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Tag: cancel culture

  • A Canceled Celebrity Rehab Reality Show? Oh, Boy

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    Versant‘s entertainment president Val Boreland.
    Photo: JC Olivera/WWD/WWD via Getty Images

    While everyone is looking back at 2016, E! is looking even further at 2006. In the spirit of From G’s to Gents, the network is developing a series in which a bunch of canceled celebrities are brought together in one house to help rehabilitate their reputations. Just what we needed. The working title is Becoming Uncanceled, reports The Ankler. “You can think about the kind of people we’re talking about — not criminals — who might need to redeem themselves in front of America,” Versant‘s entertainment president Val Boreland explained. “I don’t know if you could out rule a politician, but again, this isn’t to be salacious about criminal activity. It’s supposed to be more fun with a little of the serious nature of getting themselves back on track.” Usually, when someone gets “canceled,” it’s not for easily forgivable reasons. Former Try Guy Ned Fulmer has already tried it with his podcast Rock Bottom. Either way, we might have a suggestion for someone probably looking into PR rehab, in case they’re open to suggestions.

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    Alejandra Gularte

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  • Push for Censorship on Campus Hit Record Levels in 2025 | RealClearPolitics

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    This year, the fight over free expression in American higher education reached a troubling milestone. According to data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, efforts to censor speech on college campuses hit record highs and across multiple fronts – and most succeeded.

    Let’s start with the raw numbers. In 2025, FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire, Students Under Fire, and Campus Deplatforming databases collectively tracked:

    • 525 attempts to sanction scholars for their speech, more than one a day, with 460 of them resulting in punishment.
    • 273 attempts to punish students for expression, more than five a week, with 176 of these attempts succeeding.
    • 160 attempts to deplatform speakers, about three each week, with 99 of them succeeding.

    That’s 958 censorship attempts in total, nearly three per day on campuses across the country. For comparison, FIRE’s next highest total was 477 two years ago.

    The 525 scholar sanction attempts are the highest ever recorded in FIRE’s database, which spans from 2000 to the present. Even when a large-scale incident at the U.S. Naval Academy is treated as just a single entry, the 2025 total still breaks records.

    Twenty-nine scholars were fired, including 18 who were terminated since September for social media comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

    Student sanction attempts also hit a new high, and deplatforming efforts – our records date back to 1998 – rank third all-time, behind 2023 and 2024.

    The problem is actually worse because FIRE’s data undercounts the true scale of campus censorship. Why? The data rely on publicly available information, and an unknown number of incidents, especially those that may involve quiet administrative pressure, never make the public record.

    Then there’s the chilling effect.

    Scholars are self-censoring. Students are staying silent. Speakers are being disinvited or shouted down. And administrators, eager to appease the loudest voices, are launching investigations, and handing out suspensions and dismissals with questionable regard for academic freedom, due process, or free speech.

    Some critics argue that the total number of incidents is small compared to the roughly 4,000 colleges in the country. But this argument collapses under scrutiny. While there are technically thousands of institutions labeled as “colleges” or “universities,” roughly 600 of them educate about 80% of undergraduates enrolled at not-for-profit four-year schools. Many of the rest of these “colleges” and “universities” are highly specialized or vocational programs. This includes a number of beauty academies, truck-driving schools, and similar institutions – in other words, campuses that aren’t at the heart of the free speech debate.

    These censorship campaigns aren’t coming from only one side of the political spectrum. FIRE’s data shows, for instance, that liberal students are punished for pro-Palestinian activism, conservative faculty are targeted for controversial opinions on gender or race, and speaking events featuring all points of view are targeted for cancellation. The two most targeted student groups on campus? Students for Justice in Palestine and Turning Point USA. If that doesn’t make this point clear, nothing will.

    The common denominator across these censorship campaigns is not ideology – it’s intolerance.

    So where do we go from here?

    We need courage: from faculty, from students, and especially from administrators. It’s easy to defend speech when it’s popular. It’s harder when the ideas are offensive or inconvenient. But that’s when it matters most.

    Even more urgently, higher education needs a cultural reset. Universities must recommit to the idea that exposure to ideas and speech that one dislikes or finds offensive is not “violence.” That principle is essential for democracy, not just for universities.

    This year’s record number of campus censorship attempts should be a wake-up call for campus administrators. For decades, many allowed a culture of censorship to fester, dismissing concerns as overblown, isolated, or a politically motivated myth. Now, with governors, state legislatures, members of Congress, and even the White House moving aggressively to police campus expression, some administrators are finally pushing back. But this push–back from administrators doesn’t seem principled. Instead, it seems more like an attempt to shield their institutions from outside political interference.

    That’s not leadership. It’s damage control. And it’s what got higher education into this mess in the first place.

    If university leaders want to reclaim their role as stewards of free inquiry, they cannot act just when governmental pressure threatens their autonomy. They also need to be steadfast when internal intolerance threatens their mission. A true commitment to academic freedom means defending expression even when it’s unpopular or offensive. That’s the price of intellectual integrity in a free society.

    Sean Stevens, Ph.D., is FIRE’s chief research advisor. He was previously director of research at Heterodox Academy.

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    Sean Stevens, RCP

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  • Kevin Spacey Is Living in the Past

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    He’s been frank long enough.
    Photo: Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Im

    The days get shorter, a cold chill moves through the air, string lights sparkle in your neighborhood, a faint waft of pine floats your way, and inexplicably Kevin Spacey appears to do an odd bit of press. For whatever reason, the actor has a tendency to pop up around the holidays, typically in an ominous social-media video (like his “Let Me Be Frank” series), but this year, he is promoting a one-man music and storytelling show called Kevin Spacey: Songs & Stories that he has been trying to tour but has only been able to mount in Cyprus for an audience of “mostly real-estate developers.” The nature of the show — where Spacey regales the audience with old standards and stories from his childhood — is steeped in nostalgia, which is just about the only way to approach Spacey’s celebrity eight years after he was first accused of sexual assault by more than 50 men. The more he continues to receive accolades (even if they’re almost exclusively European ones), the more convinced Spacey becomes of his continued relevance.

    Though Spacey was acquitted on nine sexual-assault charges in the United Kingdom two years ago, Hollywood has more or less rebuffed the actor, forcing him into vaguely Mediterranean markets where he’s a staple in crime films. Despite that, however, Spacey told The Telegraph that he’s convinced “extremely powerful people” want to put him back to work. “So, my feeling is if Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino call tomorrow, it will be over. I will be incredibly honored and delighted when that level of talent picks up the phone. And I believe it’s going to happen,” Spacey explained. He’s probably right that a call from either of those directors could change his fate, but it’s telling that the phone has yet to ring.

    Unwavering self-confidence notwithstanding, things don’t seem to be going so great for him. He told The Telegraph that he doesn’t “live anywhere,” and though he hoped to put up his show in Athens and Tel Aviv, the former show fell through because of his interest in performing in the latter city. “I would love to play Athens when they are more accepting of the fact that they should not be in the position of telling someone where they can and cannot perform,” he said. Maybe Spacey will connect with Tarantino if and when he makes it down to Tel Aviv, rather than wait for the director to call him. Just as Spacey has built a show around indulging in music and stories from the past, his points of reference for his fame include both blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and beloved actor Jack Lemmon — two legendary men who have been dead a long time. Hindsight, however, is everything: Spacey sees himself as a figure of the past with the misfortune to live in the present.

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    Fran Hoepfner

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  • William & Mary sophomore helps launch Turning Point chapter after being ‘closeted conservative’ on campus

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    Students at the College of William & Mary, the second-oldest university in the United States, are launching a Turning Point USA chapter despite social media backlash and pushback from peers.

