In a new profile on Jennifer Aniston in the Wall Street Journal,
the celebrity shared her pretty unfiltered thoughts on cancel culture,
which is always a hot button topic, which always leads to some backlash.
And to be sure, Aniston is facing backlash for her comments.
So what did she say?
She told the Wall Street Journal, quote, I'm so over cancel culture,
I probably just got canceled by saying that.
I just don't understand what it means.
Is there no redemption?
I don't know.
I don't put everybody in the Harvey Weinstein basket.
And then she continues, he's not a guy, you're like, God,
I can't wait to hang out with Harvey, never.
You were actually like, God, okay, suck it up.
I remember actually, he came to visit me on a movie to pitch me a movie.
And I do remember consciously having a person stay in my trailer, okay?
So look, what I'm more interested in discuss,
like, we all know Harvey Weinstein is a disgusting person, right?
We all know that,
we don't need to adjudicate anything when it comes to that guy.
But what she is getting a lot of backlash for is her thoughts on cancel culture.
And I'm curious what you think about it, Mark.
>> Speaker 2: Well, I think it's an easy target, cancel culture,
because it means different things to everybody.
And we all go, well, that particular instance, that was a good thing,
that they canceled it or whatever, whereas we can go, that wasn't cool.
They overreacted to whatever, and then the whatevers and
the blanks are all filled in in different ways for all of us.
So I feel as though she took an easy target.
That said, probably we have been too aggressive in cancellation.
I mean, it is the coin of the realm, canceling people, jumping on people.
How could they say that?
How did they say that?
Look, she came off a show, Friends, just to talk about her.
I think it was all white people on that show, right?
I mean, that show probably would not be on the air today,
it would be cast in a far more integrated way, more representative of a community.
>> Speaker 1: The culture was, look,
I don't know why people have a difficult time accepting the reality of it.
But the culture in the country was very different in the 1990s when Friends
was on air, was putting out new episodes, all of that, versus what it is today.
>> Speaker 2: Okay. >> Speaker 1: And I'm not justifying what
the culture was back then, but I think that we should be able to look
back on the progress made rather than judge the celebrities who were
in that show back in the 90s when the culture was what it was like.
Using today's standards to judge celebrities and
their actions in the past when what they were engaging in was very much in
line with what the culture was at the time, I think is weird.
>> Speaker 2: I'm not judging her either, I mean, I don't think you can.
She's an actress who was cast in a show, she didn't write the show,
she didn't produce the show, she didn't create the show.
But I was just making a point that the culture has changed, you know what I mean?
And part of that cultural change involves being more sensitive about certain things,
like the way that show would be cast today.
>> Speaker 1: But I think the thing that annoys me is rather than look at
the progress that's been made and celebrate that, and
kind of look at the glass half full, instead, it's like, let's be really angry.
Instead of focusing on the progress, let's be very angry at what it was like in
the 90s and then get really angry at the celebrities who were in shows in the 90s.
>> [LAUGH] >> It's just, it doesn't, anyway.
>> Speaker 2: I'm sorry, the last part, I don't, you can celebrate the culture and
how we've evolved, okay, that's fine.
You can't be angry about necessarily,
you certainly can't be angry at the celebrities who are in these shows.
As I say, they're just actors and performers who are cast in these shows.
>> Speaker 1: I'll give you a specific example.
>> Speaker 1: Okay.
>> Let's get off the celebrity thing, I'll personalize it.
And you've been in the media industry for a long time, so
I know you'll understand what I'm talking about here.
So back in the day, when you share stories,
when you're reporting stories, presenting stories,
it used to be that you wouldn't censor the slurs, right?
And I remember back in the day at TYT, we literally had a meeting, and
we took a vote on what we do when we covered these
stories about these disgusting, deplorable racists.
And so at the time, we all agreed that sanitizing the words that they use,
the slurs that we use, actually does them a favor.
Cuz it does just that, it sanitizes their bigotry, their hatred, their racism,
whatever.
So I remember at the time when I would read their quotes in the context of us
condemning the racist, I'd be like, this is one day gonna come back to haunt me.
Someone's gonna take me out of context, and that's exactly what happened.
There's a compilation that was originally put together by a right winger of me and
Cenk just saying the N word.
>> Right.
>> Without any context, even though it was specifically in the context of
us reading other people's quotes and condemning the racism.
So that was used to try to cancel me, but I'm uncancelable,
mostly because I have a boss who's not a giant coward.
>> Right, he's not afraid.
>> Speaker 1: He's not afraid.
So, when the mob comes to try to come for me, Cenk's like, no, but
the thing is, not all bosses are like that, not all employers are like that.
In fact, most employers get real panicky.
