1) Here are some simple questions to which anyone using the term 'cancel culture' in earnest should have answers:
2) (a) Is The Professor Watchlist part of 'cancel culture'?
3) (b) Are media orgs such as Breitbart, The College Fix, Campus Reform, and Talking Points USA part of 'cancel culture'?
4) (c) Did the NFL 'cancel' Colin Kaepernick? Did the president of the United States try to 'cancel' Colin Kaepernick?
5) (d) Would you call what the GOP has been doing to Hillary Clinton consistently since the 1980s an effort to 'cancel' her?
6) (e) Was Steven Salaita 'canceled'?
7) (f) Has R. Kelly been 'canceled'?
8) Now let's examine premises. Questions (a) and (b) rest on the fact that these campus 'watchdog' orgs represent a significant media sector whose primary function, if not purpose, is to intimidate left faculty & students into silence and to get faculty fired by pressuring admin.
9) Question (c) is based on the fact that Kaepernick has been drummed out of an NFL career because of right-wing public pressure on the league over a peaceful speech act people didn't like.
10) Question (d) is based on a longstanding series of right-wing campaigns to portray H. Clinton as beyond the pale for US politics, which includes conspiracy theories about her being a murderer and child rapist, not just strident disagreement with her political views.
11) Question (e) is based on the fact that, in a real-world example of the pressure function of orgs named in questions (a) and (b), Salaita was fired for constitutionally protected speech despite being by all accounts excellent at his job.
12) Question (f) is a curveball. It's premised on the fact that, according to the Newspaper of Record, R. Kelly has indeed been 'canceled'...for sexually and psychologically abusing countless young women. ...
13) So question (f) carries with it an implied set of further questions: If the concept of 'cancel culture' or being 'canceled' applies to R. Kelly, are critics of 'cancel culture' arguing R. Kelly shouldn't be 'canceled' (I'm putting 'criminally prosecuted' to the side)? And...
14) What then is the utility of the concept of 'cancel culture' if it describes both a widespread public distaste for a public figure credibly charged with many state & federal counts of sexual assault & abuse of minors *and* people being Mad Online at J.K. Rowling ?
15) Finally, the larger question implied in all of the above is why, as with 'political correctness,' everyone seems to be wearing special glasses that only enables them to see 'cancel culture' as a left-wing phenomenon?
16) Right-wing media tried to 'cancel' me in 2017 before 'cancel culture' was a thing. It did so for others as well. You can read about it here: /end newrepublic.com/article/143558…
Addendum: This thread is not about the Harper’s letter. It’s hard to express how little I care about the Harper’s letter. I’ve been writing about this stuff for years before the Harper’s letter was born. The Harper’s letter wasn’t even in diapers by my nth essay on this stuff.