    Olivia Keller, a sophomore at William and Mary, told Fox News Digital in an interview Wednesday that the school administration has been supportive, but her peers haven’t been.

    Most of the resistance has been on social media app YikYak, because she thinks students are more comfortable attacking the club behind a screen rather than face-to-face.

    STUDENTS LAUNCH CONSERVATIVE GROUP AFTER TEACHER CALLED CHARLIE KIRK ‘GARBAGE’ AFTER HIS ASSASSINATION

    Grace Keller, second from right, with William and Mary TPUSA members.  (Photo courtesy: Kevin Lincoln)

    “There has been a lot of discussion on that platform among students,” Keller said. “So they’ve been pretty opposed to our efforts with this new club. They’ve made comments about the exec members on the club, they’ve made fun of it when Charlie Kirk was assassinated. They were saying, ‘Oh, we haven’t heard a racist comment in a while that’s awesome.’ So it’s just some really, really inappropriate stuff on there. But in person I haven’t really had any kind of interaction that was as bad as online, as I mean it’s face-to-face versus online, so like they’re definitely more scared to say something in person.”

    The 20-year-old student told Fox News Digital that she reached out to campus security after learning that other students planned to protest the group’s Oct. 20 informational meeting.

    “When that was brought to my attention, I had never dealt with a protest before. I wasn’t sure how big it was going to be, how many people would actually show up, or how disruptive they would be,” Keller said. “So I did feel the need to get security outside of our meeting. And the faculty and staff were really easy to communicate with to get those security guards outside.”

    Keller, who is a marketing major, said she has noticed a drastic decrease in her friends following her on social media platforms like Instagram after posting about Kirk’s assassination. 

    The 31-year-old co-founder of Turning Point USA was assassinated on Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University during his “American Comeback Tour.”

    MASSIVE CROWDS LINE UP IN THE RAIN AT OLE MISS FOR TURNING POINT USA EVENT WITH VP VANCE, ERIKA KIRK

    woman-holding-charlie-kirk-sign

    An attendee holds up a sign reading “Never Surrender” ahead of the memorial service for political activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium on Sept. 21, 2025, in Glendale, Arizona.  (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    Keller claimed that about 200 friends on Instagram unfollowed her after she posted a “rest in peace” tribute to Kirk after his assassination, and that more unfollowed her Monday when she shared a post for Veterans Day.

    Keller said she thinks conservative students tend to face a tougher environment on campus as opposed to their liberal peers.

    “Even the College Republicans, they face a lot of backlash, and they’re pretty loud about their beliefs,” Keller said. “When Trump was elected the previous year, they were wearing the MAGA hats and stuff, and so they were commented on a lot, like there were a lot of disagreements.”

    CONSERVATIVE STUDENT EXPOSES MIDWESTERN COLLEGE FOR PREVENTING TURNING POINT USA CHAPTER

    Charlie Kirk speaks to the audience just before he was shot

    Charlie Kirk speaks before he is assassinated during Turning Point’s visit to Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tess Crowley/The Deseret News via AP)

    Keller said she had been a “closeted conservative” but decided to speak up despite the risks.

    “Me personally, I’ve been more of what I would say, a closeted conservative on campus until this year, just because I feel like if I were to speak up, I would just be, attacked or, like, basically condemned,” Keller said.

    Her advice to students finding themselves in a similar position who want to start a conservative club in a left-leaning institution is to be “bold.”

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    TPUSA attendees at Berkeley before the violence breaks out

    Keller’s advice to students finding themselves in a similar position, who want to start a conservative club in a left-leaning institution is to be “bold.” (Godofredo Vásquez/AP)

    “In today’s world, I think it’s really important to be bold about these beliefs,” Keller said. “And even if your peers disagree with you, in the long run, you’re gonna find your own community with people who have similar values and those are gonna be the more important relationships.”

    Fox News Digital reached out to the College of William & Mary for comment.

    Rachel del Guidice is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to rachel.delguidice@fox.com.

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  • JD Vance tells Dems outraged over young Republicans’ leaked group chat to ‘grow up’

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    Vice President JD Vance shrugged off the outrage on Wednesday about a leaked group chat from young conservatives, arguing this pales in comparison to the exposed texts from Virginia Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones.

    Vice President JD Vance and President Donald Trump separately slammed Democrats who continue to back Virginia attorney general candidate Jones as his campaign unravels over texts envisioning the murder of a former top Republican lawmaker and his young children.

    Jones — who sent messages claiming he would gladly shoot former Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert — will face off with incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares at the University of Richmond on Thursday in their sole debate.

    Vance also tweeted and spoke about the outrage over a leaked group chat, first reported by Politico, in which young Republican activists — many from New York, sent texts that included mentions of Adolf Hitler, racial slurs, and other offensive statements, many of which may have been jokes typical of Generation Z’s offensive and absurdist sense of shock-value-based humor. 

    VIRGINIA DEM JAY JONES’ FATHERHOOD-THEMED POST SPARKS OUTRAGE OVER PAST TEXT WISHING HARM TO REPUBLICAN’S KIDS

    Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks at Hatch Stamping on September 17, 2025 in Howell, Michigan. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

    Vance shared a screenshot of Jones’ texts hoping a Republican colleague’s children would die and wrote, “This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl-clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”

    Vance responded to the incident further on the late Charlie Kirk’s podcast, noting “a person who is very politically powerful, who is about to become one of the most powerful law enforcement officers in the country, that person seriously wishing for political violence and political assassination is 1,000 times worse than what a bunch of young people, a bunch of kids say in a group chat, however offensive it might be. That’s just the reality.” 

    He added further, “And if you allow yourself to be distracted by this person’s incredible endorsement, disgusting endorsement of political assassination by focusing on what kids are saying in a group chat, grow up.”

    TRUMP, VANCE BLAST DEMOCRATS FOR BACKING VIRGINIA AG CANDIDATE OVER TEXTS FANTASIZING GOP LAWMAKER’S MURDER

    jay jones speaks from podium

    Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones speaks at an event in Norfolk, Virginia. (Trevor Metcalfe/The Virginian-Pilot/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

    Vance noted that today’s world is very different from the one where he grew up, one where one must be extremely careful about being scrutinized for offensive jokes, “but the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys, they tell edgy, offensive jokes… I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke is cause to ruin their lives.”

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    Vice President JD Vance in dark suit and red tie speaking

    Vice President JD Vance argued that young men’s lives should not be ruined for saying offensive jokes online. (Alex Brandon, Pool/AP Photo)

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    He alluded to the phenomenon of cancel culture that has been ubiquitous in America for years, arguing it is time to reject such tactics for good.

    “And at some point, we’re all going to have to say, ‘Enough of this BS. We’re not going to allow the worst moment in a 21-year-old’s group chat to ruin a kid’s life for the rest of time,’” he said.

    Fox News’ Charles Creitz contributed to this report.

    Alexander Hall is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Alexander.hall@fox.com.

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  • Republicans support free speech, unless it offends them

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    Last week, a gunman in Utah shot and killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It was a brutal and tragic event, regardless of one’s politics. And yet the fallout of Kirk’s murder has revealed a disturbing hostility toward free speech on the political right.

    Republicans have long cast themselves as defenders of free speech against cancel culture and the censorial impulses of the political left. And there was merit to the argument—Reason has covered many cases of overreach.

    But over the last week, MAGA Republicans have scoured social media for government employees posting about Kirk’s murder, contacting employers in an attempt to get them fired. “Kirk’s online defenders have snitch-tagged the employers of government workers over social media posts saying they don’t care about the assassination, that they didn’t like Kirk even as they condemn his assassination, and even criticizing Kirk prior to his assassination,” Reason‘s Christian Britschgi wrote this week. Even for nongovernmental employees, social media detectives apparently compiled a database with tens of thousands of people who criticized Kirk, including their names and employers.

