It’s rather amusing reading words of lament coming from the very people who’ve traditionally aimed to shut down ideas they’re intellectually incapable of debating. But these are also the same people who decried the mistreatment of women by misogynist males until #MeToo bit them in the ass, in their house.
Instead of debating ideas, the left and right are demanding that anyone who annoys them be cast out of polite society.
Sarah Silverman has been canceled. A Hollywood director fired the progressive comedian because of a sketch she performed a dozen years ago.
“I recently was going to do a movie … a sweet part,” Silverman said on a podcast this month. “Then, at 11 p.m. the night before, they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode.”
The first line in this USA Today opinion piece by this Jon Gabriel is an insult to anyone who’s been paying attention. It says alot about what he assumes about their audience.
Cancel culture is spreading for one simple reason: It works. Instead of debating ideas or competing for entertainment dollars, you can just demand that anyone who annoys you be cast out of polite society.
Way back in the mists of time, say five years ago, if you didn’t like a TV show or movie, you wouldn’t watch it. Now you can ensure that no one watches it, just by slinging some outrage on social media.
Actually, that’s what conservatives do. When actors, musicians, and athletes insult us (and they do a lot lately), we stop watching their television shows, movies, turn off their games and stop buying their music. We don’t seek to banish them into oblivion, primarily because it doesn’t work. Liberals can do some of the most heinous things in society and still manage to get work. They can sexually assault, beat their wives, drive drunk, plagiarize, say racist things on camera, even call a vice presidential candidate a “cunt” and you’ll still see them on our televisions, movie screens, on the field and on our radios.
Conversely, morally superior progressives will seek the professional destruction of any conservative who crosses a moral line and most of the time, it works.
Our woke mentality is America’s new Puritanism. Instead of a handy list of sins written thousands of years ago, modern sins are ever-changing. A joke that was deemed progressive a decade ago is retroactively condemned as hate speech.
This climate is a liberal creation, embraced by the left when conservatives could be bullied. Bon appetit!
“If you say the wrong thing,” Silverman said, “everyone is, like, throwing the first stone. It’s a perversion. It’s really, ‘Look how righteous I am, and now I’m going to press refresh all day long to see how many likes I get in my righteousness.’”
There is nothing “new” about this. The left is now lamenting on, like many other things, how their tables have been turned back on them. Poor babies.
They cheered when Roseanne Barr lost her job over some not-so-well-thought-through Tweets, not to mention notable casualties like Don Imus, Paula Deen, and Bill O’Reilly. Meanwhile Democrat Ralph “blackface” Northam got a pass and is still in the Virginia governor’s mansion simply because he gave the finger to those who demanded he go away.
Anytime the social media lynch mob of anonymous trolls can beat a target into a whimpering mess, begging for forgiveness, that may not even be enough. Some will just tell you to kill yourself. But when liberals are busted, like during the Bill Clinton – Monica Lewinsky adultery scandal, the left defended him by saying “Everybody does it.” In this case, no, everybody doesn’t do this. It’s almost exclusively from those on the unhinged left who are still in full punish mode after the last presidential election and they flushed all sense of civility down the toilet.
But alas, it’s happening to Hollywood liberals and their overpaid careers are in potential jeopardy, the standard “That’s not who I am” response is not enough, so now it’s something we ALL need to talk about.
It’s time for the perpetually offended on the left and right to bring back two concepts the Puritans were at least familiar with: grace and forgiveness.
— USA Today, 8/20/19
It’s always a “left and right” problem when the liberal boomerang comes back and hits them in the head, but the left very seldom forgives and forgets unless it’s one of their own and they gleefully make it hurt.
So, nice try but not this time. It’s their bed; they can lay in it.
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