I thoroughly agree that cancel culture is stupid and reduces our collective discourse into sheer nihilism. As an evangelical Republican, I would just like to point out that that it didn't originate with Democrats. I have always thought they were responding to decades of what I remember that began in the 70's by the evangelical right, then spread to politics by the late 90s.
1970s: Southern Baptists led purges of "liberal" professors, church employees, and even pastors. Many were fired, others were shamed out.
1980s and 1990s: The religious right coordinated book burnings and music bonfires. (I remember playing some albums backwards just to check.)
1972: Jane Fonda. She was wrong, indeed, but what she has incurred through the decades is ridiculous. As recently as Meagan Kelly, she was called "Hanoi Jane" on Fox. Really? In 2021 the Ohio SoS tried to cancel her speaking event hosted by Kent State. Really?
1988: Murphy Brown television show. It never stopped until the show came to a natural end years later.
1997: Disney. 16 million SBC members boycotted.
1997: Ellen DeGeneres. Her show was cancelled the next year due to this and she struggled to find work for many years.
1999: Teletubbies, led by Falwell, Sr.
*Enter political + evangelicals*
2003: Freedom Fries.
2003: The Dixie Chicks.
2012: Ellen DeGeneres, again. The objection by One Millions Moms was her placement as the JC Penny spokesperson. Huh?
* Enter The Age of Trump and it's constant outrage about anything, especially if criticism or race was involved, many times a backlash was due to a previous backlash*
2016: Beyonce's Superbowl performance that referenced police killings. A police union was nearly successful in canceling her Miami concert.
2016: Target. For their transgender policy.
@Somewhere in there: Samantha Bee's joke about Ivanka during a comedy monologue. Advertisers pulled out. Trump demanded TBS be cancelled.
@Somewhere in there: Kathy Griffin's Trump photo. The outrage was warranted, but now the same outraged people are perfectly ok with anime videos about killing the Speaker, The President, etc. Congresspersons stating that a "bullet to the head" would be an expedient ending for political oppnents. Idk, this makes a photo look tame in comparison.
2017: Keurig. Long story beginning with Fox interviewing someone who had sex with a minor.
2018: Michelle Wolf after a joke about Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the WH Correspondents Dinner. Which is by design a comedy/roast event. Her talk show was cancelled.
2019: James Gunn. Fired from Disney after he criticized Trump, which fueled the alt-right to search his past and resurface some very old offensive jokes.
2019: Gillette RE advertising regarding masculinity.
2019: The Hunt movie. Disturbing and inappropriate indeed, but not much different than other common violent filth. Universal was successfully lobbied to cancel the theater release of the film.
2019-2020: Colin Kaepernic-> NFL-> Nike.
2020: A Boon year for both sides, but since I am referencing the right, NASCAR because they banned the banned the Confederate flag. (I grew up in the Louisiana, and I loved my Rebel flag as a cultural symbol. It is NOT cultural anymore.)
I am not at all denying what the left does is just as wrong. I am just trying to make a historical point.
The left may be better at cancel culture, (I wish they were as efficient with politics.) but they definitely not start it. The right has been waging the battle for 50 years.
Wow, I never saw that. I had completely forgotten about Tipper Gore's role in all that panic. It is the parent's responsibility, indeed. The John Denver testimony was next so I listened to that too. Censorship and the comparison to Nazi Germany from Denver?! (I'm going to track down the Zappa testimony as well.) These are still so very relevant today. Can we have hearings about the current book bans and play these testimonies, just substitute book paragraphs for lyrics? (I'm going to track down the Zappa one as well.) Thanks for the link!
I think my favorite part is where he's sparring with Gore and Rockefeller:
"Senator GORE. So it is not really a wild leap of the imagination to jump to the conclusion that the song is about something other than surgery or hospitals, neither of which are mentioned in the song?"
"Mr. SNIDER. No, it is not a wild jump. And I think what I said at one part was that songs allow a person to put their own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the lyrics. People can interpret it in many ways."
"Ms. Gore was looking for sado-masochism and bondage and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references would have found that as well."
---
"Senator ROCKEFELLER. Then how would it be possible for you to, as a responsible parent, to spend the time that you suggest listening to these records and finding out what it is that you want your son to listen to and what you do not want him to listen to?"
