Jamie O, Political Crack, So Called Liberal Media

Cancel Culture Fighters Had Themselves Quite A Week

A Cancel Culture Warrior

Cancel Culture warriors have demonstrated over the past few years that they are terrible at reading the room. For starters, one of the Big Moments in the cancel culture fight was the now rather infamous Harper’s Letter, published and signed by a group of elites, some of whom later regretted it, in the summer of 2020.

Imagine during that particular summer, with the George Floyd protests, an increasingly obvious and growing threat to American democracy *being led by the occupant in the White House*, and general fear that maybe the pandemic was the end for us, that was your focus. Getting fired up about libs yelling at JK Rowling for being transphobic. Yes, that was obviously The Big Problem at that moment.

Not to be outdone, the cancel culture warriors launched another missive this week in the battle in the form of an op-ed in the New York Times. In keeping with its new goal of driving thinking liberals and progressives insane, the piece was maddening for multiple reasons.

First, criticisms of it were instantly attacked by supporters, including some aimed at New York Times writer Jamelle Bouie:

Since disingenuousness is the air that the cancel culture warriors breathe, there was no mea culpa for this. But also curious was this idea that Emma Camp is this fragile flower who is merely just another college student. However, that is not true.

Camp has already been published multiple times in national publications including several times in Reason magazine. And her claim that she is a liberal is interesting as well, given the most recent piece there is a glowing advocacy for one of the stalwarts of conservative thought: School choice.

But the Times wants us to believe that Emma is just another school paper kid, and the cancel culture warriors run with that to framer her as someone who is being picked on by elites like Jamelle Bouie. This is her bio at the end of the article:

Emma Camp (@emmma_camp_) is a senior at the University of Virginia. She has written about free speech on campus for The Cavalier Daily, a student newspaper there, and interned with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Camp’s piece itself was on the subject of campus self-censorship, and defenders of her claim it’s a massive problem. But that’s debatable. Students have always self-censored, and this thread makes a great point that the issue itself is complicated:

As the example in the thread of the angry college basketball player who was upset she was “forced into politics” demonstrates, often this cry of CANCEL CULTURE just means they don’t want others to have any freedom of speech.

It’s rather curious that dissenters from Camp’s piece were shouted down as being mean to a college kid, but we see such things over and over again. The so-called free speech advocates who call for free and open debate become enraged by…free and open debate.

Another interesting little moment in the cancel culture wars happened yesterday when Gawker ran John Ganz’s piece that should hopefully get some of those cancel culture warriors thinking.

It’s often a good idea to look around at who agrees with you, and the fact that Putin’s Russia is also obsessed with cancel culture should maybe give them some pause. They’re even using it to protest sanctions.

This is nothing new. In fact, Putin himself delivered a speech about it last year. Way to go, cancel culture warriors, you did it! You have so much international support!

One can only wonder if Bari Weiss will invite Putin to be a visiting scholar for her new university (read: grift). He might be busy for a while, though.

Despite this stuff, I doubt any of these people will have the least bit of pause. January 6 didn’t really make them realize that the claim that college students protesting appearances by neo-Nazis is on par with the actual neo-Nazis is ridiculous. These are, after all, people who claim that Dave Chapelle and Louis CK have been canceled. They in fact have thriving careers at the moment, with CK selling out theaters and Chappelle announcing last month that he has four Netflix specials coming up.

Speaking of that, the idea this “hostile” atmosphere for comedy is some never-before-seen threat to the genre is yet another disingenuous thing. Author Klipp Nesteroff discovered that people were writing that “cancel culture will end comedy” in…

1903.

And while cancel culture warriors are wailing about how lefties are ruining freedom, red states are passing laws to make it easier to run over protestors, Idaho is working on a bill to make medical treatment for trans youth a felony punishable by life in prison, and Florida is working on horrors that are too numerous to count.

But do go on about how social media randos and college students are the Greatest Threat to Democracy. Go ahead, write and post another Tweet about it. Maybe once Russia’s government is let back into Twitter, Putin will reTweet it for you.

The last word goes to the Stones. Rock on.