Cancel this
A once great newspaper careens off its rails
Former Washington Post journalist and longtime media analyst Dan Froomkin has a problem with the editorial board of the NY Times. A big problem.
It seems they’ve completely lost their way on the concept of free speech. Or the rights of citizens. Or something.
And the result is the worst of both-siderism. Government censorship, from Congress to public school board, is free speech censorship. Mockery of something that you’ve said or written is not.
If you’ve said something your employer doesn’t like and get disciplined or fired, that’s almost never a violation of your free speech rights. If you say something at a bar and a drunk patron disagrees and bops you in the nose, that’s not a violation of your free speech rights.
And if you say something dumb or extremely odious on social media and get swarmed with insulting responses, that also isn’t a violation of free speech or any other right you possess.
If you get shunned for saying something repulsive, your free speech means you can whine about the response all day or for many weeks after. But that’s not likely to change the outcome if your feelings get hurt. Free speech isn’t about feelings at all.
It’s about government efforts to control your speech. Period.
And the whole topic of so-called ‘cancel culture’ is a very weak joke. People will shun you if you talk or act like a jerk. They have every right to. Psychologists consider that normal human behavior. And if you say something so repulsive that you get ostracized or fired, well, that’s on you. Being thin-skinned and whining about it is unlikely to change a thing except draw further insults and mockery your way.
And it’s a terrible thing to witness how clueless the NYT editorial board currently is. How far the mighty have fallen. And into such a goopy puddle.
Cancel culture is an entirely different topic. If you’re employed to disseminate information or to influence or to entertain, or to represent others and your message is so offensive that your ratings drop, your employment is terminated or you get recalled or don’t get re-elected, yes, you are being cancelled. By popular will. And there’s nothing unethical occurring when people help get you cancelled.
It’s not a culture. It’s a response. It can be avoided by not triggering that response. It can sometimes be avoided by apologizing for the offense you committed.
A wrongful cancel culture is when you get fired for telling your boss you won’t have sex with him or her. Or fired for telling your boss you won’t break the law on their command.
Slaves who lose their rights to be parents or children in an intact family are unethically cancelled. Martin Luther King Jr, Medger Evers, Abe Lincoln, John Lennon: all wrongfully cancelled.
Cancelling a newspaper subscription is not at all unethical. And the ‘cancel culture’ trope in common use today is just a talking point not an impingement on anyone’s rights.
If you’re in the public eye and you’re making a living at it, you will have critics. If your skin’s too nano-thin for that, find another profession. Your rights aren’t being trampled. You’re merely being held to account for what you say and do. That’s just how all societies work.
In fact, some of the best comedy comes from mocking odious messaging.
Cancelling the rights of people to vote by impeding their votes is a real cancel culture that needs to be stopped. Because that’s violating their Constitutional rights. It’s not a contest between religious freedom and voting rights. Religious freedom means the government won’t tell you not to believe and won’t jail you for your beliefs. It doesn’t grant any right for religious adherents to deny the rights of others.
And when you wrongfully deny the rights of others, US courts will usually rule against you and restore the rights you’ve trampled on. That’s how real rights and real justice works.
The NY Times editorial board gets a 10 for completely destroying their own cred with this mistake. A 10 for incompetence might get them cancelled. As it should.