Anthony Freda‘s illustration says it all — cancel culture fanatics are the ogres of our time. I can’t wait until the culture swings back and around and everyone starts coming for them.
No, not punitively — I don’t want to see anyone’s career threatened or damaged — but wokesters deserve to be exposed for who and what they are, as no different in temperament or attitude than the rightwing legislators of the early to mid ’50s who destroyed the careers of several reputable screenwriters for being ex-Communists.
The 11.2 N.Y. Times article, written by John McDermott, is called “Those People We Tried to Cancel? They’re All Hanging Out Together.”
The best portion of the article focuses on the remarks of Jonathan Kay, an editor of Quillette, “an online publication that touts itself as a defender of free speech and has emerged as a home for the canceled to plead their cases.”
Excerpt: “Mr. Kay clarified that Quillette will not publish just anyone, however. ‘Being canceled is like autism — it’s a spectrum,’ he said. Harvey Weinstein would be a ‘no’ for him.
“’We’re much more interested in the opposite end of the spectrum, where you have people who have been accused of things that are much less serious, and don’t nearly approach a criminal level,’ Mr. Kay said.
“Readers want to hear from the canceled, but the larger motivation is philosophical. Quillette’s editorial point of view is that so-called cancel culture is overly punitive and lacks nuance.
“’When I went to law school, in the ’90s, the presumption of innocence was seen as a progressive value,’ Mr. Kay said. ‘Because who is mostly wrongly accused of crime? Racialized minorities. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor. More often than not, it protects marginalized communities. And now the presumption of innocence is seen as a conservative value. And that troubles me.’”
