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Cont: Cancel culture IRL Part 2

lionking said:
You would be happy to have your name spread around the world and be denigrated by righteous crusaders? That’s a swap you would take?



Of the many cases cited in this thread, this one is probably the most outrageous.
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I work retail.

I deal with several score of people who become irrationally hostile while assured of their footing on moral high ground every day.
 
Delphic Oracle said:
I work retail.

I deal with several score of people who become irrationally hostile while assured of their footing on moral high ground every day.
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Yup. The students are students being obnoxious dumbasses. The administration that listened to them was moronic beyond belief.

So a pretty good sample of American behavior. Always has been.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Some call the behavior of students such as these "performance art." I think that such students (see also my posts about the rock incident at UW-Madison) are not outraged but instead just want to throw their weight around. This is one more reason to support FIRE, not that one were needed.
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I'd suggest it's generally underestimated how much of this is fueled by a capitalism/consumerism mindset (the customer-is-always-right). At r/college, students are quick to advise each other to complain to the dean and "remember, you're paying the professor's salary."

"Heart palpitations" allegedly occurred during an exam, not a lecture or discussion (though, yes, there have been other such complaints). Even before COVID, there was an explosion in the number of students who claimed to suffer from undiagnosed "anxiety." These anxieties predictably spike when grades are due. Testing accommodations are on the rise, and securing them is a joke at some universities -- not different than getting a medicinal marijuana card in California. Student entitlement is also self-righteously rationalized by outstanding loans.
 
Some would call this 'War on Christmas' but I call it interesting that, as the article indicates, the person who's writing was cited by the people behind the ban actually disagrees with their interpretation.



Not surprising is that when asked for comment beyond their initial statements the only response is stonewalling....


“Jingle Bells” is one of the most performed and well-known secular holiday songs ever written, not only in the United States, but around the world. It’s the first song to have been broadcast from space—by Gemini 6 astronauts nine days before Christmas in 1965. It’s regularly been sung at the White House—most recently by President Barack Obama and his family upon lighting the National Christmas Tree in 2016.

But “Jingle Bells” isn’t being sung anymore at Brighton’s Council Rock Primary School.

“Jingle Bells,” explained Council Rock principal Matt Tappon in an email, has been replaced with other songs that don’t have “the potential to be controversial or offensive.”
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https://rochesterbeacon.com/2021/12/23/jingle-all-the-way-maybe-not/
 
Weird that in a thread about the societal scourge of "cancel culture", one school that doesn't allow "Jingle Bells" is mentioned, but not any of the recent attempts by right wingers to ban books cropping up all over the place.

I'm still not sure what the overarching thesis of this thread is supposed to be - something about the oppression of free speech, I guess - but it makes it even more difficult to suss out when one school not singing "Jingle Bells" merits mention, but multiple school districts engaging in book banning doesn't.
 
Graham2001 said:
Some would call this 'War on Christmas' but I call it interesting that, as the article indicates, the person who's writing was cited by the people behind the ban actually disagrees with their interpretation.
Not surprising is that when asked for comment beyond their initial statements the only response is stonewalling....
https://rochesterbeacon.com/2021/12/23/jingle-all-the-way-maybe-not/
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In the future, could you please include Cringe Warning when posting such links? I cringed so hard I actually hurt my neck when I read this part with the knowledge that we're talking about educators here.

“Some suggest that the use of collars on slaves with bells to send an alert that they were running away is connected to the origin of the song Jingle Bells. While we are not taking a stance to whether that is true or not, we do feel strongly that this line of thinking is not in agreement with our district beliefs to value all cultures and experiences of our students.
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I'm actually embarrassed for these people :o
 
johnny karate said:
I'm still not sure what the overarching thesis of this thread is supposed to be - something about the oppression of free speech, I guess - but it makes it even more difficult to suss out when one school not singing "Jingle Bells" merits mention, but multiple school districts engaging in book banning doesn't.
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Because "Cancel Culture" is nothing but the dreaded panic of the "wrong" people using societal pressure.
 
