Professional Assholes Equate Consequences With 'Cancel Culture' To Obscure That They're Finally Being Held Accountable

Culture

from the don't-let-them-get-away-with-it dept

You may recall, last summer, there was a big dustup regarding a letter published in Harper’s Magazine about cancel culture (though it didn’t use that term). I pointed out the irony of a bunch of very famous writers whining about being silenced and even took a shot at what a much better letter could have said. Harper’s even asked me to pen a response to the letter which it published (though, it only gave me a limited amount of space, and complained about some of what I originally submitted, which I — at least — found amusingly ironic).

Since then these debates have continued to flare up, as people keep screaming “cancel culture” in many situations where it simply does not apply. There are some who argue that there is no such thing as “cancel culture,” which possibly takes things too far. I do think what can be said is that there are some cases where someone loses their job for questionable reasons, often having to do with a bunch of people online overreacting. And it’s reasonable to point out those cases and to highlight the unfair response. However, the focus on “cancel culture” and the willingness to expand that phrase to cover just about any consequences is very much being abused by the powerful to try to shield themselves from consequences.

Two recent pieces help drive this home. The always insightful and brilliant Margaret Sullivan at the Washington Post has an excellent piece about how being held accountable is not “cancel culture.” This article drove home a key point for me: even if there are cases of cancel culture, the people who are whining most loudly about it are really trying to use those few legitimate stories of overreaction as a whitewash shield to argue that they should never be held accountable for their own behavior or assholish behavior.

As Sullivan points out, most of what people are complaining about as “cancel culture” is really people exercising their 1st Amendment rights to call out bad behavior and ridiculous arguments. And that’s a good thing. We should want bad behavior and ridiculous arguments to be called out. And, yes, we should recognize that sometimes people overreact. And sometimes there’s more nuance and the bad behavior maybe isn’t bad, or the ridiculous arguments aren’t so ridiculous. But often they are. And that’s where people speaking out and debating these things makes sense. As Sullivan notes, having people push back on nonsense is a good thing. It’s called responsibility:

It would help if journalists pushed back more effectively. CNN?s Pamela Brown gave a master class in her devastating interview with Madison Cawthorn, a Republican congressman from North Carolina. By the end, he had no defense left for his election denialism.

But, even if that sort of pushback becomes the norm, news organizations should be wary of handing these charlatans a megaphone.

You can call that cancel culture if you want. I call it responsibility.

The good news is that, in America, we get to argue about it.

The other piece comes from Will Wilkinson, who was recently let go from a job he had at the Niskanen Center, after a very disingenuous Trumpist online troll took what was an obvious joke from Wilkinson and pretended it was not a joke, trying to whip up faux outrage and comparing it to outrage that was more legitimate (I’m not going to get into the specifics, because it’s really stupid). Unfortunately, the Niskanen Center (whose work I often appreciate) decided to get away from the controversy and let Wilkinson go. And then some people turned up a tweet he had made from last year suggesting that cancel culture isn’t real. This resulted in a bunch of “well, what do you think now?” kind of takes.

Except, Will then responded and pointed out that what he experienced is not cancel culture, and rightly notes how the phrase is not just meaningless, but it collapses any of the important nuances and arguments into a mindless slogan (which is what allows dishonest brokers and assholes to hide behind it):

In my experience, tendentious question-begging is the point. Slogans like ?cancel culture? and ?political correctness? are used again and again to short-circuit debate, avoid the underlying substantive controversy, and shift the entire burden of justification onto advocates of the rival position. The person who believes that the transgression is serious enough to merit severe consequences isn?t given a fair chance to make her case for this position. Instead, she?s forced to earn the right to make the case by acquitting herself of the implicit charge that she is a petty tyrant policing mind-crimes in the name of stultifying ideological conformity. Good-faith discussion of the gravity of racist jokes never gets off the ground.

That?s why ?cancel culture? tends to strike me as more of an evasive maneuver than a coherent idea with determinate content.

And that’s exactly right. The phrase rarely seems to be used by those who actually are a victim of true overreaction. Even when unfair, they seem to recognize the nuances and uniqueness of their own scenario. Instead, those who scream about cancel culture the loudest seem to be the very type of people who are most afraid of any consequences for being an asshole.

Let’s put it this way. Bad judgment doesn’t call into question good judgment. The prevalence of unjust and unmerited censure, sanction, and ostracism should not suggest to us that censure, sanction and ostracism, as such, need a hard second look. The problem is the imposition of undeserved or disproportionate penalties. Penalizing people for flouting rules, norms or the terms of agreements is no more worrying than rewarding those who faithfully hew to them. Without the distribution of approbation and disapprobation, without a functioning economy of esteem, human civilization would crumble to dust and blow away.

People should get what they deserve. Duh. But what do people deserve? We?re never ever ever going to agree about that. We will always disagree about the bounds of acceptable speech and behavior. Even when we can manage to agree that somebody’s crossed what we agree is the line, we may nevertheless differ sharply about the gravity of the transgression and the price they ought to pay for it. Pluralism is hard. But we should steer into these disagreements, the real ones, and not evade them by fighting over the application of a dumb catchy term somebody made up six months ago to shut down constructive debate about whether the social opprobrium they?re trying to shield themselves and their friends from is deserved.

Exactly that.

Filed Under: cancel culture, consequences, free speech, responsibility, trolls, will wilkonson