Speaker 1: Hey, does cancel culture actually exist in light of the latest right wing cancellation of
the new Eminem's? We have to talk about cancel culture. Does cancel culture actually exist?
Someone sent me an article from the Center on a Stateless Society, which is sort of the basis
for this segment. And that article really got me thinking. And what I mean by does cancel culture
really exist is sometimes things are canceled in the sense that people are fired or a show is
canceled or someone is ostracized or people change their views, or activists express opinions that
say, I don't like what you said. That happens, right? That takes place. But does the cancel
culture that Republicans describe actually exist? Does this culture exist when Republicans scream,
we are being canceled by the woke left? I believe that it does not really exist. Often
what is happening is that someone's words or actions are having consequences as those
words and actions are being evaluated in the free market of ideas which Republicans claim
to support. Oftentimes the canceled still have a bully pulpit, plenty of access to corporate media,
social media and other platforms to spread their views. Sometimes they're canceled in the sense
that they lose when they're entertainers. They lose one opportunity, but then they come back
and they get another opportunity. And sometimes it takes a little while. You look at Mel Gibson,
who had this horrible incident where he was pulled over drunk driving, and he said to the officer,
Are you a Jew? And I guess the officer was Jewish. You know, what are the odds?
And then he, you know, made all sorts of other horrible statements. And there was a period
during which Mel Gibson wasn't doing much work in Hollywood, but like, then he's back. Then he
started getting work again. And so is that is that really a cancellation? There was a
period during which his statements and actions impacted his career. It seems logical that in
such a free market, there are consequences to the things that you say and that you do.
And so often and this is really what I believe is at the crux of this meme of cancel culture
that the right likes to talk about. Often those who are accused of doing the canceling are people
from groups that only more recently are getting a louder voice. They're from previously marginalized
groups. And thanks to social media and the Internet, some of those individuals, some of
those groups are now having more of a voice to express their views. People speak out and they
push back against marginalization, and sometimes there are consequences to the person doing the
marginalizing. And now they have been canceled as if it's bad that there are consequences for the
things that they have said or done. Now, it's also worth noting that by their own definition
of canceling, it is often Republicans that are doing the canceling, despite the fact that they
say it's the left that does the canceling. And we see this in the way that they try to silence
dissenting voices in the media and in academia and in politics. They want to control the narrative.
They want to shut down voices that challenge their ideology. And when they get called out,
they say it's cancel culture as a way to deflect responsibility and to play the victim everything
they accuse the left of doing, they do. Let me remind you of something else. This isn't
as popular in the last couple of years, but you used to often hear from the right.
Saying you're offended isn't an argument. And I agreed with them. Right. If someone makes
a statement and someone on the left or the right responds by saying that's offensive.
Boom. Conversation over. I think that that is a way to shut down an argument,
to shut down debate. And it's not actually an argument in and of itself. You offended
me. Boom. Well, let's let's talk about what I said. Let's talk about white. White. Okay.
That's cancel culture is exactly the same thing. It is exactly equivalent to I'm offended. And the
conversation that's cancel culture. That's it. We're done. It's exactly the same thing now.
I'll be upfront with everybody here. You all know I am not blind to the reality that sometimes
people may go too far in their activism. Sometimes the calls for someone's head are premature or they
are inappropriate. If we go back and think about, by the way, when Democrats demanded
that their own Senator, Al Franken, resign. Al Franken participated in a tasteless joke that
was photographed and it was tasteless. There's no question about it. But in a sense, Democrats were
too quick to say you got to resign Al Franken, partially because Democrats wanted to show how
how fair and nonpartisan they were when it came to these things. And the reality is that what Al
Franken did was really quite minor compared to the things others have gotten away with. So I'm
not blind to the fact that sometimes people go too far, but that doesn't mean you can't hold anyone
accountable. And if you do, it's cancel culture. So we need to shift from calling people out to.
It's so cliche like sometimes that people say we need to call people in to talk. Right. This
is all the reality of there are now many more platforms on which people can speak
and there are many more platforms on which people can respond to speech. And so that's the reality.
And so the idea of cancel culture as this monolithic movement to salespeople is basically
meaningless. It's not accurately representing what's happening. There's no conspiracy. It's
the marketplace of ideas that the right holds up as a place where ideas or jokes or bigotry
or ad campaigns or content or whatever are open to criticism, and they're open to consequences.
So let's get away from the term cancel culture. I use it tongue in cheek when I say, look,
it's cancel culture from the right, but it's really a political boogeyman and it's meant to
silence voices, often marginalized voices. It's meant to protect the status quo, particularly
when it comes to Republicans by making them immune to the consequences of their actions
and their words. Don't fall for it. Let's actually push back against the concept of cancel culture.