    Of course, that’s just people online. It’s not like those with government power are advocating such a thing, right?

    “I would think maybe their [broadcast] license should be taken away,” President Donald Trump told reporters this week on Air Force One, about TV networks. “All they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”

    “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer,” Vice President J.D. Vance said while guest-hosting Kirk’s podcast this week. “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”

    Vance’s argument bears a striking resemblance to the comments made just a few years ago by his ideological enemies. When certain public and not-so-public figures received backlash for offensive statements, some commentators noted that this was not cancel culture, it was “consequence culture”—people merely experiencing the consequences of their actions.

    It’s no surprise that Trump has no principles on free speech—from the beginning of his first term, he called the press the “enemy of the American people.” But Vance’s position marks a notable pivot from just a few months ago.

    “Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite,” Vance said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February. “Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square, agree or disagree.”

    Now, Vance seems less keen on defending someone’s right to offer views that he personally disagrees with. Unfortunately, he’s not alone.

    This week, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr criticized TV host Jimmy Kimmel for comments made about Kirk during his show. Carr openly intimated that ABC should take action or potentially face reprisal; within hours, the network suspended Kimmel’s show indefinitely. (Trump later praised Carr as “outstanding. He’s a patriot. He loves our country, and he’s a tough guy.”)

    Of course, when the opposing party was in power, Carr recognized the error of such a threat. In 2022, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan that during the 2020 election, Facebook artificially decreased the spread of a story about Hunter Biden in response to a request from the FBI.

    “The government does not evade the First Amendment’s restraints on censoring political speech by jawboning a company into suppressing it—rather, that conduct runs headlong into those constitutional restrictions, as Supreme Court law makes clear,” Carr posted on X in response. Now that government power is in his hands, Carr apparently has fewer qualms about wielding it like that.

    Other officials have made their shifting beliefs more blatant.

    “Under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right. And that there should be almost no checks and balances on it. I don’t feel that way anymore,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.) told Semafor on Thursday. “We just can’t let people call each other those kinds of insane things and then be surprised when politicians get shot and the death threats they are receiving and then trying to get extra money for security.”

    Lummis’ complaint sounds like a more aggressive version of the heckler’s veto, a “form of censorship, where a speaker’s event is canceled due to the actual or potential hostility of ideological opponents,” wrote Zach Greenberg of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. In Lummis’ telling, the government must punish people for saying offensive or inflammatory things because of how others might respond.

    That’s not only completely wrong, it’s unconstitutional.

    “The First Amendment to the Constitution protects speech no matter how offensive its content,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union. “Speech that deeply offends our morality or is hostile to our way of life warrants the same constitutional protection as other speech because the right of free speech is indivisible: When we grant the government the power to suppress controversial ideas, we are all subject to censorship by the state.”

    Lummis, Vance, and Carr apparently see no problem policing offensive speech, at least when they’re the ones who are offended.

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    Joe Lancaster

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  • The perverse incentives for snitch-tagging teachers who criticized Charlie Kirk

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    It’s often said that the First Amendment exists to protect unpopular speech. Benign comments about the weather or statements in support of things everyone already likes aren’t likely to be the subject of government censorship.

    In the case of First Amendment protections for government workers’ off-the-job speech, this dynamic is reversed.

    Public employees have robust protections against being fired for such speech, unless it proves exceptionally unpopular.

    This feature of First Amendment jurisprudence, and the bad incentives it creates for cancel culture campaigns, is on full display following the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk last week.

    In the wake of the conservative influencer’s murder, a lot of people said unkind, uncharitable, and even obscene things about the man, including, in some cases, explicit praise for his assassination.

    In a country where some 22 million civilians are employed by the government, the pool of people who’ve made nasty comments about Kirk naturally includes some public sector workers.

    Public school teachers seem to be overrepresented in this demographic. They’ve become a specific target of conservatives’ cancelation campaigns.

    Unlike most private employees who can be fired at will, government employees have robust protections against being fired for their off-the-job speech.

    As Eugene Volokh detailed in a post at The Volokh Conspiracy shortly after Kirk’s death, government employees can only be disciplined for their speech when that speech is said as part of their job duties, the speech is not a matter of public concern, and the damage of the speech to the government’s own ability to do its job is outweighed by the benefit of the speech.

    Volokh stresses that these protections even cover comments supporting violence, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Rankin v. McPherson, in which a majority of justices ruled that a police department employee’s firing for praising the Ronald Reagan assassination in a private conversation violated the First Amendment.

    The facts of that case would seem to offer a pretty close parallel to public school teachers who praised Kirk’s assassination on social media. Their speech was not made on the job, and speech about Kirk’s assassination is obviously a matter of public concern.

    At first blush, this would suggest that even government employees who explicitly praised Kirk’s assassination have First Amendment protections against being fired for that speech, however distasteful.

    Whether or not they can, in fact, be fired turns on how much their comments disrupt government operations.

    Consequently, the more outrage that can be directed at a particular public worker’s employer, and the more of a headache retaining that worker becomes as a result, the less the First Amendment will protect them from losing their job.

    That creates a powerful, toxic incentive to gin up anger at individual government workers as a means of erasing First Amendment protections they have for off-the-job speech.

    Organic outrage about a public employee’s private statements from people who heard them directly and have to interface with that person is one thing.

    In the case of comments made on social media, people who would never have to deal with a government worker can see their intemperate thoughts and use them to get them fired.

    This encourages Kirk’s supporters to actively go hunting for comments they find offensive. The harm created by those statements becomes almost self-inflicted.

    It’s hard to imagine a better recipe for creating cancel culture mobs.

    Over at National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty writes that “the critique of cancel culture wasn’t intended to protect all speech from normative judgment, but to preserve the necessary space for democratic deliberation and contestation.”

    Professionally penalizing people for reveling in Kirk’s assassination, he argues, is distinct from going after people for merely expressing a negative view of him.

    That’s a reasonable distinction to draw. But it misses the fact that cancel culture pile-ons are not particularly discerning once they get going. Already, we’re seeing efforts to identify people who literally celebrated Kirk’s death morph into efforts to get people fired for merely posting something critical about him.

    Kirk’s online defenders have snitch-tagged the employers of government workers over social media posts saying they don’t care about the assassination, that they didn’t like Kirk even as they condemn his assassination, and even criticizing Kirk prior to his assassination.

    With enough online outrage, even relatively benign critical comments could potentially become firing offenses.

    This is particularly concerning given that government officials themselves are urging people to be outraged.

    “So, when you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility,” said Vice President J.D. Vance while guest-hosting Charlie Kirk’s podcast yesterday.

    Texas’ education commissioner has encouraged school superintendents to report teachers’ “inappropriate comments” to state officials, as have the top education officials in Florida and Oklahoma.

    There’s always been the thicker critique of cancel culture made by folks like Reason‘s Robby Soave, who condemned efforts to go hunting for the worst comments made by nonpublic figures in the heat of the moment to their small social media followings.

    It makes for a less vindictive world and more robust discourse when we can agree to avoid massive pile-ons of even repugnant comments made in that context.

    Kirk was undoubtedly a polarizing figure. The strong feelings, both negative and positive, that he elicited in people are one reason his murder has become such a huge public conversation.

    It’s inevitable in that context that some people will say intemperate, mean-spirited things about the man.

    It’s foolish to trust online snitch-taggers to be judicious in determining who they’re going to try to get fired, particularly when the more outrage they can generate serves to route around First Amendment protections for government workers’ speech.

