A Busy and Bad Week for Cancel Culture
This week's assaults on Joe Rogan, Ilya Shapiro, Snow White, and Whoopie Goldberg are instructive if stupid. Cancel Culture mostly lost this week. With one tragedy.
Cancel culture raised its ugly head again this week. I guess the dark lords of the culture underworld were restless. They struck fast and furiously, but not fatally, with one tragic exception.
Spotify and Joe Rogan
Surely you’ve heard of podcaster Joe Rogan by now. It’s okay if you hadn’t until this week, even though he’s to podcasting what the late Rush Limbaugh was to talk radio. Now available on the streaming service Spotify, his downloads exceed over 100 million. I’m not a subscriber or regular listener, but a great admirer of his considerable interview skills.
I was introduced to Rogan a few years ago by my oldest son via a series of “breakout” long-form interviews with the Canadian author and psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson, whom I’d also not heard of at that point. Both are now practically household names. Surely you’re heard of Peterson’s book, Twelve Rules for Life, controversial only because it runs counter to our modern embrace of woke victimhood. He’s accused of all manner of things but inured a strong defense against cancelation forces.
Rogan’s eclectic, even undefinable politics are fascinating. He endorsed Bernie Sanders for President, so he’s no conservative. He brings less of an agenda than a style of intellectual curiosity and a full embrace of free speech and a desire to explore contrarian views. It is refreshing, and something colleges used to do before they became indoctrination factories. But he got in trouble for entertaining a canceled medical expert on vaccines, Dr. Robert Malone. Rogan allegedly promoted “dangerous misinformation” and cancel culture’s medical storm troopers launched a frontal assault.
Competing or alternative ideas and information, even from renowned medical experts, are not permitted and must be censored, it seems, from our modern-day book burners. You and I cannot be trusted with information that conflicts with the medical borg. Resistance is futile, it seems. All must assimilate.
You were reminded this past week that aging rockers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell were still alive. And 93-year old Quebec musician Gilles Vigneault. Perhaps others who, like Vigneault, you’ve never heard of, have also made the demand, “It’s Rogan or my music!” Spotify thought for a nanosecond and waved goodbye to Young and Mitchell, whose music has tens, maybe hundreds of downloads. OK, that’s probably not accurate. But you get my point.
No word yet on Vigneault. Perhaps the aging Quebecer will have more influence than we imagine. We doubt it. Adieu.
Ilya Shapiro and Georgetown University Law School
Less well known outside of constitutional and conservative legal circles is the suspension of Ilya Shapiro, a brilliant scholar formerly associated with the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. JustTheNews.com tells the story, the classic case of the inartful tweet that he deleted and apologized for:
A recently hired executive director and senior lecturer at Georgetown University Law School was placed on administrative leave prior to the official start of his position on account of a tweet he posted about President Biden's plans to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.
Following the announcement of Justice Stephen Breyer's retirement, Shapiro in a (since deleted) tweet wrote: "Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart. Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn't fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we'll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?"
Sri Srinivasan, who is Indian, serves as the chief judge on the District of Columbia's Court of Appeals.
Shapiro is likely to survive this assault from Georgetown's Black Law Students Association. Then again, Georgetown made this new list of America’s ten worst colleges for free speech.
The law school dean suspended the newly-hired Shapiro pending an investigation into whether Shapiro violated professional conduct and anti-harassment policies. This “investigation” will tell us a lot about Georgetown Law and whether it will capitulate to the uninformed and malevolent demands of a woke mob.
Surely Georgetown Law isn’t that weak. After all, they hired Shapiro in the first place, likely knowing full well his legal scholarship and views. Let’s hope Shapiro’s return will include teaching reading comprehension skills to the woke and illiterate mob. And maybe how one President’s racial quota for a Supreme Court Justice is blatantly discriminatory.
