Prickly City by Scott Stantis for July 28, 2020

I didn’t know Winslow was an IG.

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If you’ve ever wondered what you’d have done in 1930s Germany, you’re doing it now.

Day 1,000,052 of the Georgia economic recovery. Everything is peachy.

He must have come out against slavery. That’s the new red line for the Republicans.

Any way you look at it, the timing is … odd. I have no idea why those who wrote and signed it (J.K. Rowling / Harper’s magazine letter) thought that the middle of a global pandemic and a worldwide uprising against law enforcement’s long history of racist brutality was an ideal moment to give young people a stern talking to about the moral and societal risks of cancel culture.

The letter offers a hint, asserting that while calls for racial and social justice are good things (whew), “resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion — which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting.”

Ah, so fear of President Trump and his supporters, and of their talent for shouting “hypocrite” and “fake news,” are — at least in part — the motivation.

Yes, Trump and his supporters will definitely cool it if only young lefties on Twitter quiet down.

✁

I am old enough to disdain cancel culture, though not for the reasons the letter gives.

My disdain comes from the belief that it doesn’t exist — at least not as anything new, anything more than yet another term used as a blanket criticism of people, often young but not always, deploying new forms of communication (in this case, social media) to call out those they believe are espousing or enabling racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, sexual harassment and capitalistic exploitation. (Or, less grandly, to promote inter-influencer feuds.)

For the most part, however, the folks addressed by the letter — the supposed cancelers — have little or no institutional power.

All they have is the influence of the collective. Which makes the letter something of a feint.

Either way, the notion of “canceling” is not the problem.

Substitute “boycott” for “cancel” in all those Twitter feeds and you have the United Farm Workers.

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https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-07-09/cancel-culture-harpers-letter

So the Wall of Moms didn’t stop the TrumpStapo, how about a Wall of Vets? https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1286884473934503936

Boorish Stanty

Or. . . . . you could not care what people you don’t know and will never meet, think.

I suppose admitting you made a mistake, apologizing for it, and trying to do better is completely off the table in this world.

You can also get cancelled for running an idea into the ground.

The new thought police!

Time to put Joe in a Nursing Home.