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    Christian Britschgi

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  • A taboo worth keeping

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    Call their employer? “If we want to stop political violence like what happened to Charlie Kirk, we have to be honest about the people who are celebrating it and the people who are financing it,” wrote Vice President J.D. Vance on X, promoting his guest hosting of Kirk’s show, following Kirk’s killing. “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer,” he said on the program.

    “I’m desperate for our country to be united in condemnation of the actions and the ideas that killed my friend,” Vance added. “I want it so badly that I will tell you a difficult truth. We can only have it with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable.”

    At East Tennessee State University, two faculty members were placed on administrative leave, allegedly due to comments such as “you reap what you sow” and “[Kirk’s killing] isn’t a tragedy. It’s a victory.” Oklahoma’s state superintendent is investigating at least one middle school teacher for her posts (calling Kirk a “racist, misogynist piece of shit,” which seems nasty, but not actually advocating political violence). The Texas Education Agency is reviewing 180 complaints filed against teachers for comments related to Kirk; some of those are surely murder cheerleading, while others are scathing criticism that should probably be tolerated. Four different high school teachers were placed on leave in Massachusetts for their commentary. One elementary school teacher in that same state has been placed on leave for her TikTok video mocking Kirk’s death. Both Delta and American Airlines have axed a few employees each for social media posts on Kirk. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and the University of Miami’s health care system fired one worker each. An Office Depot worker at a store in Michigan was fired after allegedly refusing to print flyers about a Kirk vigil for a paying customer—which makes an awful lot of sense, given that printing flyers is literally their job. These cases are all different, and some seem like they do actually call for or celebrate political violence, whereas others are just tasteless expressions of hatred for Kirk that don’t violate that norm.

    So let’s back up for a moment. Why did cancel culture of the 2010s strike so many of us as so bad and wrong?

    Some of it surely had to do with proportionality: The punishment rarely fit the “crime” (which was almost always debatable).

    Some of it surely had to do with changing sensibilities and sensitivities, and a sense that the orthodoxy being enforced was invented yesterday, not a reflection of prevailing sentiments. Thus it was unpredictable: You couldn’t really be sure you weren’t running afoul of the new tyrannical enforcers, because the shift in pieties (or language) had happened practically overnight.

    But there was something undergirding it that felt especially stupid: The kids were the enforcers, overthrowing the adults. Not because the adults had exercised bad judgment or shown themselves to be incapable of faithfully executing the roles they’d been given. In some cases, they were canceled as they exercised good judgment: Consider the case of Mike Pesca, a Slate journalist (and, disclosure: my friend) who had been discussing how the publication ought to cover the firing of New York Times writer Donald McNeil, who referred to a racial slur in context on a trip to Peru with high schoolers; could a white person ever write or say nigger in context? Don’t we make a use/mention distinction? Some vocal portion of his workplace apparently disagreed, and he was dismissed after he’d worked there for seven years. It was never about morals, it was never about quality of product being produced; it was about power in the workplace, wrapped up in something that, to the young, resembled morals enough to give them plausible deniability.

    Now, something a little different is happening, for which people are using the same name. Professors, teachers, nurses, and doctors who have celebrated the assassination of Kirk are being purged from their workplaces. It’s conservatives swarming this time, phoning employers, making them aware of the misdeeds, asking for their scalps.

    Most of me thinks it’s wrong and bad on principle—since I don’t ever want to be fired for my own speech (and thus want to maintain a very wide sense of what we societally tolerate)—but also as a strategy, since I don’t believe conservatives gain very much by weeding out the people with dumb beliefs who are in positions of relatively little power and importance. People have little impulse control and use social media like a diary; I’ll never understand the crying-in-a-car TikTok woman genre, but I’m fine living in a society with people who get off on that. (Also: What even is a position of relatively little power and importance? Teachers and professors are entrusted with impressionable minds. Isn’t this extreme power?)

    But a not-that-tiny piece of me sees this as substantively different: Cancel culture grievances were mostly petty and minor, issues that could have been resolved if participants were willing to be 10 percent more charitable toward their perceived opponents, and if bosses were willing to instruct their inferiors to get over themselves. James Damore’s Google memo about heritability of certain traits and brain differences between genders and how to reduce the gender gap among engineers is a good example; anyone who claims to have felt threatened was being an opportunist, looking to amass power and get the hit of collective effervescence that comes from vanquishing an opponent.

    Of course, there were also the “offensive” acts that were not really relevant to the workplace, but that the 2010s cancelers implied indicated something about the tainted souls of the powerful: Adam Rapoport, the Bon Appetit editor in chief, who in 2020 handed in his resignation after colleagues dug up a boricua (Puerto Rican)/durag Halloween costume from 2013. Rapoport’s photo was “just a symptom of the systematic racism that runs rampant within Conde Nast as a whole,” said one chef/editor who worked at the magazine, while others alleged black women had been systemically mistreated under Rapoport’s leadership.

    With Kirk’s killing, the posters who lose their jobs are saying something actually bad, something that society has long seen as beyond a crossed line; we don’t cheer the killing of people with whom we disagree. This isn’t the Cultural Revolution. We don’t flog people. We don’t put them in stocks in the town square. And we don’t get titillated when a bullet flies into their neck and they spurt out blood and crumple to the ground; it’s gruesome and awful and it happened as a thousand impressionable young people looked on. Looked at one way, this was an insane person committing an extrajudicial act of violence. Looked at another, this was a public execution for the crime of being conservative—which is, apparently, judging by their reactions, what a lot of people had been wanting.

    When a working professional can’t manage to exercise self-control and refrain from posting in public about how grateful they are that the assassin had the balls to shoot their shot, you have to wonder about their judgment. It’s perhaps especially odd for professors to say as much. (Don’t they spend their time…speaking their mind…in public?) And is there perhaps some value in maintaining or enforcing a consensus of what types of things lie beyond the pale? I don’t want pedophilia apologists as kindergarten teachers, to use an extreme example; I also probably don’t want a doctor treating me who cheers on the murder of people who think like Kirk.

    In general, I trust that reputable employers have done some amount of quality/maturity/professionalism/judgment vetting. Surely celebrating political violence runs afoul of these basic expectations, and that’s what they’re responding to when they fire someone who posted gleefully about Kirk, which is materially different than the made-up social justice dogma that was being enforced before. (It would be better if employers self-policed rather than succumbing to the demands of angry mobs.) We’ve always had taboos, and the taboo against political violence is a strong one worth keeping, not one we should constantly have to renegotiate.

    Scenes from New York: Gov. Kathy Hochul, a sort of forgettable, generically bad Democrat who inherited the spot when Andrew Cuomo left in a hurry, endorsed Zohran Mamdani; nobody followed her lead. lol.

    QUICK HITS

    • Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi is saying utterly wrong things about hate speech. “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society…We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” Does Bondi need a reminder?
    • “President Donald Trump approved a National Guard deployment to Memphis, expanding the federal government’s efforts to crack down on what he has cast as out-of-control crime in Democratic-run cities,” reports Bloomberg. And Chicago will probably be next after Memphis, signaled the president.
    • The U.S. military struck a second boat carrying Venezuelan narcotraffickers, killing at least three. The first strike of this variety was ordered and carried out earlier this month, killing 11. More strikes are planned; congressional approval has not yet been sought.
    • Inside the deal reached between the U.S. and China for the sale of TikTok, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
    • “Israel unleashed a long-threatened ground assault on Gaza City on Tuesday, declaring ‘Gaza is burning’ as Palestinians there described the most intense bombardment they had faced in two years of war,” reports Reuters. “An Israel Defence Forces official said ground troops were moving deeper into the enclave’s main city, and that the number of soldiers would rise in coming days to confront up to 3,000 Hamas combatants the IDF believes are still in the city.”
    • The Washington Post fired journalist Karen Attiah; Attiah claims it was for her social media posts on Kirk, including one in which she says Kirk once said, “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.” This was a botched quote. From Reason‘s Robby Soave: “What he said was that the achievements of four specific black women—former First Lady Michelle Obama, former MSNBC host Joy Reid, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D–Texas)—were suspect because of affirmative action; the existence of racial preferences casts a pall over their selections for various positions. One can certainly criticize the point or disagree with how he worded it (Michelle Obama, diversity hire?), but he did not say the words attributed to him by Attiah. And she put it in quotes, which is journalistic malpractice.”

