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Be charitable, he could be talking about the Dixie Chicks or anchors that were fired for questioning the Iraq war. Or for the biggest example of modern cancel

by cma 6y ago

Be charitable, he could be talking about the Dixie Chicks or anchors that were fired for questioning the Iraq war. Or for the biggest example of modern cancel culture, Kaepernick's firing after targeting by the president.

pjc50 6y ago
Well exactly - it's a phrase that seems to cover so many different situations it's meaningless without further qualification.
- SantalBlush 6y ago
  I think it’s a formula for poisoning the well. First, make vague complaints about conformism and “cancel culture.” Then, anyone who disagrees with you from that point must clearly be a conformist who approves of cancel culture.
  - harshreality 6y ago
    Vague? First of all, we can omit anything dealing with real sexual harassment, abuse, or obvious discrimination by people in power; although I think the social witch hunt phenomenon of things like #metoo is problematic, I'm not going to defend any of the people caught up in that kind of thing. So I think it's fair to exclude people like Lawrence Krauss, Louis CK, and definitely people like Harvey Weinstein. That leaves us with people cancelled for ideological reasons because of things they've said or written, because that ideology is felt to have a chilling effect on anyone interacting with them. James Watson: cancelled Tim Hunt: cancelled for sexist joke Lawrence Summers: cancelled Bret Weinstein: cancelled (from Evergreen, at least) Erika Christakis: quasi-cancelled (left Yale voluntarily a year after the Halloween incident). J. K. Rowling: ongoing attempted cancellation[1] due to being a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF), despite the fact that she didn't seem to be exclusionary at all, and definitely nothing at all like Camille Paglia who is more definitively a TERF. Among numerous others. Including that PR rep who was fired within the span of her plane trip to Africa after making a racial joke about HIV on her personal twitter account. That's to say nothing of people who would be cancelled if today's culture were transported back in time. Starting with William Shockley, and extending to a large number of notable historical figures. [1] For some tweets and later elaborated on in a blog post, all detailed here: https://www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk-rowling-transgender-comments-controversy https://www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk... . Basically, her crime seems to be an attempt to frame her experience and sexuality around her biological gender.
    - SantalBlush 6y ago
      This diatribe has nothing to do with what we’re discussing.
- hajile 6y ago
  Puritans left England to escape the English Cancel Culture. Upon arriving, most of them then implemented their own cancel culture. After Massachusetts cancelled him, Roger Williams founded Rhode Island on the belief that religious persecution by the majority was wrong (note: moral, religious, ideological -- whatever you call it, it's the same idea). This idea of personal tolerance is itself a moral position. Republic government reflects the will of the governed with emphasis on the will of the minority as a FUNDAMENTAL moral belief of the majority. "Free speech only applies to the government" is untrue because that is simply an outgrowth of the governed. When the governed majority actually start believing that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from results", you have opened Pandora's Box by shifting that fundamental moral belief. Once you have decided Cancel Culture is moral, you are simply negotiating the terms. The majority of the US believes homosexuality is morally wrong, but it's a personal decision/action. What if freedom to come out as gay doesn't mean freedom from consequences? What if the majority of people who believe abortion is immoral decide to lay on the consequences? There's a huge list of moral disagreements where the majority could decide to cancel the minority. Finally, Cancel Culture ALWAYS leads to violence. If tolerance isn't part of the mix (and Cancel Culture literally means you aren't being tolerant), then either someone must change their fundamental morals or must start a conflict. Saying "I'm tolerant" and then persecuting everyone who doesn't say and do exactly as you think they should might be cognitive dissonance, but it isn't tolerance.
baryphonic 6y ago
> Or for the biggest example of modern cancel culture, Kaepernick's firing after targeting by the president. Kaepernick was "fired" because he was poor at his job. Defenses started to understand his 1-dimensional attack and then shut it down. He was cut after the 2016 season, but had been benched in 2015 because the 49ers offense was struggling.[1] This was nine months before he ever took a knee before a game.[2] Did the 49ers look into a crystal ball and decide to bench him in favor of a demonstrably mediocre quarterback because of something that wouldn't happen for nine months? If he didn't show actual improvement on the field, were the 49ers obligated to keep him? Is an employer obligated to keep any employee who says something controversial regardless of performance? > Be charitable, he could be talking about the Dixie Chicks or anchors that were fired for questioning the Iraq war. Which anchors lost their jobs for questioning Iraq? Dan Rather stepped down for his role in publishing a hoax memo about George W. Bush's National Guard duty.[3] Brian Williams was quasi-fired for embellishing a story about his time as an embedded journalist in Iraq.[4] The Dixie Chicks were actually blacklisted by country music radio stations, so we'll give you that one. Still, .333 isn't great unless you're playing baseball. [1] https://www.nfl.com/news/niners-bench-colin-kaepernick-blaine-gabbert-to-start-0ap3000000572076 https://www.nfl.com/news/niners-bench-colin-kaepernick-blain... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/01/colin-kaepernick-kneeling-history/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/01/colin-kaepe... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/business/media/analysis-postmortemof-cbss-flawed-broadcast.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/business/media/analysis-p... [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/brian-williams-admits-that-his-story-of-coming-under-fire-while-in-iraq-was-false/2015/02/04/d7fe32d0-acc0-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/brian-william...
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  Kaepernick was blackballed by the league, full stop. Find me another instance of an uninjured QB under the age of 35 who led a team to a Super Bowl 3 years prior who was not only cut by his current team but not signed for even a backup role by another club. There's a reason that Cam Newton has a job today and Kaepernick doesn't, and it's because Newton didn't get cancelled.
jimbokun 6y ago
Yes, "cancel culture" exists on both the Left and the Right.

by cma 6y ago

pjc50 6y ago

Well exactly - it's a phrase that seems to cover so many different situations it's meaningless without further qualification.

