Cancel culture has gone too far. I’ve had enough, I cannot sit idly by anymore and bite my tongue. This has got to stop. Woke culture, the woke mob, have gone too far.
What was the proverbial straw?
Now they want to cancel Grease.
My beloved Grease – a movie I saw 26 times the summer it was released – sometimes two or three times in an afternoon that summer (sorry Har Mar Theatre, I owe you a ten spot). My best friend Stella and I memorized every line of dialog and every song in that movie. We had the moves too. We could sing into a hairbrush like Olivia Newton John, and within a couple of years smoke like the rest of the Pink Ladies.
Earlier in the day I learned that Condé Nast was going into its archives and putting trigger warnings on all its recipes – of all things.
The Muppets now have a disclaimer and can only be watched on Disney + from an adult account.
Coca Cola wants everyone to be less white:
🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: Coca-Cola is forcing employees to complete online training telling them to “try to be less white.”
These images are from an internal whistleblower: pic.twitter.com/gRi4N20esZ
— Karlyn supports banning critical race theory in NH (@DrKarlynB) February 19, 2021
These are just examples from this week, and it’s only Tuesday.
Of course these are examples of the left eating their own – something that should strike terror in all of us. This does not include the list of those who lean moderate or to the right, or those who simply questioned conventional wisdom – from getting canceled by the mob.
Amazon has been quietly ending sales of books labeled “hate speech”.
California considering bill requiring gender neutral toy departments.
*Not three minutes after publishing this post Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage was removed from Target. For the moment you can still get it by clicking on the link (that’s an affiliate link – I earn a small fee if you purchase the book using that link).
Hey there, @AskTarget: My book, IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE, is suddenly gone from https://t.co/NRY9T9nAfA, once again, without a word of explanation.
At least have the guts to tell us why.
— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) February 24, 2021
Gina Carano was fired from the Mandolarian and Disney for an instagram post that most people were unable to comprehend.
“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children,” Carano wrote in a now-deleted post on Instagram, adding, in quote marks: “Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
Carano did not say Republicans today were like the Jews of the 1930s. She said – quite correctly – that tyrants succeed by turning neighbor against neighbor. That is Totalitarianism 101 , a point made in fiction by Orwell and in history by Solzhenitzyn, among many others. h/t Mitch Berg over at Shot in the Dark.
Of course the argument is that this is not Cancel Culture, it is merely a Culture of Consequence.
And anyone who makes that argument intends for you to shut your mouth, there will be no discussion of cancel culture anymore. How can there be, it’s already been decided that it was bad behavior that was the culprit.
I don’t know about you, but I never got the memo about what was and was not acceptable to discuss.
I was canceled in 8th grade. It was one of the most traumatic things I have ever experienced. To this day I don’t know what I did to have my little clique of friends turn on me, but they were swift and unforgiving. I’m sure I said something that was inappropriate. Most things I said when I was in 8th grade were painfully awkward and inappropriate. I didn’t read social cues well, was way too self conscious about my weight and was too busy trying to make sure no one found out that my dad was gay (not that there was anything wrong with that, but he was married to my mom and I didn’t understand it myself), to navigate the teenage girl social hierarchy.
I learned I was canceled by a bunch of insecure, and awkward second tier teens when I went to sit at my spot at our lunch table. No one talked to me. No one looked at me. I’m not sure who it was that made the decision to cancel me (because to this day I still don’t know what I did wrong in their eyes) but the two who were constantly stabbing each other in the back for leadership in the group probably held some king of vote.
There was no discussion, I did not get to state my case or defend my behavior. There was no context. The mob had spoken, I was out.
Friends who I really believed had my back no longer talked to me, accepted my phone calls or sat next to me in study hall. No one would tell me what I did so I could grovel for forgiveness (I’m actually really thankful for this).
I don’t think I have ever felt as alone as I did that year. Thankfully, I had some friends who were not interested in being part of a clique and welcomed me with open arms to their table at lunch.
Cancellers aim to inflict as much harm as possible, almost all of it social or psychological. When you see the mob come for someone, your first assumption should be, “They want that person to kill herself/himself.” That’s not a joke.
— What’s It To You (@andre_aceman) February 27, 2021
The treatment by those girls/ young women who said they were my friends, has tainted every relationship since. It takes me a long time to trust new people and even then I know they can kick me out on a whim whenever they like. I don’t ask for help unless I’m desperate and the help is from family – and even then I feel like I don’t deserve it.