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    Liz Wolfe

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  • To honor Charlie Kirk, reject cancel culture

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    This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch confront the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. They open with reflections about the history of political violence in the U.S. and whether reactions online are amplifying fear rather than clarity. The panel critiques early attempts to pin the blame on social media—highlighting Trump and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s calls for new restrictions—while contrasting them with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’s argument that responsibility rests with individuals, not platforms.

    The panel also considers how quickly tragedies get folded into pre-existing narratives, and whether calls for broad regulation risk undermining civil liberties without addressing the real problem. The conversation then turns to attempts to punish speech, including proposals to fire public-university employees and revoke licenses for those who made offensive remarks about Kirk’s death. A listener question about the books on the panelists’ shelves offers a brief detour, with each host highlighting a few favorites in view of the camera.

    “Is mass immigration good for America?” Join us for a Reason Versus live debate on October 2 in Washington, D.C.

     

    0:00–The role of social media in Charlie Kirk’s assassination

    18:15–Crisis politics and the growing censorship creep

    39:30–What is the path forward?

    52:30–Listener question on host’s bookshelves

    58:00–Weekly cultural recommendations

     

    Mentioned in This Podcast:

    “Social Media Didn’t Kill Charlie Kirk“, by Elizabeth Nolan Brown
    “The Standard for ‘Vicious’ Speech Trump Laid Out After Kirk’s Murder Would Implicate Trump Himself”, by Jacob Sullum
    “What the Messages on the Bullets of Charlie Kirk’s Assassin Mean”, by C.J. Ciaramella
    “Charlie Kirk and America’s History With Political Violence”, by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch
    “The Killing of Charlie Kirk: 5 Idiotic Responses on Social Media”, by Robby SoaveWhat If “We Acted Like Political Violence Was a Problem?“, By Matt Welch

    “The Apocalyptic Faithlessness of Trump/Bannon Conservatism”, by Matt Welch

    “Politically Motivated Violence is Rare in the United States”, by Alex Nowrasteh

     

    Upcoming Reason Events:

    Reason Versus — Mass Immigration Is Good for America, October 2

    Today’s Sponsor:

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    Peter Suderman

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  • Conservative activist slams Cracker Barrel as company left reeling after logo redesign

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    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    Conservative activist Robby Starbuck is the latest influencer to weigh in on the Cracker Barrel logo controversy. He described the company’s logo makeover as going from “old American nostalgia” to something “cold, dead, lifeless and modern.” In his 15-minute video, Starbuck does a brutal takedown of the company’s history, explaining how over the years it has embraced “wokeness.”

    Starbuck told his followers that while the Cracker Barrel brand is often associated with American tradition, the company is “infested with left-wing activists who are more interested in safe spaces, pronouns, and virtue signaling than they are in their customers.”

    In his video, Starbuck highlights Cracker Barrel’s support for LGBTQ+ organizations and events, such as Nashville Pride, River City Pride and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

    Activist Robby Starbuck believes Cracker Barrel’s logo redesign is part of a larger “woke” shift away from their loyal customer base.  (Bess Adler/Bloomberg/Joe Raedle/Getty)

    CRACKER BARREL CEO SERVES UP LEFTOVER CORPORATE BRANDING TO UNHAPPY CUSTOMERS

    He also noted that the company displayed rocking chairs with rainbow colors and LGBTQ+ insignia. The company even went so far as to place one in its Tennessee corporate office. Rocking chairs are practically synonymous with Cracker Barrel. Rocking chairs are practically synonymous with Cracker Barrel, with the restaurant’s long porches lined with them at locations nationwide.

    “The fact that it’s located there is important to this story because what’s happened here is a microcosm of the parasitic operating procedure of left-wing activists,” Starbuck said. “They don’t just wanna force their soulless, godless, hedonistic vision of the future onto blue hellscapes that their party controls. 

    “No, it’s much more important to them that they shove it down into your towns, into your kids’ schools, and into your way of life. So, sticking a pro-trans rocking chair into their headquarters in a predominantly conservative town is exactly the type of thing they revel in doing.”

    Starbuck then pointed to the company’s involvement with HRC and participation in the Out and Equal Workplace Summit. For the Out and Equal conference, Cracker Barrel made rocking chairs in every color of the rainbow, representing the LGBTQ+ flag. Out and Equal even gave Cracker Barrel an award for having 2018’s top LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group (ERG).

    Cracker Barrel Old Country Store customers eat inside a restaurant with antiquities on the wall.

    Customers are seen dining inside a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store restaurant in Stuart, Florida. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

    CRACKER BARREL DISMISSES CRITICS AS ‘VOCAL MINORITY’ WHILE RIVAL RESTAURANT ADDS TO BACKLASH

    The restaurant chain previously participated in HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, which measures “corporate policies, practices, and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer employees,” according to the organization’s website. A company’s score on the index is determined by how inclusive HRC judged it to be toward LGBTQ+ employees.

    Cracker Barrel told Fox News Digital on Friday that it “has not participated in the Human Rights Campaign Index or had any affiliation with HRC in several years.”

    Two Cracker Barrel employees are called out by name in Starbuck’s video, Steve Smotherman and Rachel CampBell. 

    Smotherman was the head of management training and development at Cracker Barrel for 15 years, Starbuck asserted, showing a screenshot that appeared to be from LinkedIn. Smotherman, who eventually left Cracker Barrel for Out and Equal, serves on HRC’s Business Advisory Council in Washington, D.C. 

    DEMOCRATIC PARTY, GAVIN NEWSOM JOIN ONLINE ROASTING OF NEW CRACKER BARREL LOGO

    Starbuck describes Smotherman as “the archetype activist employee that fueled the rise of DEI in corporate America.” He also slammed CampBell, a manager of training and development at Cracker Barrel, for publicly expressing excitement over the company’s rainbow pride rocking chairs.

    “And it’s important to note all of this because these types of employees play a critical role in turning companies away from the values of their customers and moving the companies toward wokeness,” Starbuck said.

    Cracker Barrel

    A Cracker Barrel restaurant in Dumfries, Virginia, US, on Tuesday, May 21, 2024.  (Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    CRACKER BARREL EXECUTIVE INSISTS RESTAURANT REMODELS ARE ‘WHAT THE GUESTS ASKED FOR’

    Gilbert Dávila, a member of Cracker Barrel’s board of directors, was also referenced in Starbuck’s video. Dávila, who joined Cracker Barrel’s board in 2020, has worked at several major companies, including Disney, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. He’s also the co-CEO of DMI Consulting, which looks to “infuse cultural relevance and creativity into every solution.”  Starbuck asserted that Dávila, and others like him, are responsible for the “woke advertising push” seen over the last few years.

    In the end, Starbuck emphasizes that the controversy around Cracker Barrel’s logo change is about more than the removal of a man in his chair leaning on a barrel.

    A hat displaying the old Cracker Barrel logo is on display inside a restaurant.

