Pasadena Star News: Culturally Canceling The Other Cancel Culture

Resolved: Don’t be a Jared Schmeck (Pasadena Star Newslink): If you culturally identify on the politically right side of things, there are only a few topics you can draw upon to demonstrate the worthiness of your beliefs. Or so it seems. There are those controversial COVID-19 vaccines, designed to deny you the liberty of experiencing Freedom Flu. And face masks, of course. A state-imposed torture regimen of near-medieval barbarity.

There is “wokeness,” often lumped in with “Critical Race Theory,” which some claim is a conspiracy to embarrass conservatives by imposing unwanted accuracy on historical writing. Apparently there are things from back in the day that some folks dare not acknowledge. It risks making sensitive people feel bad about themselves.

There is Hunter Biden, who is interchangeable with Gavin Newsom for any conservative columnist wanting to branch out and write about two topics. Hunter, as you know, is the son of our current president. But unlike the nepotistic and legally at-risk Trump tots, he never was employed, officially or otherwise, in his dad’s White House.

And, of course, there is that “cancel culture” we hear so much about. This includes a plot to euthanize several Dr. Seuss books while also denying Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head the ability to express themselves in gender-specific ways. Some family therapists consider that important to the survival of any potato-head marriage.

As with anyone having a strong need to communicate, but only a small body of information to draw upon, we do see a lot of repetition. Last Sunday there were three (!) articles about cancel culture in this one Opinion section. After God knows how many others appeared previously. You certainly must know the material by now.

Here’s the problem. The conservative effort to blame “cancel culture” solely on anyone to the left of Attila the Hun is a kind of cancel culture in itself. The right has been trying to shut lib’ruls up even before the glory days of Tailgunner Joe McCarthy. “Have you now, or ever, advocated for a non-binary Mr. Potatohead?”

In an article called “The Great Hypocrisy of Right-Wingers Claiming ‘Cancel Culture,’” The Nation’s Kali Holloway tells us:

“There is an historic thread tying right-wingers who today call everything left of them communism, who label anti-racist and social justice movements like BLM terrorism, and the anti–civil rights racists and red-baiting McCarthyite‘traditionalists’ of yesteryear. You want to know who was actually canceled by these sorts? … Paul Robeson, who had his passport revoked by the U.S. State Department for his political beliefs and was forced to spend more than a decade living abroad. Racism and red-scare hysteria also canceled the acting career of Canada Lee, who was blacklisted from movies and died broke in 1952 at the age of 45. The song ‘Mississippi Goddam’ got Nina Simone banned from the radio in much of the American South, and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics essentially hounded Billie Holiday to death for the sin of stubbornly refusing to stop performing the anti-lyching song ‘Strange Fruit.’”

You could successfully argue that the right’s endless whining about cancel culture has its origins in racial anxiety. Certainly its kissing cousin, the MAGA-right’s so-called “Replacement Theory,” pushes that button. Maybe it’s the reason Critical Race Theory opponents want to cancel lynching from your kid’s American history books?

Anybody following the Jared Schmeck story? This loon got on the phone during President Biden’s televised children’s Christmas event and told him to go screw himself. In so many words. Schmeck now claims the outrage this sad incident caused is an attempt to cancel his right to free speech.

Don’t be a Schmeck. People are gonna talk. Even claiming victimhood won’t cancel that consequence.

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