SantalBlush 6y ago
I think it’s a formula for poisoning the well. First, make vague complaints about conformism and “cancel culture.” Then, anyone who disagrees with you from that point must clearly be a conformist who approves of cancel culture.
- harshreality 6y ago
  Vague? First of all, we can omit anything dealing with real sexual harassment, abuse, or obvious discrimination by people in power; although I think the social witch hunt phenomenon of things like #metoo is problematic, I'm not going to defend any of the people caught up in that kind of thing. So I think it's fair to exclude people like Lawrence Krauss, Louis CK, and definitely people like Harvey Weinstein. That leaves us with people cancelled for ideological reasons because of things they've said or written, because that ideology is felt to have a chilling effect on anyone interacting with them. James Watson: cancelled Tim Hunt: cancelled for sexist joke Lawrence Summers: cancelled Bret Weinstein: cancelled (from Evergreen, at least) Erika Christakis: quasi-cancelled (left Yale voluntarily a year after the Halloween incident). J. K. Rowling: ongoing attempted cancellation[1] due to being a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF), despite the fact that she didn't seem to be exclusionary at all, and definitely nothing at all like Camille Paglia who is more definitively a TERF. Among numerous others. Including that PR rep who was fired within the span of her plane trip to Africa after making a racial joke about HIV on her personal twitter account. That's to say nothing of people who would be cancelled if today's culture were transported back in time. Starting with William Shockley, and extending to a large number of notable historical figures. [1] For some tweets and later elaborated on in a blog post, all detailed here: https://www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk-rowling-transgender-comments-controversy https://www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk... . Basically, her crime seems to be an attempt to frame her experience and sexuality around her biological gender.
  - SantalBlush 6y ago
    This diatribe has nothing to do with what we’re discussing.
hajile 6y ago
Puritans left England to escape the English Cancel Culture. Upon arriving, most of them then implemented their own cancel culture. After Massachusetts cancelled him, Roger Williams founded Rhode Island on the belief that religious persecution by the majority was wrong (note: moral, religious, ideological -- whatever you call it, it's the same idea). This idea of personal tolerance is itself a moral position. Republic government reflects the will of the governed with emphasis on the will of the minority as a FUNDAMENTAL moral belief of the majority. "Free speech only applies to the government" is untrue because that is simply an outgrowth of the governed. When the governed majority actually start believing that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from results", you have opened Pandora's Box by shifting that fundamental moral belief. Once you have decided Cancel Culture is moral, you are simply negotiating the terms. The majority of the US believes homosexuality is morally wrong, but it's a personal decision/action. What if freedom to come out as gay doesn't mean freedom from consequences? What if the majority of people who believe abortion is immoral decide to lay on the consequences? There's a huge list of moral disagreements where the majority could decide to cancel the minority. Finally, Cancel Culture ALWAYS leads to violence. If tolerance isn't part of the mix (and Cancel Culture literally means you aren't being tolerant), then either someone must change their fundamental morals or must start a conflict. Saying "I'm tolerant" and then persecuting everyone who doesn't say and do exactly as you think they should might be cognitive dissonance, but it isn't tolerance.

baryphonic 6y ago

> Or for the biggest example of modern cancel culture, Kaepernick's firing after targeting by the president. Kaepernick was "fired" because he was poor at his job. Defenses started to understand his 1-dimensional attack and then shut it down. He was cut after the 2016 season, but had been benched in 2015 because the 49ers offense was struggling.[1] This was nine months before he ever took a knee before a game.[2] Did the 49ers look into a crystal ball and decide to bench him in favor of a demonstrably mediocre quarterback because of something that wouldn't happen for nine months? If he didn't show actual improvement on the field, were the 49ers obligated to keep him? Is an employer obligated to keep any employee who says something controversial regardless of performance? > Be charitable, he could be talking about the Dixie Chicks or anchors that were fired for questioning the Iraq war. Which anchors lost their jobs for questioning Iraq? Dan Rather stepped down for his role in publishing a hoax memo about George W. Bush's National Guard duty.[3] Brian Williams was quasi-fired for embellishing a story about his time as an embedded journalist in Iraq.[4] The Dixie Chicks were actually blacklisted by country music radio stations, so we'll give you that one. Still, .333 isn't great unless you're playing baseball. [1] https://www.nfl.com/news/niners-bench-colin-kaepernick-blaine-gabbert-to-start-0ap3000000572076 https://www.nfl.com/news/niners-bench-colin-kaepernick-blain... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/01/colin-kaepernick-kneeling-history/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/01/colin-kaepe... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/business/media/analysis-postmortemof-cbss-flawed-broadcast.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/business/media/analysis-p... [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/brian-williams-admits-that-his-story-of-coming-under-fire-while-in-iraq-was-false/2015/02/04/d7fe32d0-acc0-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/brian-william...

MisterBastahrd 6y ago
Kaepernick was blackballed by the league, full stop. Find me another instance of an uninjured QB under the age of 35 who led a team to a Super Bowl 3 years prior who was not only cut by his current team but not signed for even a backup role by another club. There's a reason that Cam Newton has a job today and Kaepernick doesn't, and it's because Newton didn't get cancelled.

jimbokun 6y ago

Yes, "cancel culture" exists on both the Left and the Right.