    A hat with the former Cracker Barrel Old Country Store logo is displayed for sale inside the restaurant’s gift shop in Louisville, Kentucky, on Monday, Sept. 23, 2019. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    “It’s very, very important to understand that the Cracker Barrel story is not about a logo. It’s not at all about a logo, it is about a country, it is our heritage, and it is a culture. It’s about a power structure built to tell us that we are somehow backwards, embarrassing or bigoted,” Starbuck said.

    “A conservative can’t give their money to Cracker Barrel. A Christian cannot give their money to Cracker Barrel, and so we won’t,” he added.

    As Starbuck sees it, the Cracker Barrel debacle is a win-win for conservatives, saying that the company will either have to double down and lose customers or revert back to its 1977 logo to retain its customer base.

    Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood and Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.

    Cracker Barrel did not respond Fox News Digital’s request for comment in time for publication. 

    Rachel Wolf is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital and FOX Business.

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  • 2024’s Canceled Shows, for Your Final Consideration

    2024’s Canceled Shows, for Your Final Consideration

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    Photo: Warner Bros Discovery

    Way back in 2016, Vulture wrote of the now mostly forgotten Netflix series Bloodline that “Netflix did something it’s rarely done in its four-year history of original programming Wednesday: It canceled a show.” These days, updates on streaming series reckon with how “platforms invented cruel and unusual ways to cancel them.” Well, the great cancel-off of 2024 is officially on its way, and no show is safe. Without reputable sourcing on streaming audience numbers, there’s little way to know if your favorite piece of art content is actually a hit or just a hit with your friend group/online bubble/in-laws. So we end up with cancelations like Our Flag Means Death, which, based on the amount Taika Waititi fans talk about it, sure seemed like a hit. This Fool was canceled on February 14, which (besides Valentine’s Day) was Ash Wednesday. Time to think about your sins, execs. And now, we’re saying goodbye to Tokyo Vice (thankfully, we’ve prepared a speech ahead of time.) Below, a list of every TV show canceled so far in 2024.

    What’s it about? Based on the book of the same name, this comedy stars Chris O’Dowd. It takes place in a small town that, per Apple TV+, “is forever changed when a mysterious machine appears, promising to reveal everyone’s true potential. Soon residents start changing jobs, rethinking relationships, and questioning long-held beliefs — all in pursuit of a better future.”
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? June 28

    What’s it about? TikTok stars Dixie and Charlie D’Amelio try to expand their brand, Kardashian-style. They’re joined in this effort by parents parents Heidi and Marc. According to Deadline, the choice not to renew came from Hulu, but was supported by the fam.
    Number of seasons: 3
    When was it canceled? June 26

    What’s it about? Per Max, the show follows “Adelstein’s (Ansel Elgort) daily descent into the neon-soaked underbelly of Tokyo in the late 90s, where nothing and no one is truly what or who they seem.” During a PGA producing panel in June, the producers revealed that the Max noir thriller is closing up shop. Creator J.T. Rogers and director Alan Poul said in a statement, “Not only did they give us these two seasons, they said yes when we asked to end season one with a series of cliffhangers, and they said yes when we asked for two extra episodes so we could land the plane in the way J.T. had always envisioned.”
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? June 8

    What’s it about? Inspired by a chapter of Amy Chozick’s book, this show “chronicles four female journalists who follow every move of a parade of flawed presidential candidates, while finding friendship, love, and scandal along the way,” per Max.
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? May 24

    What’s it about? A series based on Tegan and Sara’s memoir, Freevee describes it as “a story about finding your own identity—a journey made even more complicated when you have a twin whose own struggle and self-discovery so closely mimics your own.”
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? May 23

    What’s it about? Per the CW, the show follows Texas Ranger Cordell Walker (Jared Padalecki), who is “living by his own moral code” as he navigates romance, fatherhood, his law enforcement career, and “secrets from his past.” It was a reboot of the 1990s show Walker, Texas Ranger.
    Number of seasons: 4
    When was it canceled? May 21

    What’s it about? This single-cam comedy was inspired by journalist Shea Serrano’s life growing up in San Antonio, Texas. Ignacio Diaz-Silverio starred as 16-year-old Rafa Gonzales, who was being raised by his mother and five overbearing uncles.
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? May 21

    What’s it about? Based on the novel by Zakiya Dalila Harris, the show starred Sinclair Daniel as Nella, an editorial assistant who is tired of being the only Black girl at her company. She’s excited when Hazel (Ashleigh Murray) is hired. But, per Hulu, “as Hazel’s star begins to rise, Nella spirals out and discovers something sinister is going on at the company.”
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? May 10

    What’s it about? This psychological thriller followed an astronaut named Jo (Noomi Rapace) who returns to Earth after a disaster in space – only to discover that key pieces of her life seem to be missing. Per Apple TV+, it’s “an exploration of the dark edges of human psychology, and one woman’s desperate quest to expose the truth about the hidden history of space travel and recover all that she has lost.”
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? May 10

    What’s it about? An expansion of the 2016 short film Scavengers, this surreal sci-fi animated series followed the remaining crew of a damaged interstellar freighter ship who are stranded on an alien planet. Per Max, “their new home reveals a hostile world allowed to thrive without human interference.” The show will remain on Max, but also begin streaming on Netflix on May 31.
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? May 10

    What’s it about? Created by Jennifer Crittenden, Clea DuVall, and Gabrielle Allan, this animated sitcom follows pets in a Los Angeles therapy group led by a poodle named Honey (voiced by Lisa Kudrow).
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? May 10

    What’s it about? Created by Mike O’Malley, this comedy follows Jim (Jon Cryer) and Julia (Abigail Spencer), a couple who amicably divorce and take turns staying with their kids at the family home. But things get complicated when Boston Celtics owner Trey (Donald Faison) wins Julia’s heart. The show is inspired by the real-life family dynamic of executive producers Emilia Fazzalari, George Geyer, and real-life Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck.
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? May 7

    What’s it about? Nasim Pedrad transforms into awkward Persian American teenager Chad Amani, who is navigating his cultural identity and the chaos of high school. The Roku Channel swooped in to save the comedy after TBS’s last-minute cancellation, but it has now confirmed to Deadline that it’s out, too.
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? May 7

    What’s it about? Love Is Blind’s Vanessa Lachey and NCIS: LA’s LL Cool J star as “a skilled mix of mainland transplants who’ve re-located to the tranquility of the Pacific and wizened locals who know their mahalo from kapu,” according to CBS.
    Number of seasons: 3
    When was it canceled? April 26

    What’s it about? Per CBS, “a brilliant team of forensic investigators” must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to face an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab. The old friends in question include William Petersen and Jorja Fox in season one, and Marg Helgenberger starting in season two.
    Number of seasons: 3
    When was it canceled? April 19

    What’s it about? Pitch Perfect’s Skylar Astin played a private investigator who reluctantly goes to work at his mother’s (Marcia Gay Harden) law firm.
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? April 19

    What’s it about? The year-round daytime talk show premiered in 2010, with a discussion format featuring Holly Robinson Peete, Julie Chen Moonves, Leah Remini, Marissa Janet Winokur, Sara Gilbert, and Sharon Osbourne. The most recent host lineup included Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Jerry O’Connell, Natalie Morales, and Sheryl Underwood.
    Number of seasons: 15
    When was it canceled? April 12

    What’s it about? A follow-up to the original NBC series of the same name, the show follows a new team that is trying to restart the work of Dr. Sam Beckett, who stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and disappeared 30 years ago.
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? April 5

    What’s it about? Mandy Patinkin and Violett Beane starred in this show set “amidst the glamor of the global elite,” per Hulu. Imogene Scott (Beane) becomes the prime suspect in a locked room murder mystery on a lavishly restored Mediterranean ocean liner. To prove her innocence, she must partner with the world’s greatest detective, Rufus Cotesworth (Patinkin), whom she happens to despise.
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? March 29