And so when there's a mob of people dogpiling and
demanding that an individual get fired, more often than not,
that person gets fired, they lose their livelihood.
That's cancel culture, that's what I consider cancel culture, right?
Getting a bunch of backlash, but not losing your job, and
I don't consider that cancel culture.
But when there's a group of people who literally make it their life's goal to
get people they disagree with fired from their jobs, that's cancel culture.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, this is interesting because this is the virtue of TYT and
being member supported.
Because you don't have petitioning of advertisers per se the way you
might in the commercial broadcasts that have pretty much ruled the world,
until now that's all beginning to change.
And so I would say, Anna, that through time there have been these
coalitions of parents and they've tried to marshal advertiser support.
I mean, that's not a new thing, they've been doing that since the 70s.
And that's to try to get changes in programming and
to get programs canceled or to take away the advertiser support.
So I think that's always been a thing.
It does feel as though now, to your last point, it's more of an industry
now where people all feel empowered to personally do a remix of Cenk and
Anna and somehow take their stuff out of context.
And see how far that will go, see if they can get some virality to it.
So I take that point.
>> Speaker 1: But also, I mean,
something as simple as sharing an opinion that a group of people dislike.
But it's not an opinion that advocates for violence, it's not even a particularly
hateful opinion, people are allowed to have political disagreements.
But now we're in an era where even the slightest political disagreement could
lead to a giant group of people online.
Who, again, somehow believe that it's their life's mission to censor
your message by getting you fired.
And I think that that's totally unacceptable, and
I'm not crying about it in the context of what's happened to me.
Again, luckily, I'm in a place where I feel respected, where I work,
I have an employer who respects me and makes me feel like my voice is important.
But I think that that's a rarity these days.
And so I hate that this culture has in fact impacted the lives
of ordinary people who might have been caught behaving
poorly in a video that was viral online or whatever.
I just think that as someone who identifies as a progressive,
someone who cares about the livelihoods of ordinary Americans,
including those I disagree with politically.
It's gross to try to take their livelihood away because you disagree with their
behavior or what they've said.
>> Speaker 2: No, you're right, I mean, I think we've gotten now to use the phrase
a little far out over our skis on canceling.
And just that is the culture and social media, of course,
has fed that because it's just so
much more interesting to watch somebody my God, look, it's a gotcha video.
A Gotcha video is much more fun to watch than something else.
And so I think it's just in the culture, it's sort of woven into today.
>> Speaker 1: How do we weave it out?
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, how do weave it out?
>> Speaker 1: How do we come at stories or issues, political disagreements
from a place of openness, understanding, compassion?
And by the way, I wanna make a distinction cuz this is important, right?
I see the cancel culture situations I'm referring to as different from,
let's say, you have a teacher who's caught on tape saying
disgusting racist things about students, right?
No, no, in that case, that person should lose their job because that is an educator
who clearly has a bias against a specific race, and
that's gonna impact students in that classroom, right?
So if the behavior has an impact on other people's lives as that
person is still employed in that job, that's different.
But what I'm talking about is someone has a political view you disagree with,
or someone is caught in an out of context video where it appears that they're
behaving poorly.
But you don't know all the details yet, like the rush to judgment and
the rush to contact that person's employer and get them fired.
That is the behavior that I do find questionable, do not support.
And I think Aniston also brings up an interesting point about redemption.
Is there redemption?
It seems like we're also in an era where redemption is unacceptable.
>> Speaker 2: No, you're right.
It used to be that Americans particularly would embrace the redemption and so
anticipate the redemption.
But just to your point about the schools,
let's now take a teacher who is canceled, to use the word,
because parents, a coalition of parents, go after this teacher because they
taught something in the classroom that the parents disagree with.
It may be related to slavery, it may be related to the Holocaust,
it may be related to God knows what.
And you see how all of a sudden, these parents just seize power.
And we've seen it, I mean, there are just so
many examples of teachers being essentially canceled out of the profession
for doing things that are perfectly reasonable.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right.
I mean, look, I wanna also be clear about something.
Cancel culture is practiced by people of all political affiliations, okay?
This is not a left wing thing, this isn't solely a right wing thing.
Everyone engages in it, everyone does it.
>> Speaker 2: That's why it's such a great subject, because that's exactly right.
>> Speaker 1: Exactly, but
it is interesting because I think that conservatives have been far more
successful in using the anti-cancel culture narrative against the left, right?
And the left, in response to that, has largely denied that cancel culture exists,
even though we see it play out almost on a daily basis.
So my argument would be, rather than denying the existence of cancel culture as
we experience it being practiced regularly.
Maybe draw a little more attention to the cancel culture and
how it's being practiced by other political groups who
are exploiting that narrative for their political advantage.