But there wasn't even any societal pressure here. Someone on the school board read and completely misinterpreted an article about jingle bells and they decided to pull it independent of any outside influence.

If anything, the article seems primed to try and create a cancellation against the school board. Maybe that's the point?
 
I guess this one belongs here.

Woman who said that Dershowitz was acting crazy like Donald Trump didn't get her university contract renewed.

She was accused of breaking the Goldwater Rule, although she claims it was in keeping with her offering opinions on Twitter that do not reflect the official stance of her university.

Link

On January 2, 2020, Lee posted a few tweets about a comment that Dershowitz had made in response to an accusation by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims that Epstein had forced her to have sex with Dershowitz. “I have a perfect, perfect sex life,” he had told Fox News. For Lee, Dershowitz’s “odd use of ‘perfect’” called to mind Trump’s phrase “perfect phone call” when describing his infamous interactions with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, which led to Trump’s impeachment. This coincidence, she argued on Twitter, “might be dismissed as ordinary influence in most contexts. However, given the severity and spread of ‘shared psychosis’ among just about all of Donald Trump’s followers, a different scenario is more likely … That he has wholly taken on Trump’s symptoms by contagion.”

Dershowitz was enraged. “I was trying to emphasize that I have been faithful to my wife — that I have had perfect attendance in the marriage bed,” he told me. On January 11, Dershowitz fired off a typo-strewn five-sentence email to several top Yale officials, in which he accused Lee of breaking the Goldwater Rule by publicly diagnosing him as psychotic. Dershowitz, who two weeks later would testify on behalf of Trump at his first impeachment trial, claimed that Lee’s comments were motivated by her objections to his political views. “By this email,” wrote Dershowitz, who graduated from Yale Law School in 1962, he was “formally asking Yale university and it’s [sic] medical school to determine whether Dr Lee violated any of its rules.”
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It would be helpful to know what she actually said in her tweets, which are not reproduced here. I think that Dershowitz has a bit of a reputation for being personally vindictive in his academic disputes and seeking retribution.
 
angrysoba said:
It would be helpful to know what she actually said in her tweets, which are not reproduced here. I think that Dershowitz has a bit of a reputation for being personally vindictive in his academic disputes and seeking retribution.
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Ask Norman Finkelstein. I'm sure Joe or Johnny can offer an umpteenth airy take about how cancel culture is nothing new.
 
angrysoba said:
I guess this one belongs here.

Woman who said that Dershowitz was acting crazy like Donald Trump didn't get her university contract renewed.

She was accused of breaking the Goldwater Rule, although she claims it was in keeping with her offering opinions on Twitter that do not reflect the official stance of her university.

Link



It would be helpful to know what she actually said in her tweets, which are not reproduced here. I think that Dershowitz has a bit of a reputation for being personally vindictive in his academic disputes and seeking retribution.
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I think it’s close. It’s got some components of a juicy cancellation; deliberately misinterpretation of intent, faux outrage, and a lot of unknowns everyone is free to make an assumption on to fit their narrative.

The only thing it lacks is the mob. But if this story gets some traction, maybe Dershowitz gets some heat on Twitter and can even then claim to be a victim of cancel culture later. Very exciting.
 
dirtywick said:
I think it’s close. It’s got some components of a juicy cancellation; deliberately misinterpretation of intent, faux outrage, and a lot of unknowns everyone is free to make an assumption on to fit their narrative.

The only thing it lacks is the mob. But if this story gets some traction, maybe Dershowitz gets some heat on Twitter and can even then claim to be a victim of cancel culture later. Very exciting.
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Dershowtiz DID get cancelled!
 

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d4m10n said:
Possibly this is because the thread was originally started to discuss one specific incident rather than a broader social phenomenon.
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This thread has obviously morphed into exploring the broader social phenomenon, as evidenced by the numerous examples being discussed.

I understand why the “cancel culture” hand-wringers don’t want to be pinned down on clarifying the issue. By keeping their concerns vague, they afford themselves the appearance of moral superiority without the risk of being exposed as hypocrites with a less noble agenda.