    What’s it about? Created by Darren Star, star Neil Patrick Harris plays a newly single gay man named Michael where, per Netflix, “Overnight, he has to confront two nightmares: losing the man he thought was his soulmate, and suddenly finding himself a single gay man in his mid-forties in New York City.” Showtime tried to save it from cancelation early last year, but their efforts were not fruitful; they uncoupled with the idea of a season two in March.
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? March 21

    What’s it about? Long, long ago, in the pre-YouTube essays era of the internet, someone made a machinima show using Halo. The success of Red vs. Blue spun out into a whole company, Rooster Teeth, which was eventually subsumed by Warner Bros. Discovery. And we all know what happens to cartoons at Warner Bros. Discovery. Rooster Teeth announced its shut down March 6, as well as the final season of Red vs. Blue.
    Number of seasons: 19
    When was it canceled? March 6

    What’s it about? Created by Brad Falchuk (Glee, American Horror Story) and Byron Wu, this action comedy-drama follows legendary killer Charles “Chairleg” Sun (Justin Chien), whose father — the head of a Taiwanese triad — is shot by a mysterious assassin. Per Netflix, Sun heads to L.A. to “protect his mother, Eileen (Michelle Yeoh), and his naive younger brother, Bruce (Sam Song Li) — who’s been completely sheltered from the truth of his family until now.”
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? March 1

    What’s it about? Chris Estrada (who created the show) and Frankie Quiñones starred as cousins/reluctant buddies. When Luis (Quiñones) is released from prison, Julio (Estrada) becomes his case worker at a gang-rehabilitation center run by a rich white dilettante (Michael Imperioli).
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? February 14

    What’s it about? Sarah Paulson seemingly confirmed the show’s cancelation while signing autographs at the stage door after Appropriate. “In 1947, Mildred arrives in Northern California to seek employment at a leading psychiatric hospital where new and unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind,” described Netflix of the series inspired by One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
    Number of seasons: 1
    When it was canceled: February 5

    What’s it about? Per Netflix, the series followed a special forces team that celebrates a victory in Las Vegas, but “when the real threat emerges, they must sober up to save Las Vegas.” Created by Cobra Kai’s Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald, the show starred the ensemble partiers of Nick Zano, Shelley Henni, Terrence Terrell, Alyson Gorske, C. Thomas Howell, Eugene Kim, Paola Lázaro, and Kimi Rutledge.
    Number of seasons: 1
    When it was canceled: February 1

    What’s it about? Griffin Campbell and his family move into an old hotel that the town believes “is haunted by the ghost of a girl who disappeared over 30 years ago,” per Disney. “When Griffin and his new best friend Harper try to solve the mystery of what happened to her, they find a portal that lets them travel back in time, where they learn that the secret to solving the mystery is meeting Griffin’s own father!”
    Number of seasons: 3
    When it was canceled: January 30

    What’s it about? Created by Teen Wolf’s Jeff Davis and based on the books by Edo van Belkom, Wolf Pack follows four young adults who “find themselves drawn together under a full moon” when “a raging wildfire releases a supernatural creature,” according to Paramount+.
    Number of seasons: 1
    When it was canceled: January 25

    What’s it about? Starring Kaley Cuoco as the titular flight attendant Cassie Bowden, the first season was based on the novel of the same name by Chris Bohjalian. The second season follows Bowden “living her best sober life in Los Angeles while moonlighting as a CIA asset in her spare time. But when an overseas assignment leads her to inadvertently witness a murder, she becomes entangled in another international intrigue.”
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled: January 19

    What’s it about? A pastiche of classic musicals, season two of Schmigadoon found, “Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Strong) in Schmicago, the reimagined world of ’60s and ’70s musicals,” according to AppleTV+. “The second season of Apple’s broadly acclaimed comedy will include new original musical numbers from co-creator and executive producer Cinco Paul.”
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled: January 18

    What’s it about? “Rap Sh!t follows two estranged high school friends from Miami, Shawna and Mia, who reunite to form a rap group,” Warner Bros. says. “In their rise to fame, Shawna and Mia find themselves at a pivotal moment in their rap career as they are forced to decide if they will stay true to themselves or conform to the demands of the music industry.”
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? January 18

    What’s it about? A Max spokesperson confirmed to Vulture that Julia is closing up the kitchen. The show was inspired by “Julia Child’s extraordinary life and her long-running television series, The French Chef, which pioneered the modern cooking show. Through Julia’s life and her singular joie de vivre, the series explores a pivotal time in American history – the emergence of public television as a new social institution, feminism and the women’s movement, the nature of celebrity and America’s cultural evolution,” according to Warner Bros.
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? January 10

    What’s it about? “Our Flag Means Death is based (very) loosely on the true adventures of 18th-century would-be pirate Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby),” according to Warner Bros. “After trading the seemingly charmed life of a gentleman for one of a swashbuckling buccaneer, Stede became captain of the pirate ship Revenge. Struggling to earn the respect of his potentially mutinous crew, Stede’s fortunes changed after a fateful run-in with the infamous Captain Blackbeard (Taika Waititi). To their surprise, the wildly different Stede and Blackbeard found more than friendship on the high seas … they found love. Now, they have to survive it.”
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? January 9

    What’s it about? After being revived from the dead (being canceled by Max) after one season by Starz, the network proceeded to cancel the show after one extra season. “Minx is set in 1970s Los Angeles and centers around Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond), an earnest young feminist who joins forces with a low-rent publisher (Jake Johnson) to create the first erotic magazine for women,” according to Warner Bros.
    Number of seasons: 2
    When was it canceled? January 5

    What’s it about? The show is “based on Gene Luen Yang’s groundbreaking graphic novel that chronicles the trials and tribulations of a regular American teenager whose life is forever changed when he befriends the son of a mythological god,” Disney+ says. “This is the story of a young man’s battle for his own identity, told through family, comedy, and action-packed Kung-Fu.”
    Number of seasons: 1
    When was it canceled? January 5

    This story has been updated.

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    Jason P. Frank

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  • Candace Cameron Bure Rips Cancel Culture – 'I've Taken Punches Before'

    Candace Cameron Bure Rips Cancel Culture – 'I've Taken Punches Before'

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    Opinion

    Source: Kirk Cameron On TBN YouTube

    The former “Full House” star Candace Cameron Bure, who has long been one of the only openly Christian conservative stars in Hollywood, recently spoke out to blast cancel culture, something that she has frequently been targeted by.

    Cameron Bure Slams Cancel Culture

    “I’ve taken punches before in my industry but it was at a level I hadn’t experienced yet, and it’s been very challenging,” said Cameron Bure, 47, according to Fox News. “Cancel culture is very real and they were trying to cancel me.”

    At the end of 2021, Cameron Bure was hit with backlash over comments she made about her new network Great American Family.

    “I think that Great American Family will keep traditional marriage at the core,” she’d said.

    In her latest interview, Cameron Bure explained that while she wasn’t “shy” or “ashamed” of her Christian faith, the negative attention she got over her comments was difficult for her to deal with.

    “So when I had a lot of these bullets kind of hit me in the last year or so, they’ve been a really big challenge to me personally, to my heart, to my character, to my relationships, to my jobs,” she confessed. “I remember being so upset over it because it’s like, how do you recover?” 

    “I could have bailed and just said, ‘You know what? I’m totally done with this,’ or ‘I don’t want to be a public figure anymore,’” Cameron Bure admitted, adding that she was never trying to stir up controversy with her marriage comments.

    In the end, this experience taught her that anyone in the public eye who stands by their convictions needs to be prepared for criticism in today’s world.

