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Cancel culture is leading us down a dangerous road
âPerceptions,â by Gerry Warner
Op-Ed Commentary
Was it Captain Kirk who first said something about going boldly where no man had gone before? Forgive me if I got it wrong. Iâm not a Trekkie. But Iâm about to boldly attempt something Iâve never attempted before â explain what is meant by âcancel culture.â
Unless you live under a rock, you see this term everywhere now. Celebrities like Taylor Swift or the Kardashians being âcancelled,â though not successfully. The same for politicians like Maxime Bernier, who really did get âcancelledâ in the last federal election. (Donât we wish the same fate for Donald Trump?) And did we ever see it in the still ongoing furore over the ousting of Don Cherry from his bully pulpit known as âCoachâs Corner.â
But what the hell is cancel culture?
Well, the answer isnât found in my good olâ Oxford Dictionary, but something called the âOpen Dictionaryâ carries this definition: âa form of boycott in which someone (usually a celebrity) who has shared a questionable or unpopular opinions, or has had behaviour that is perceived to be offensive is called out on social media . . .â Don Cherry certainly fits that definition and many others too.
This can hit pretty close to home especially if youâre a millennial or a follower of social media. And isnât that everybody to some degree these days? But it most often happens to celebrities we all know and the number of celebs being erased nowadays is accelerating like a rocket in the sky.
For instance, thereâs Prince Andrew, who voluntarily took himself out of public life this week â though some insist he got a push from the Queen â after he lamely tried to explain in a televised interview his dalliance with a 17-year-old girl who was a âfriendâ of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein who recently committed suicide in a Manhattan jail awaiting new charges. An example of cancel culture taken to the absolute extreme.
But critics say cancel culture is becoming a toxic phenomenon. Perhaps in a tweet to a friend you told an off-colour joke or made a remark that in the vaguest of ways could be interpreted in the Twittersphere as racist, sexist, homophobic or whatever. Bang! Before you know it, youâre being publicly shamed, derided and abused and regarded as untouchable or invisible if you ever dare to show your miserable face in public. This has happened to such celebrities as Kevin Spacey, Roseanne Bar and Woody Allen.
Itâs also happened closer to home. Remember CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi the former host of CBCâs âQ,â the most popular interview show in the networkâs history. In 2014 and 2015 several allegations of sexual harassment were made against Ghomeshi and he was charged and acquitted after a sensational trial. What did CBC do after Ghomeshiâs acquittal? They fired him, effectively destroying his broadcasting career.
Then thereâs University of Toronto psychology Professor Jordan Peterson, author of the best seller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos and considered one of the worldâs leading intellectuals. But Petersonâs social conservative political views and refusal to heed demands of the LGBTQ community to use pronouns they dictate have made him persona non grata at many universities around the world resulting in campus boycotts and demonstrations. Call it a victory for cancel culture, but hardly a victory for an enlightened, tolerant civilization.
So where is this all taking us? Certainly not on the road to free speech, tolerance and enlightenment. But on the other hand, there certainly are such things as hate speech, racism, homophobia and many other vile forms of human behaviour that degrade our civilization. What do we do now that societyâs arbiter today is social media in the form of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like?
At one time it was religion, the rule of law and education that shaped our society. Now itâs the Twitter mob and you know whoâs the most powerful user of that.
Itâs hard to avoid thinking our future looks bleak.
– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and an occasional user of social media.