"Mr. SNIDER. To be perfectly honest, 9 years from now I am going to be well retired and I will be spending more time with my son than any other parent probably ever spends. And that is one of the beautiful things about rock and roll, is that I can retire hopefully at a very early age."
"But even now, I am very lucky that I have a wife who I have been going with for 10 years now, we have been married for 4, who is the most incredible mother. And while I am gone, she fills the role, and has a very difficult job, too, of mother and father."
"Senator ROCKEFELLER. Do you expect later on, then, that she will be going through these records?"
"Mr. SNIDER. I think both of us will be doing that."
"Senator ROCKEFELLER. Do you expect me to believe that?"
"Mr. SNIDER. You can. I am terminally teenage. I will be listening to my son's records."
"Senator ROCKEFELLER. What about families where both parents have to work, which is an increasing phenomenon in this country now, because they have to survive? And the whole notion of parents sitting down and listening to record after record, tape after tape -- that is what you suggested -- does that not strike you as just a little bit naive and unrealistic?"
"Mr. SNIDER. No, it does not, because I know the reality of the record-buying market as a record buyer. With my allowance, I was able to, if I was lucky, afford maybe one album a week at the most. Usually it was one a month. Albums cost anywhere from $6 to $10, and that is a lot of money to a teenager, or to a pre-teenager it is a ridiculous sum."
"And to a teenage kid that is a considerable amount of money. And so to listen to one record a week, I do not consider that a hardship."
--
Parents today have a lot to learn from Mr. Snider.
Excellent column Steve. You summed up with moral clarity(far better than I could’ve ever done) the concerns I’ve had with the political discourse and behavior of the right as of late. This woke, cancel culture from the new right is the religion of anti-wokeness. It’s in many respects markedly similar to the woke progressive left’s anti-racism extremism. Fighting toxic wokeness with another variety of toxic wokeness will have deleterious consequences for our culture and society.
The only push-back I'd put is that it doesn't mean that things will inevitably move leftward in a political sense: it's just as likely that a violent right-wind takeover occurs. Maybe more so, considering the fetishism of violent rhetoric in the US right.
Bravo. And very well stated.
Thank you.
I thoroughly agree that cancel culture is stupid and reduces our collective discourse into sheer nihilism. As an evangelical Republican, I would just like to point out that that it didn't originate with Democrats. I have always thought they were responding to decades of what I remember that began in the 70's by the evangelical right, then spread to politics by the late 90s.
1970s: Southern Baptists led purges of "liberal" professors, church employees, and even pastors. Many were fired, others were shamed out.
1980s and 1990s: The religious right coordinated book burnings and music bonfires. (I remember playing some albums backwards just to check.)
1972: Jane Fonda. She was wrong, indeed, but what she has incurred through the decades is ridiculous. As recently as Meagan Kelly, she was called "Hanoi Jane" on Fox. Really? In 2021 the Ohio SoS tried to cancel her speaking event hosted by Kent State. Really?
1988: Murphy Brown television show. It never stopped until the show came to a natural end years later.
1997: Disney. 16 million SBC members boycotted.
1997: Ellen DeGeneres. Her show was cancelled the next year due to this and she struggled to find work for many years.
1999: Teletubbies, led by Falwell, Sr.
*Enter political + evangelicals*
2003: Freedom Fries.
2003: The Dixie Chicks.
2012: Ellen DeGeneres, again. The objection by One Millions Moms was her placement as the JC Penny spokesperson. Huh?
* Enter The Age of Trump and it's constant outrage about anything, especially if criticism or race was involved, many times a backlash was due to a previous backlash*
2016: Beyonce's Superbowl performance that referenced police killings. A police union was nearly successful in canceling her Miami concert.
2016: Target. For their transgender policy.
@Somewhere in there: Samantha Bee's joke about Ivanka during a comedy monologue. Advertisers pulled out. Trump demanded TBS be cancelled.
@Somewhere in there: Kathy Griffin's Trump photo. The outrage was warranted, but now the same outraged people are perfectly ok with anime videos about killing the Speaker, The President, etc. Congresspersons stating that a "bullet to the head" would be an expedient ending for political oppnents. Idk, this makes a photo look tame in comparison.
2017: Keurig. Long story beginning with Fox interviewing someone who had sex with a minor.
2018: Michelle Wolf after a joke about Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the WH Correspondents Dinner. Which is by design a comedy/roast event. Her talk show was cancelled.
