidity of it? Shaming is all that disadvantaged and voiceless people have. The mere fact that the letter exists, was published, widely mocked, and the world didn’t end is proof that it doesn’t need to exist at all. Things are fine. And frankly, if places like Harper’s had given voices the to voiceless sooner and with more frequency, this debate wouldn’t even be happening. A lot of these supposed “institutions” brought this criticism on themselves.
Free speech is fine. No one is saying that Tom Cotton can’t write his dumdum ideas for civil genocide. He can. The Times, the bestest, most famousest paper in the world, DOESN’T HAVE TO AMPLIFY THOSE IDEAS TO MILLIONS OF READERS. He isn’t being silenced. He’s having the megaphone taken away. And that’s what this is really about: people who are used to be supreme being told they are not. Nothing chaps a supremacist’s ass quite like being told no. Especially by people they feel are not their equals.
A society is created by either the masses or the magi. Either the people, the lifeblood of a nation, decide what their society is or a privileged chosen few dictate that. In America, it would seem that we are beginning to shift, ever so slightly, away from a structure based on and informed by white supremacy and into something that at least considers there are people of color who might have a valued opinion on how things should be. This is good. More, please! And as this happens, for the people who are used to having their say, it will feel like they are being silenced.
You ever give a megaphone to a teenager? In high school, I was in the marching band. And only the drum majors got to use the megaphones. That didn’t stop us from trying to steal it though. One time, I managed to get my hands on it. But the controls were too complicated and all I could do was make the siren sound. It was awful and annoying and the band director, Mr. Hyman (real name, giggles) came and took it from me. Did my teenage self feel he was justified? No, of course now. I was being SILENCED.
Not the author but close.
The same applies to this situation. For a long time (ok for all of it) there’s been a select few people who have been deemed the captains of mediums. Newspaper editors, book publishers, etc. All gatekeepers. And now the gates are overflowing and the keepers are being bum-rushed. Of course, they don’t like it. The reaction online might seem overly disproportionate but that is because it has to be. Otherwise, their voices will not be heard.
We have a right to “cancel” people. Nobody dies. In a lot of cases, we’re talking about famous or well-off individuals. They’re going to be fine. JK Rowling will be fine. When somebody gets canceled, they aren’t run out of town on a rail or banished to a desert, though a few probably deserve to be. We’re tired of seeing the same rehashed bullshit over and over again. The theatre of democracy is boring to us. We want it to be legit. And yeah, if you say some dumb shit loudly, expect a callout. You’ve got our attention. Make it worth it because we have real problems to solve.