What most struck me about being canceled in 8th grade was that mob rule wins. It didn’t matter what I said or did to get kicked out of the clique – it could have been for wearing the wrong sweater; it might have been because I didn’t participate in smearing butter all over the mirror and walls of the girls bathroom in the cafeteria; or it could have been because I didn’t back up one of the girls vying for top mean girl status – but likely it was due to something that I said I believed that went against the orthodoxy of the group. I have been a contrarian ever since.
It’s not a surprise that most of the people doing the canceling these days are the same people who canceled me in 8th grade. A gaggle of mean girls who never really grew up or had to actually live in the real world. They might be on the board, work for Coca Cola, or hold political office of some kind, but it’s very likely they never had to struggle to pay their bills, find a job or work an 8 hour shift on their feet. They live in a world where science is settled and cannot be questioned – which is exactly the opposite of science.
They put signs in their yard proclaiming their wokeness. They may even pass out Ziploc bags of toothpaste and deodorant to the homeless standing on street corners – and you’ll know because they’ll post their virtue on Insta, Facebook and Twitter.
Pro Tip: You can do good deeds without posting it on social media.
I have seen behind the curtain (most moderate and right leaning folks have) and know that my status is almost completely dependent on the good graces of people who are pretty despicable. No matter what you do, eventually you’re going to piss them off and be kicked out of the cool club.
As a white person how do we even talk about this? If they can cancel Grease, are they going to cancel “West Side Story” and a ton of classic movies and books? Wouldn’t they have to cancel “To Kill A Mockingbird”? What about predominantly black or Hispanic movies? Don’t some of those movies have derogatory references to other races? Is it really necessary to “cancel” these movies and books, make them for adults only? How are kids today supposed to find out about their culture, their race and the culture and race of others different from themselves? How are they supposed to LEARN from those movies and books? How are they supposed to learn about the events from the ‘60’s/70’s? I just think this country is moving in the wrong direction. To take these things away does not lessen the chance of their recurrence. The Equality Act passed the House, who knows about the Senate, but if it does pass, will LGBTQ movies be canceled because they portrayed us in a derogatory manner? Maybe Stevie Wonder isn’t being weird moving his family to Ghana to get away from all of this.
A few points:
1. Cancel culture is also a major right-wing problem. See the CPAC’s recent treatment of Young Pharaoh as an example of the most recent right-wing version of it. Or just watch angry conservatives cancel the voices of moderate conservatives like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney because they aren’t conservative enough. Conservatism is an ouroboros right now.
2. Fascist movements can rise from liberal movements, but historically they have risen from right-wing conservatism, not left-wing liberals. That’s true even when they were dressed up under names that feel liberal to Americans who don’t understand history well. Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party might sound liberal, but in reality it was a strongly nationalist, socially conservative, Christian movement. Most political science professors say this was also true in Italy, Cambodia, and many other places where fascism became a problem. (One major exception would be Cuba, where liberal ideology went bad.) I believe we came whisper-close to fascism and the cancel culture it thrives on under Trump and his conservative supporters, and aren’t done flirting with it yet.
3. Coke’s Be Less White training wasn’t mandatory or “forced” as the Tweet falsely claims. Also, it was hosted by a famous but controversial writer who herself is being subjected to the right-wing cancel culture.
4. Orwell was a devout Socialist who said he wrote “1984” not as a conservative screed opposing liberalism, but as a reaction against Stalin’s socially conservative fascist movement. Liberal -hating conservatives cite him all the time without knowing this, and it always makes me smile.
5. Target has a financial responsibility to sell what it wants based on market trends. Regardless, the author hasn’t been silenced. Irreversible Damage is Amazon’s best-selling transgender studies book. Conservatives who compare Target’s unexplained decision to remove the book to Nazi Germany’s persecution and murder of trans people is, frankly, stupid.
6. Cancel culture may be a bad thing—I’ve been personally subjected to it by both the right and left—but that doesn’t mean speaking out and holding people accountable for their racist, misogynistic viewpoints is also bad. It isn’t an either-or proposition, and some people need to be shown how fucked up their thinking is. Personally, I’d include Carano on that list, although I don’t know enough about her to have strong feelings.
7. I can’t believe you saw Grease 26 times. I haven’t seen anything more than three times, and that was only once, with the LOTR films. I would even consider seeing a single film 26 times. I’m floored, and this helps explain why you’re so upset. You really, really like this movie.
