Sciascia: 'Cancel Culture' Simply Doesn't Exist
All right, I have something to tell you, and you might want to sit down for this one. It has been weighing on my mind for weeks, and I’ve been racking my brain, but I simply don’t know how to put it delicately. So instead, I am going to put it as frankly as I can.
The American left is absolutely right: “Cancel Culture” does not exist.
Yes, you read that correctly. I said, “Cancel Culture does not exist” — at least, not in the way you think of it. Now, before you submit that “Correction” notice to my editors and get me in trouble as a closeted hater of conservatives, allow me explain.
Take a moment and call to memory every prominent cultural figure you can think of who has been “canceled” in the past few years.
Who comes to mind? Are any patterns emerging?
More importantly, are there any figures in particular who conveniently avoided a well-deserved spot on the list?
Did high-profile Hollywood celebrities such as Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon or Nick Cannon make the list? What about widely recognized politicians like Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?
Of course not. Each is left-of-center politically. And that’s exactly the point.
Despite having been exposed numerous times for dressing in blackface and even employing racial slurs during some comedy sketches, late-night host Kimmel has yet to lose his ABC television program “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
In fact, when his latest blackface controversy spun up roughly a month ago, from the late 1990s, Kimmel somehow worked out a months-long vacation with the network.
Despite having similarly employed blackface in skits of his own, Kimmel’s counterpart at NBC, Jimmy Fallon, also is still comfortably employed.
Despite having admitted to wearing blackface and seemingly featured in blackface in an Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook photograph of two students dressed for Halloween as a Ku Klux Klan member and a black person, Democrat Ralph Northam remains the governor of Virginia.
Despite the revelation of not one but two photographs of the figure wearing “brownface” throughout his life, radical left loverboy Justin Trudeau remains the prime minister of a developed Western nation.
If you weren’t already painfully aware, the American left does not hold its own accountable to the same standard it holds its opponents to, whether that be in the culture or the political sphere.
No. The American left is immune to “Cancel Culture.”
You see, the moral and social standard is for conservatives and conservatives alone.
Exclusive: Justin Trudeau wore brownface at 2001 ‘Arabian Nights’ party while he taught at a private school, Canada’s Liberal Party admits https://t.co/j3UobfYNIF
— TIME (@TIME) September 18, 2019
A reminder that Ralph Northam apologized for being in this photo— then backtracked & said ackshually it wasn’t him, but that he’d been in blackface a different time. And the investigation into the blackface & KKK yearbook photo ended with no real answers.https://t.co/Nn1tXGpWfF https://t.co/bjLztyIDwe pic.twitter.com/9BNBPG454t
— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) June 17, 2020
Every other month, an effort is made by left-wing activists and Media Matters goons to boycott the advertising partners of prominent conservative political commentators such as Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson in order to cut revenue and eventually see their shows canceled.
In 2018, NBC News host Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News personality and moderate conservative at best, saw her television spot handed off to a colleague for her mere willingness to question whether blackface is acceptable in certain contexts.
Just last year, Christian entrepreneurial luminaries David and Jason Benham saw their opportunity at a faith-based home renovation program at HGTV axed over viewer outrage regarding traditional marriage and pro-life views espoused by the two.
Heck, even just things that conservatives enjoy get canceled when the American left wants its way. According to The Wall Street Journal, A&E was willing to lose roughly half its viewership overnight by cutting “Live PD” to appease the social justice left’s Black Lives Matter mob.
So, tell me: If only one group is taking the heat, how can a cancel “culture” possibly exist?
It cannot.
Forgive me for arguing semantics, but there is no wide culture of cancellation. Instead, there is a strategically targeted system of cancellation.
In Hollywood boardrooms, academic ivory towers and New York City newsrooms, there is a political machine bent on canceling conservatives. Its onboard computer is perpetually acquiring, isolating and firing on new targets. Its engine never runs out of fuel. Its parts undergo round-the-clock upkeep.
It is a weapon of war, not an element of the culture.
Conservatives need to recognize that and begin altering their rhetoric and tactical response — because when moderates, independents and default liberals hear you say “Cancel Culture,” they look around and say, “What cancel culture? I don’t see it. I don’t know anybody that believes in ruining someone’s life over their political values or previous remarks.”
And they are only going to listen to you cry wolf and point to some vague cultural dilemma so many times before it all starts falling on deaf ears.
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