2019: James Gunn. Fired from Disney after he criticized Trump, which fueled the alt-right to search his past and resurface some very old offensive jokes.
2019: Gillette RE advertising regarding masculinity.
2019: The Hunt movie. Disturbing and inappropriate indeed, but not much different than other common violent filth. Universal was successfully lobbied to cancel the theater release of the film.
2019-2020: Colin Kaepernic-> NFL-> Nike.
2020: A Boon year for both sides, but since I am referencing the right, NASCAR because they banned the banned the Confederate flag. (I grew up in the Louisiana, and I loved my Rebel flag as a cultural symbol. It is NOT cultural anymore.)
I am not at all denying what the left does is just as wrong. I am just trying to make a historical point.
The left may be better at cancel culture, (I wish they were as efficient with politics.) but they definitely not start it. The right has been waging the battle for 50 years.
Dee Snider going to Congress is one of my favorite videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0Vyr1TylTE
Wow, I never saw that. I had completely forgotten about Tipper Gore's role in all that panic. It is the parent's responsibility, indeed. The John Denver testimony was next so I listened to that too. Censorship and the comparison to Nazi Germany from Denver?! (I'm going to track down the Zappa testimony as well.) These are still so very relevant today. Can we have hearings about the current book bans and play these testimonies, just substitute book paragraphs for lyrics? (I'm going to track down the Zappa one as well.) Thanks for the link!
I think my favorite part is where he's sparring with Gore and Rockefeller:
"Senator GORE. So it is not really a wild leap of the imagination to jump to the conclusion that the song is about something other than surgery or hospitals, neither of which are mentioned in the song?"
"Mr. SNIDER. No, it is not a wild jump. And I think what I said at one part was that songs allow a person to put their own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the lyrics. People can interpret it in many ways."
"Ms. Gore was looking for sado-masochism and bondage and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references would have found that as well."
---
"Senator ROCKEFELLER. Then how would it be possible for you to, as a responsible parent, to spend the time that you suggest listening to these records and finding out what it is that you want your son to listen to and what you do not want him to listen to?"
"Mr. SNIDER. To be perfectly honest, 9 years from now I am going to be well retired and I will be spending more time with my son than any other parent probably ever spends. And that is one of the beautiful things about rock and roll, is that I can retire hopefully at a very early age."
"But even now, I am very lucky that I have a wife who I have been going with for 10 years now, we have been married for 4, who is the most incredible mother. And while I am gone, she fills the role, and has a very difficult job, too, of mother and father."
"Senator ROCKEFELLER. Do you expect later on, then, that she will be going through these records?"
"Mr. SNIDER. I think both of us will be doing that."
"Senator ROCKEFELLER. Do you expect me to believe that?"
"Mr. SNIDER. You can. I am terminally teenage. I will be listening to my son's records."
"Senator ROCKEFELLER. What about families where both parents have to work, which is an increasing phenomenon in this country now, because they have to survive? And the whole notion of parents sitting down and listening to record after record, tape after tape -- that is what you suggested -- does that not strike you as just a little bit naive and unrealistic?"
"Mr. SNIDER. No, it does not, because I know the reality of the record-buying market as a record buyer. With my allowance, I was able to, if I was lucky, afford maybe one album a week at the most. Usually it was one a month. Albums cost anywhere from $6 to $10, and that is a lot of money to a teenager, or to a pre-teenager it is a ridiculous sum."
"And to a teenage kid that is a considerable amount of money. And so to listen to one record a week, I do not consider that a hardship."
--
Parents today have a lot to learn from Mr. Snider.
They didn't even learn then: we ended up with the "Parental Advisory - Explicit Content" label.
Excellent column Steve. You summed up with moral clarity(far better than I could’ve ever done) the concerns I’ve had with the political discourse and behavior of the right as of late. This woke, cancel culture from the new right is the religion of anti-wokeness. It’s in many respects markedly similar to the woke progressive left’s anti-racism extremism. Fighting toxic wokeness with another variety of toxic wokeness will have deleterious consequences for our culture and society.
The only push-back I'd put is that it doesn't mean that things will inevitably move leftward in a political sense: it's just as likely that a violent right-wind takeover occurs. Maybe more so, considering the fetishism of violent rhetoric in the US right.