8. I’m sorry you were treated badly by some people in school. So was I, and it’s a hurt that, weirdly, lingers.
Of course it happens on both sides, and it would appear that the right is finally following suit. No one will win this way. I agree that holding people accountable is the right thing to do, it just isn’t equitably done. Silencing someone because they have a different viewpoint never leads anywhere worthwhile. Target sells some godawful stuff, this is political – nothing more, nothing less. They believe they will ultimately attract more customers if they remove the book than if they keep it – and they are absolutely free to make that calculated risk – but it is short sighted, performative and makes them look small minded and petty. Abigail Shrier is a liberal and democrat. Who are the conservatives comparing Target’s remove of the book to Nazi Germany? Also, does calling something or someone a Nazi have any impact anymore? I don’t think it does. Sadly, we’ve ruined that epithet. I was a child when I saw the movie 26 times. It was summer, there wasn’t much else to do but ride the bus to the theatre, it had A/C.
1. Cancel culture is also a major right-wing problem. See the CPAC’s recent treatment of Young Pharaoh as an example of the most recent right-wing version of it
Disinviting someone to a political get-together destroying their livelihood and smearing their name.
Or just watch angry conservatives cancel the voices of moderate conservatives like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney because they aren’t conservative enough. Conservatism is an ouroboros right now.
Again – political consequences for political acts isn’t the same as having jobs, writing, speech and records of one’s existence expunged.
Nobody loses their career – outside of politics, anyway – to conserative “cancelation”.
Ooops. That was supposed to be “Disinviting someone to a political get-together ISN’T destroying their livelihood and smearing their name”. Stupid broken keyboard.
“Nobody loses their career – outside of politics, anyway – to conservative ‘cancelation.’ “
This assertion is so obviously unaware and wrong I’m not actually going to respond to it. I suggest you Google 4Chan, right-wing extremism, and doxing. Then do a little research on everything from McCarthyism to the current conservative backlash against so-called liberal public schools and universities. Or look up how the Dixie Chicks were treated when conservatives were confronted with ideas they didn’t like. Or for even more fun, look up what happened to Morgan Wallace’s sales when he embraced ideas conservative DO like.
2. Fascist movements can rise from liberal movements, but historically they have risen from right-wing conservatism, not left-wing liberals…. Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party might sound liberal, but in reality it was a strongly nationalist, socially conservative, Christian movement.
You act as if nationalism and socialism are mutually exclusive. Benito Mussolini was a high-ranking functionary in the Italian Socialist Party when he realized that internationalism was a dog that wasn’t gonna hunt in young, newly united, socially conservative Italy. He founded a new party, that combined strident nationalism with a centrally planned economy and a big welfare state.
Arguing about the Nazis is more nuanced, since many things changed after Hitler took complete control – but the early Nazis, like the Italian Fascists, combined socialism and nationalism. Hitler himself had contempt for everything but power – all ideology, religion (and lack of religion), politics were there for co-opting, not believing. BUT – the Nazi economy was planned nearly as thoroughly as that of the USSR, and the Reichswohlfarhtbeamt (Reich Welfare Office) provided a social welfare state that’s make a Bernie Bro’s leg tingle (provided the recipient was Aryan enough).
Planned/command economy, welfare state – you can quibble about labels, but if it barks like a socialist system, it’s a socialist system.
As to Christianity? Patent nonsense. Hitler co-opted nationalist and ethnicist tendencies in the German Lutheran and Catholic churches, but calling Nazis “Christian” – or for that matter, Pagan or Atheist – is putting western liberal labels on what was in fact pure totalitarianism.
Most political science professors say this was also true in Italy, Cambodia, and many other places where fascism became a problem.
That’s a train of thought that grew up among “most poli sci” profs after the 1940s, when the left became ascendant in the Western academy and wanted to establish that “Fascism” and “Socialism” were opposites, rather than dialects of Statism with a few distinctions and many commonalities. Hitler aped Lenin more than he did Mussolini.
(As a cite for the facts of the era, I’ll commend to you Modern Times, by Paul Johnson, who cites considerable material from the era. This has been a primary area of study for me.
“You act as if nationalism and socialism are mutually exclusive. Benito Mussolini was a high-ranking functionary in the Italian Socialist Party when he realized that internationalism was a dog that wasn’t gonna hunt in young, newly united, socially conservative Italy.” Etc., etc., etc.
Nationalism and Socialism aren’t mutually exclusive. You might have missed it, but I said so, citing Cuba as an example (Although it was Communist, most conservatives don’t differentiate, so neither did I).
