I suppose the big "news" of the day is the back-to-back resignations of Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan, from the NY Times and New York Magazine respectively. I assume they are either going to join forces with their tiresome ankle-biting and start some sort of "you can't cancel me" online portal, just as soon as the Koch check clears, or they'll become full-time sidekicks on Bill Maher's Weekly Cancel Culture Zoom Meeting, since they basically alternate weeks there anyway.
Just as political junkies across the spectrum often forget that most people don't engage with that dismal subject to any great depth or breadth, so too do they forget that 95% of the public couldn't identify Weiss or Sully or Bobo or Modo or Peggy Noonan or whoever. Not only have I never had anyone ever ask me if I had read something any of the op-ed dupes had written, I would be hard-pressed to recall the last time -- or any time -- I had read anything from most of them that was at all interesting or insightful.
Most op-ed columnists at these "elite" publications envision a smart-set salon consisting of themselves and their peers and colleagues, exchanging witty bon mots over appletinis and cucumber-and-watercress sandwiches about the weasels who run the country. They are not talking to you, Tonstant Weader, they are talking to each other, posing and preening like fucking show cats, never actually saying anything interesting or challenging.
Since they have no real-world experience, they are acutely unaware of just how out-of-touch they are. The rabble in the street, with their pedestrian protests and quotidian concerns, occasionally make enough noise to be heard way up on the 23rd floor of the ivory tower, but it's an annoyance to Our Betters, who again have never held an actual job but have countless recommendations on how you should do yours.
This "cancel culture" bullshit is one of the more annoying catch-phrases from the past year or so, made all the more annoying as it gains currency among a certain type of schmuck. I think I've made myself pretty clear on the subject multiple times, so I won't belabor the issue here. I will say that I think it's pretty fucking rich that these sinecured crybabies have the stones to take to their elite gatekeeper platforms and whine over and over again about how mean Twitter is to them, how it's just like the French Revolution or Kristallnacht.
I mean, you do get how, if you're complaining about being silenced, but you're voicing those complaints in Harper's or the Times or National Review or whatever, it's literally the opposite of what you're saying. You know? Go to Bari Weiss' own website and check out her CV. She's been on The View, for fuck's sake. I've seen her on Maher's show at least a half-dozen times in the last couple years. She's been writing for the New York Fucking Times. Yeah, damn, real tumbrels and guillotines there.
As with any viral movement, there are excesses. I don't think a young person should be run out of her own family's business because someone dredged up some shit from eight years ago that she apologized for. I don't see the benefit in firing someone for being dumb enough to wear blackface at a Halloween party. Some of this is pre-emptive corporate ass-covering though, the HR department trying to get out in front of something they could probably just brass out for a couple weeks if they really wanted to. It's not like we have a memory or an attention span anymore.
Elite opinion-mongers are a different breed of cat, though. James Bennet got his ass fired because not only did he not see anything wrong with giving a reactionary politician a free soapbox and megaphone to propose using American military troops on street demonstrators, he inadvertently admitted that, as editor-in-chief, he hadn't even read the piece first. Bennet had to go because the Times knew it had fucked up, that its hackcess White House Tiger Beat coverage has already lost subscribers, and that people are losing patience with the Times' routine bad-faith both-siderism.
The "cancel culture" phrase is already worn out; a more accurate term would be "crybaby culture" or "consequence culture" or accountability culture. That's what this is really all about -- spoiled elites doing sloppy work, put off that the peons are insufficiently grateful for the road apples of wisdom that are generously plopped onto the pages of the corporate media's factories of consent.
Just as political junkies across the spectrum often forget that most people don't engage with that dismal subject to any great depth or breadth, so too do they forget that 95% of the public couldn't identify Weiss or Sully or Bobo or Modo or Peggy Noonan or whoever. Not only have I never had anyone ever ask me if I had read something any of the op-ed dupes had written, I would be hard-pressed to recall the last time -- or any time -- I had read anything from most of them that was at all interesting or insightful.
Most op-ed columnists at these "elite" publications envision a smart-set salon consisting of themselves and their peers and colleagues, exchanging witty bon mots over appletinis and cucumber-and-watercress sandwiches about the weasels who run the country. They are not talking to you, Tonstant Weader, they are talking to each other, posing and preening like fucking show cats, never actually saying anything interesting or challenging.
Since they have no real-world experience, they are acutely unaware of just how out-of-touch they are. The rabble in the street, with their pedestrian protests and quotidian concerns, occasionally make enough noise to be heard way up on the 23rd floor of the ivory tower, but it's an annoyance to Our Betters, who again have never held an actual job but have countless recommendations on how you should do yours.
This "cancel culture" bullshit is one of the more annoying catch-phrases from the past year or so, made all the more annoying as it gains currency among a certain type of schmuck. I think I've made myself pretty clear on the subject multiple times, so I won't belabor the issue here. I will say that I think it's pretty fucking rich that these sinecured crybabies have the stones to take to their elite gatekeeper platforms and whine over and over again about how mean Twitter is to them, how it's just like the French Revolution or Kristallnacht.
I mean, you do get how, if you're complaining about being silenced, but you're voicing those complaints in Harper's or the Times or National Review or whatever, it's literally the opposite of what you're saying. You know? Go to Bari Weiss' own website and check out her CV. She's been on The View, for fuck's sake. I've seen her on Maher's show at least a half-dozen times in the last couple years. She's been writing for the New York Fucking Times. Yeah, damn, real tumbrels and guillotines there.
As with any viral movement, there are excesses. I don't think a young person should be run out of her own family's business because someone dredged up some shit from eight years ago that she apologized for. I don't see the benefit in firing someone for being dumb enough to wear blackface at a Halloween party. Some of this is pre-emptive corporate ass-covering though, the HR department trying to get out in front of something they could probably just brass out for a couple weeks if they really wanted to. It's not like we have a memory or an attention span anymore.
Elite opinion-mongers are a different breed of cat, though. James Bennet got his ass fired because not only did he not see anything wrong with giving a reactionary politician a free soapbox and megaphone to propose using American military troops on street demonstrators, he inadvertently admitted that, as editor-in-chief, he hadn't even read the piece first. Bennet had to go because the Times knew it had fucked up, that its hackcess White House Tiger Beat coverage has already lost subscribers, and that people are losing patience with the Times' routine bad-faith both-siderism.
The "cancel culture" phrase is already worn out; a more accurate term would be "crybaby culture" or "consequence culture" or accountability culture. That's what this is really all about -- spoiled elites doing sloppy work, put off that the peons are insufficiently grateful for the road apples of wisdom that are generously plopped onto the pages of the corporate media's factories of consent.
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