Shapiro is experiencing interesting times. He ran for school board in leafy and uber-lefty Falls Church, Virginia, this past November. He didn’t win but wrote about the experience for the Washington Examiner. An excerpt:
Well, six years after we bought into this great school district, our oldest son was set to start kindergarten, so we were about to have some serious skin in the game. The pandemic arrived just in time for this increased sensitivity to school governance, and then the board paid a consulting company to conduct a survey on whether slave ownership disqualified Jefferson and Mason from educational monikers.
More than two-thirds of respondents supported keeping the names . We dodged a bullet, I thought. Canceling the founders was apparently a bridge too far even for the limousine liberals who populate our fair burg (which voted 81% for Joe Biden ). And yet the board voted unanimously to rename.
Regardless of the merits of the issue — Mason tried to end the slave trade! — how could elected officials be so oblivious?
We’re about to find out how oblivious Georgetown Law is. At least, they need to do a better job in admissions. Perhaps Shapiro can fix that.
Peter Dinklage and Snow White
I remember actor Peter Dinklage more as Miles Finch from Elf than Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. He is a superb and successful actor, and very much against a live-action remake of the 1937 Disney classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. From the Washington Post:
This week, actor Peter Dinklage, who played McBride, once again found himself grappling with Snow White vis-a-vis dwarfism. On Monday’s episode of the podcast “WTF with Marc Maron,” Dinklage reacted to Disney creating a live-action remake of its first animated feature film, 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” In June, the company announced the role of Snow White was going to Rachel Zegler, who played María in Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story” released last month.
Dinklage, 52, told Maron he was surprised by what he saw as a contradiction.
“They were very, very proud to cast a Latino actress as Snow White, but you’re still telling the story of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’ ” Dinklage said, adding, “You’re progressive in one way … but you’re still making that … backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave. What … are you doing, man?”
On Tuesday, Disney responded, saying it will aim to present the characters in a sensitive manner.
Maybe Disney can rescue some small Uyghur Muslims from Jinxiang Province in China. That would be new and different, especially for woke Disney.
Dinklage was immediately criticized by at least one fellow dwarf, Dylan Postl.
“It makes me so sick to my stomach to think that there are seven roles for dwarfs that can’t get normal acting roles, or very few and far between roles, and now they are gone because of this guy,” actor Dylan Postl told Daily Mail.
Dylan Postl made his name originally working for WWE where he played a Leprechaun called Hornswoggle. He also took a role in a new Leprechaun movie and also appeared in The Muppets.
“Peter Dinklage is the biggest dwarf actor probably of all time but it doesn’t make him king dwarf,” Postl said. “When he was cast as a little person role in Lord of the Rings or in Game of Thrones or in Elf or this that or the other thing, those checks cashed just fine.”
While Snow White will not be canceled, it seems, my confidence is low in the remake’s ability to escape Disney’s wokeism, which apparently includes condoning genocide.
Whoopi Goldberg and the Holocaust
I tried to watch The View once. As I felt my IQ quickly descending into double digits, I quickly changed the channel. Whew. It's no wonder it has a hard time finding an intelligent conservative woman to balance out the others. They could not keep Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Meghan McCain, and others who auditioned. I can’t keep up, but the show is not for people like me. IQs over 100 need not apply. Did you know that the dumbest panelist on The View, Joy Behar, is 79? Proof that age is no indicator of wisdom or intelligence. But she’s laughing all the way to the bank.
One of the more gifted lefties on the show is actress Whoopi Goldberg. In the very rare instance of a liberal encountering cancel culture, she was suspended for two weeks from the show over ignorant comments. Why? She claimed that the Holocaust wasn’t about “race.” Jewish organizations pounced.
No one seriously believes that Goldberg is anti-Semitic. But she is, or was, ignorant and uninformed about the Holocaust. She should not be canceled, but she should use her two weeks off to learn a thing or two. It is a lesson for all of us to be careful while opining on sensitive matters (like genocide) without a modicum of grounding. It speaks, again, to the woeful failure of our educational system and culture to teach history. Real history, not the History Channel variety, which focuses on other things.