But let’s get to the point. By definition, Socialists socialize private business. Famously, Mussolini did the opposite, abandoning Marxism, embracing classical liberalism, and privatizing many businesses that had been state-run. Like Hitler, he also worked hand-in-glove with industry to strengthen it using the state’s powers, much as many conservatives here have done.
The bottom line is that if you co-opt liberalism’s name to implement authoritarian fascism as Mussolini did, you’re a conservative fascist, not a liberal totalitarian. But you don’t have to believe me because Mussolini was clear about it himself: “If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the ‘Right,’ a Fascist century.”
Your assertion that “Hitler himself had contempt for everything but power – all ideology, religion (and lack of religion), politics were there for co-opting, not believing” strikes me as true. It also reminds me of somebody. Oh yeah, that’s it, Trump and his conservative enablers, who brought us to the brink of fascism and are already planning an authoritarian comeback. What a shock.
I don’t know if Hitler was a Christian. Neither do you. But yes, he co-opted it for political gain, much as conservatives and liberals here do, often insincerely. As he put it, “”We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity. . .in fact our movement is Christian.” It’s my view that no recent politicians have been more insincere about their faith than Trump, who admitted in at least one interview he’d never done anything he needed forgiveness for and couldn’t even hold a Bible the right way up in a photo-op that he staged by physically attacking peaceful protestors using the military and police. Fascist much? It think so. And anyway, any party that separates babies from their mothers and locks them up in cages and then “loses” their records so they can’t be reunited months or years later can’t claim the moral high ground on any issue.
.Also, it was hosted by a famous but controversial writer who herself is being subjected to the right-wing cancel culture.
Beverly DeAngelo has built a career (I’d say “grift”) hawking an ideology that destroys careers, livelihoods and lives in areas far outside the workplace. Referring to resisting this kind of injustice as “cancelation” may or may not be a false equivalence. I’m on the “May” side. Convince me.
4. Orwell was a devout Socialist who said he wrote “1984” not as a conservative screed opposing liberalism, but as a reaction against Stalin’s socially conservative fascist movement. Liberal -hating conservatives cite him all the time without knowing this, and it always makes me smile.
Conservative-hating liberals omit the part about Orwell’s book being a commentary on totalitarians eating their own, whether in Stalin’s purges, the internecine squabbling among the Communists Orwell traveled among during the Spanish Civil War, and the British far left, which had a pretty nasty “cancel culture” of its own in 1948. Ignoring that context – gleaned from interviews with Orwell himself – is myopic and self-serving for leftists.
Conservatives who compare Target’s unexplained decision to remove the book to Nazi Germany’s persecution and murder of trans people is, frankly, stupid.
Overreaching and out of proportion? Sure – but then, totalitarian statism doesn’t bloom overnight.
that doesn’t mean speaking out and holding people accountable for their racist, misogynistic viewpoints is also bad.
If the definitions of racism and misogyny are expanded to the point of absurity, covering much of the thought we call “western civilization”, then yes, it’s bad. Horrible and unbearable. And yes, that’s exactly what Big Left’s grand inquisitors are going. Ibran Kendi’s notion of “anti-racism”, “Anti”-Fa’s “anti-fascism” and the like are all aimed squarely at demonizing all “liberal” Western thought as racist and fascist.
So yes – canceling people based on that perverse-unto-meaninglessness set of criteria is way beyond “bad”.
It isn’t an either-or proposition, and some people need to be shown how fucked up their thinking is. Personally, I’d include Carano on that list, although I don’t know enough about her to have strong feelings.
I can’t believe you saw Grease 26 times. I haven’t seen anything more than three times,
I’m about 76 times through Casablanca ATM.
Sorry for the copy paste. But since you said it – why would you put Carano on the list?
Based on what? Be specific.
Yes, it’s a trap.
Hm, what to say that isn’t repetitive and endlessly arguable? Carano is a bit of a conspiracy theory-loving, racist asshole, admit it. D’Angleo also is controversial, as I said earlier but you apparently missed. But she isn’t any more controversial, hateful, and destructive that than that racist, misogynistic and, thankfully, recently deceased dick Rush Limbaugh. (Or Hannity, Carlson, Dobbs, etc., etc., etc., for that matter). Everyone’s got an opinion as well as an asshole, it turns out.
I’ll say this much about your view of Orwell: You’re wrong. He hated that conservatives misinterpreted and co-opted 1984. He also hated Stalin, whose army nearly killed him, and saw him as a socially conservative fascist posing as a Communist. And while his embracing of leftists might not have been blindly complete, he embraced them nevertheless. But again, don’t trust me, trust Orwell: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it,” Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay handily titled “Why I Write.”
