Cancel Culture

My wife and I watched the Dave Chappelle special on Netflix.  When Chappelle had his show we didn’t really watch it.  I never really had seen him do much comedy before but knew he was funny.  His show on Netflix is funny.  While his delivery is a little coarse for my taste, he does was good comics do-uncover uncomfortable things and make you laugh at them.  I don’t agree with all of Chappelle’s opinions, but he’s funny.  It’s sometimes good to feel a bit uncomfortable because it makes you think.

One of the things he makes fun of is the cancel culture that wasn’t around in 2003 when he had his show.

He is right.  The stuff that is going on today is outrageous.   I am all for transparency.  But, there are limits.  Debra Messing tweeting about who is attending a political fundraiser and publishing all their names is over the line.  Especially in this day and age.  The Cancel Culture Mob is toxic.  It’s eliminating the ability for people to even earn a living.  It happens mostly on the left.  They even are eating their own.  Yesterday though, I was disturbed to see the right go after the Dean of Students at Alabama.  Just because you don’t agree with someone’s opinion doesn’t mean that they have to lose their job.

I think that the Cancel Culture has some deeper consequences for our society than just not being able to earn a living.  I think it promotes a lot of fear, which induces people NOT to take risks. When people don’t take risks and have a constant fear of failure or fear of being shamed, society doesn’t move forward. It retreats.  It becomes vanilla.  It becomes uniform.