It would be nice of The View, upon Whoopi’s return, to accept the invitation of this Holocaust survivor to appear on the show. We all could learn a thing or two, perhaps. I might even watch.
Former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst tragically self cancels
Finding true meaning in our lives is a challenge all face at some point, along with learning to handle the process of getting older.
Cheslie Kryst was not successful. She apparently took her own life this week.
This is a tragedy on so many levels. A beautiful, talented, highly educated, and successful (by the world’s standards) woman, she jumped to her death from a Manhattan high rise.
Last March, she wrote about her fear of turning 30. No one close to her apparently saw the warning flags.
Each time I say, “I’m turning 30,” I cringe a little. Sometimes I can successfully mask this uncomfortable response with excitement; other times, my enthusiasm feels hollow, like bad acting. Society has never been kind to those growing old, especially women. (Occasional exceptions are made for some of the rich and a few of the famous.) When I was crowned Miss USA 2019 at 28 years old, I was the oldest woman in history to win the title, a designation even the sparkling $200,000 pearl-and-diamond Mikimoto crown could barely brighten for some diehard pageant fans who immediately began to petition for the age limit to be lowered.
A grinning, crinkly-eyed glance at my achievements thus far makes me giddy about laying the groundwork for more, but turning 30 feels like a cold reminder that I’m running out of time to matter in society’s eyes — and it’s infuriating.
After a year like 2020, you would think we’d learned that growing old is a treasure and maturity is a gift not everyone gets to enjoy. Far too many of us allow ourselves to be measured by a standard that some sternly refuse to challenge and others simply acquiesce to because fitting in and going with the flow is easier than rowing against the current. I fought this fight before and it’s the battle I’m currently fighting with 30.
How do I shake society’s unwavering norms when I’m facing the relentless tick of time? It’s the age-old question: What happens when “immovable” meets “unstoppable”?
Running out of time. At 30 years of age.
I vaguely recall turning 30. Yes, it was the first of several (and, hopefully, more to come) milestone birthdays. 40. 50. 60. 65. Funny, each seems less traumatic than the previous one. More from the accomplished athlete, attorney, and Emmy Award winner:
My 29th birthday felt very emblematic of the season I’m looking forward to entering. In a time when extravagant birthday bashes are the gold standard of celebrations, I was happily stuck in my apartment, parading around in a black silk top, matching shorts, and a floor-length robe while scarfing down banana pudding and screening birthday calls. I even wore my crown around the apartment for most of the day knowing I’d have to give it back at the end of my reign as Miss USA. I did what I wanted rather than the expected.
The lessons here are too voluminous and essential to expound on here. But they remind us that happiness and genuine success are not found from dusty, inanimate trophies, diplomas, or even crowns awarded to us. It comes from the gifts we grant to others, including life, friendship, service, and time. “Popularity is fleeting; fame is a vapor,” a late Democratic US Senate leader once said. Genuine happiness cannot be found in either. Hope and happiness are found in things eternal, not temporal.
No one tried to cancel her; just the opposite. Failure was rare, if non-existent, in her short and accomplished life. Even then, she found her life unbearable. And lonely.
It saddens me that she never visited Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan or had a wise mentor to see her pain and help guide her through these challenges. She could not break from her superficial world, so it broke her. At age 30, she fell victim to the evil belief that her life was all behind her, fading into meaningless oblivion. What a lie. There is much that she never got to know or experience. Sometimes, Satan wins. But not in the end.
For many of us, our faith has guided us through the phases of life. For Cheslie, not so much. Many of my greatest rewards in life came well after I turned 30. Starting with the birth of my two wonderful and accomplished sons. Cheslie will never know.
Cancel culture has its victims and must be fought, but none more tragic than the young life that hopelessly cancels itself. We must all be mindful of the Cheslie Krysts among us, who come in all shapes, sizes, successes, failures, and challenges. And no matter their looks, their accomplishments, and their accolades, each one suffers differently but no less than “the least” among us. Worldly success is its own empty reward. There’s a better way.