BTW, 1946 was also the year Orwell joined a leftist militia to fight in the Spanish Civil War against Francisco Franco’s military uprising in Spain. Franco, of course, being yet another social conservative, a monarchist, military dictator, and fascist. You conservatives have some serious issues with authority.
Oh, and also, Franco’s still dead. Probably having umbrella drinks in hell with Limbaugh.
P.S.–I’ve never seen Casablanca, either. As a good friend of mine correctly points out, nearly all movies made before 1971 are crap.
I am so far left that you can’t see my right hand but I would never cancel you. We have known each other for years and I come visit every time I am in your state (my aunt died just as Covid exploded so we had to cancel our last trip. You could have finally met my better half. He’s the nice one). I agree with Mike above that there is cancelling done on both sides. I believe in canceling if it is harmful to a group of people. I don’t see West Side Story (one of my most favorite musicals) as being offensive to Puerto Ricans (except for the song America). I’m not so sure about going back with art and literature . You could go back to Shakespeare who is somewhat racist. On another note entirely, I have seen Grease more times than I can count. I think every girl of our generation lived by it.
And isn’t that the crux of the issue? Of course you wouldn’t cancel me, you do know me and you know what I stand for, we’ve eaten beignets together. I wouldn’t cancel you either, which I am sure you are aware. But on social media no one knows anyone so there is no giving the benefit of the doubt. The first and only assumption is that whoever is stating something disagreeable is wrong, -ist, and must be stomped out.
I don’t believe the right is “finally following suit.” They’ve always done it. (So has the left.) I remember being in college when conservatives tried to get a professor fired for teaching about Marxism, which was happening all over the country back then just like it happened under McCarthyism. This isn’t a new thing, and in that sense, isn’t necessarily an alarming issue. It’s just how some people are sometimes.
Calling someone a Nazi doesn’t have as much impact anymore, which is unfortunate because they were evil fucks and make the best movie villains. But it happened to Target with Shrier. Nobody famous criticized Target that I can remember, but it was widely reported at the time that conservatives were making the comparison online. Probably Russian bots, anyway.
Anyway, I feel like I ought to watch Grease just to honor your teenage dedication to it. And you, of course.
The right is notorious for having lame comebacks to the left. If they even manage to think of one while talking to someone on the left it’s usually nothing more than “I know you are but what am I?” Or something along that line. Their social media game is woefully short of the left’s. They’re catching up, but it has taken a while.
I know I’m old, but I remember a time when both right and left would defend free speech to the ends of the earth – even if they disagreed with it. Social media has changed the game – and not for the better.
Neither the article you sited or the quotes of twitterers actually asked for the movie to be banned, or quoted anyone at the BBC who said anything about banning Grease. Granted, I didn’t spend more than 10 minutes looking.
I do think the criticisms of the movie are valid and people should be able to criticize the movie’s content. Isn’t it free speech to criticize an outdated movie that purports to be just a bunch of fun, but isn’t really?
Businesses have always made decisions based on markets and perceived good or bad publicity. I don’t think that’s new. What’s new is people are complaining about what we grew up with and that makes us uncomfortable.
How are disclaimers and content warnings any different from the rating systems we already have on movies and TV shows? Also, how is it different from hiding porn in brown wrappers or behind counters, or not putting certain content on at certain times on commercial TV? Aren’t these all forms of censorship that we’ve had all along?
I agree that the criticism about Grease is accurate. It is misogynistic, it is sexist, it is in poor taste. So what? It’s a movie that’s 43 years old. There’s plenty of current art that could be critiqued that would be more meaningful – WAP comes to mind.
If Disney wants to put a trigger warning on their content it’s no skin off my nose. I was against them when Tipper Gore slapped them on record albums and think they’re silly now. Hiding porn in brown paper bags was more about shame than a warning label. Placing porn movies behind the curtain or the counter is to keep the content away from children – which they should – but porn is very different than a muppet. Ultimately I believe we are doing our children a huge disservice by becoming so thin skinned. Should people be held accountable? Absolutely. But kids need to know this stuff does exist. Shunning and shaming someone for a belief you don’t agree does not make them change their mind, it makes them go silent which can be much more dangerous. Humiliating people for their beliefs isn’t likely to make them see the light. Civil discussion achieves that, and that is what is being canceled.
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