But, of course, this refusal to be clear leaves the rest of us to draw our own conclusions why Gelato Andy merits multiple mentions while the numerous election officials driven from their livelihoods by Trump supporters merit none.
 
Obviously its pointless but...
A. Censorship has mostly been a thing of the right, so this sort of thing from the left is counterintuitive.
B. For most of the last 20 years of so(probably since Tipper Gore's thing against lyrics) there's been a broad consensus in the US regarding freedom speech.

So, the currently climate feels more like the 50s than anytime most of us remember.

For every story like:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politi...porters-threats-election-workers-1277276/amp/
There is also:
https://ivn.us/2018/10/08/a-blue-wave-of-violence-and-threats-against-republicans/

Some folks don't seem to care about cancellation on the right and others don't seem to care about it on theft. Meanwhile it just escalates. There is also, that there has always been a low level of threats of violence against pretty much everybody who's famous. Now we have social media that makes it much easier to see.
 
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It’s not that it’s pointless or that I even disagree with you.

But I do think combining politically motivated death threats against government officials and such to boycotting a celebrity or business or discussing it on social media because they said or did something you disapprove of as censorship isn’t very useful either.

If we are viewing threats of violence and death as just as problematic as criticism and discontinuing financial support, then we’re not even talking about the same thing even if we’re using the same term to describe it.
 
johnny karate said:
I understand why the “cancel culture” hand-wringers don’t want to be pinned down on clarifying the issue.
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I don't see why the "hand-wringers" need to take up the burden of proving a proposition they didn't argue.

johnny karate said:
But, of course, this refusal to be clear leaves the rest of us to draw our own conclusions why Gelato Andy merits multiple mentions while the numerous election officials driven from their livelihoods by Trump supporters merit none.
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As I explained earlier, the attempted cancellation of that particular gelateria was promoted by self-identified skeptics (and atheists) over events which arose directly from a skeptic convention. Since this is a forum for skeptics (rather than, say, Trump supporters) I'd expect that gives it extra salience here. Whenever I feel the need to debate issues with Trump supporters, I can always visit my in-laws.
 
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dirtywick said:
It’s not that it’s pointless or that I even disagree with you.

But I do think combining politically motivated death threats against government officials and such to boycotting a celebrity or business or discussing it on social media because they said or did something you disapprove of as censorship isn’t very useful either.

If we are viewing threats of violence and death as just as problematic as criticism and discontinuing financial support, then we’re not even talking about the same thing even if we’re using the same term to describe it.
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I basically agree with this. I'm reminded of something I heard once, something about critics complaining that an author didn't write the book the critic wanted rather than criticizing the actual book.
 
ahhell said:
Obviously its pointless but...
A. Censorship has mostly been a thing of the right, so this sort of thing from the left is counterintuitive.
B. For most of the last 20 years of so(probably since Tipper Gore's thing against lyrics) there's been a broad consensus in the US regarding freedom speech.

So, the currently climate feels more like the 50s than anytime most of us remember.

For every story like:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politi...porters-threats-election-workers-1277276/amp/
There is also:
https://ivn.us/2018/10/08/a-blue-wave-of-violence-and-threats-against-republicans/

Some folks don't seem to care about cancellation on the right and others don't seem to care about it on theft. Meanwhile it just escalates. There is also, that there has always been a low level of threats of violence against pretty much everybody who's famous. Now we have social media that makes it much easier to see.
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Where and how is it escalating on the left? Because the "cancellations" I see that can be laid at the feet of the left are isolated incidents with significantly lower stakes, if they aren't outright laughable (see: Johnny Depp complaining about being "cancelled" while accepting a life time achievement award). Furthermore, there's no indication that "cancel culture" is a mainstream tenet of the left.

Meanwhile on the right, anti-First Amendment laws are being passed, election and health officials are being forced out of their positions, and books are being banned as part of a larger, organized effort for authoritarian control of our government and culture. The right is literally trying to cancel anything and everything that doesn't fit into their regressive and narrow orthodoxy.

As usual, what happens on the fringes of the left and in the mainstream on the right are given equal weight so certain people can smugly proclaim "Both sides do it".
 
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