I found myself reading an article in Wired early this morning on the heels of a very very bad dream. The article, which should be read, concerns the concept of Cancel Culture. By my understanding this is an evolution of PC culture in which persons who say things that don’t fit what the cultural zeitgeist (or who think they are such) want to hear are silenced. I find this fundamentally anti-American. I also find it really really limited and, in its own way, promoting of some real nonsense.
I want to start this argument with the ‘all or nothing’ argument. Recently I became aware of a teenage youtube star named James Charles. He is ostensibly a gay man who dresses in drag and wears and sells makeup. He is pretty good at the makeup stuff, but I don’t really like him. I think his look is over the top and very very Kardashian. However, my dislike isn’t the point here. The point is that any expression of dislike of Charles is immediately credited to his lifestyle choice and his (apparent since I know little about him) homosexuality. Since he is publicly defined by one thing any dislike of him is unerringly ascribed to that one thing. However, it should not be. We are starting to fall into stereotype style behavior in this fashion.
The Chapelle situation is much the same. He is being attacked for ‘attacking’ the victims of sexual abuse without people considering the individual situations he is discussing and joking about and even pausing to consider the message underneath.
I’ll wrap there because I wrote the quick thought below first and now the clock is coming for me.
Some Thoughts:
- I am slowly coming to accept that ego, personal failure, a lack of self awareness, and an inability to accept the shortcomings of my own children factor heavily into the decision to continue letting my kids play football. My youngest, once heralded for his talent, has shown himself to be flat out not good when it comes to dealing with a higher level organization. He still talks like he is better than this person and that person, etc. However, on the field I see someone who is not at all comfortable with his body, is degrading his running form, and flat out looking like a small child when he on the verge of being a middle school kid. He is regressing physically and psycho-socially and I am struggling to understand how to stop it…
- There is a potential story in all of this… Call it my silver lining.