    “You have to be ready for some of those fiery darts to be thrown at you in a bigger public platform,” she said.

    Related: Candace Cameron Bure Wants To Create Content That ‘Serves Faith And Family’ Amidst ‘Cultural Desert’

    Cameron Bure had previously opened up about her “traditional marriage” controversy in February of last year.

    “It’s difficult. And it’s hard, but listen, I just want to encourage you that you are not the only one and there are lots of us, and we are always stronger together,” Cameron Bure said while appearing on the “Unapologetic with Julia Jeffress Sadler” podcast.

    “It’s hard, no matter what. Especially when you are a compassionate person and you have a heart for people,” she continued. “But it’s important that we speak truth in love, ’cause, listen, nobody’s gonna change, nobody’s gonna listen to you when it comes out angry, when it comes out in a harsh way, but it’s important that we don’t back down.”

    Cameron Bure went on to talk about the importance of her strong Christian faith and knowing where to draw “the line in the sand.”

    “If you know what your boundaries are, that’s the most important,” she explained. “Because if you don’t make them for yourself, the entertainment industry will make them for you. And that’s what you don’t want.”

    Related: Candace Cameron Bure Wants To Create Content That ‘Serves Faith And Family’ Amidst ‘Cultural Desert’

    Cameron Bure Talks Being A Christian In Hollywood

    Cameron Bure also addressed the fact that she’s one of the only openly conservative Christian actors in Hollywood today. 

    “There are lots of Christians in the entertainment industry,” she said. “Some of them you have to find. Some of them are not as outspoken as others, because of the stigmas that might be around being a Christian in entertainment. But there are lots of us.” 

    God bless Cameron Bure for continuing to show the world that it’s possible to be a good Christian woman and still find success in the crazy world of Hollywood. Here’s hoping that she continues to overcome cancel culture in 2024!

    Now is the time to support and share the sources you trust.
    The Political Insider ranks #3 on Feedspot’s “100 Best Political Blogs and Websites.”

    An Ivy leaguer, proud conservative millennial, history lover, writer, and lifelong New Englander, James specializes in the intersection of culture and politics.

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    James Conrad

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  • Morgan Wallen 'Actually Mad' About Being Targeted By Cancel Culture After Saying The N-Word

    Morgan Wallen 'Actually Mad' About Being Targeted By Cancel Culture After Saying The N-Word

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    Celebrity

    Source: Good Morning America YouTube

    Back in 2021, the country music star Morgan Wallen was targeted by cancel culture after he was caught on camera saying the N-word. Now, Wallen is firing back to say that he is “actually mad” about how he was treated in the wake of this incident.

    Wallen Sounds Off

    “There’s no excuse. I’ve never made an excuse. I never will make an excuse,” Wallen, 30, told Billboard. “I’ve talked to a lot of people, heard stories [about] things that I would have never thought about because I wasn’t the one going through it.”

    “And I think, for me, in my heart I was never that guy that people were portraying me to be, so there was a little bit of like, ‘Damn, I’m kind of actually mad about this a little bit because I know I shouldn’t have said this, but I’m really not that guy,’” he added.

    “I put myself in just such a s— spot, you know? Like, ‘You really messed up here, guy.’ If I was that guy, then I wouldn’t have cared,” Wallen continued. “I wouldn’t have apologized. I wouldn’t have done any of that if I really was that guy that people were saying about me.”

    Related: Morgan Wallen Eager To Find Love At 30 – Here’s ‘His Type’

    ‘Not The Same Person I Am Now’

    In early 2021, video was released showing Wallen saying the N-word as he came home drunk from a night out with friends.

    “That person is definitely not the same person I am now,” Wallen said of the video.

    Wallen checked himself into rehab after this incident and donated $500,000 to Black-affiliated groups, yet the cancel culture mob still went after him. Despite this, Wallen’s sales actually increased, which showed him “just how much that people listen” to him.

    “I don’t think I realized that, at least not at that grand of a scale at the time,” he explained. “I [learned] how much my words matter.”

    These days, Wallen is more popular than ever in the country music world.

    “When I started doing this, I had no intentions or expectations of becoming that guy,” he said of being a champion of the modern world of country music. “Especially when people say to me that they never liked country music before and now it’s [their] favorite.”

    “I obviously have brought some of my own flavor into the space and everybody doesn’t necessarily like that, and I don’t care because I love it,” he concluded. “I love being able to incorporate all the types of music that I like. If I had to sing one kind of song for two hours, I’d lose my mind.”

    Related: Morgan Wallen Scores Huge Win After N-Word Scandal

    Wallen’s Vocal Break

    Earlier this year, Wallen was forced to take a six week break from performing after injuring his vocal cords.

    “I got some bad news from my doctors at the Vanderbilt Voice Center yesterday,” he said, according to Entertainment Tonight. “After taking 10 days of vocal rest, I performed three shows last weekend in Florida and by the third one I felt terrible.”

    “So I went in and got scoped yesterday, and they told me that I reinjured my vocal cords and that I have vocal fold trauma,” he added. “Their advice is that I go on vocal rest for six weeks, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

    Fox News reported that while Wallen has since recovered, he is currently on hiatus from his “One Night At A Time” tour, which is set to resume in 2024.

    The cancel culture mob tried to ruin Wallen’s life and career, but they failed miserably in this endeavor. While we certainly don’t support him using the N-word, Wallen has also taken responsibility for this and made amends. That’s why we’d like to wish Wallen many years of success and happiness to come!

    Now is the time to support and share the sources you trust.
    The Political Insider ranks #3 on Feedspot’s “100 Best Political Blogs and Websites.”

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    James Conrad

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  • Plaintiff Sues Defendant, Alleging Defendant's “Niche Is Cancel Culture”

    Plaintiff Sues Defendant, Alleging Defendant's “Niche Is Cancel Culture”

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    From Couture v. Noshirvan, decided Thursday by Judge Sheri Polster Chappell (M.D. Fla.):

    This case stems from a dozen TikTok videos…. [According to the Complaint,] Defendant Noshirvan is a TikTok creator. He makes money through TikTok gifts, tips, and subscription fees. His niche is cancel culture. Noshirvan finds a video of someone messing up. He then edits and reposts the video. In the edited video, Noshirvan overlays himself doxing the person depicted in the video—that is, he provides the person’s name, contact information, employer, and other personal information. He targets the person as an antagonist, in need of accountability. Many of his millions of followers then harass the person. People pay Noshirvan for this doxing service.

    That’s what happened here. Someone recorded Plaintiff Jennifer Couture during an argument. And someone then provided that video to Noshirvan and paid his fee. Noshirvan went to work. He edited the video and reposted his version targeting Couture. Many of his followers berated Couture by text and phone call. They found her family, the schools her children attended, and employers and contacted them. Over the next several months, Noshirvan posted twelve videos about Couture. He encouraged his followers to report Couture to Southwest Florida Crimestoppers. And he falsely reported to the Florida Department of Children and Families that Couture had harmed her child.

    Noshirvan did not target only Couture. He also targeted Garramone Plastic Surgery (her employer and family). Garramone similarly received calls, texts, emails, and negative online reviews. Garramone responded to a negative review by stating that it was not from a former or current patient. Noshirvan then accused Garramone of slander and questioned why Garramone took out a PPP loan. Noshirvan’s videos forced Garramone to terminate contracts with surgeons who worried about reputational harm. Patients canceled scheduled procedures.

    Garramone sued Noshirvan for, among other things, tortious interference with business relations; the court rejected these claims, but left open room for plaintiffs to amend their complaint:

    The elements of tortious interference are “(1) the existence of a business relationship … (2) knowledge of the relationship on the part of the defendant; (3) an intentional and unjustified interference with the relationship by the defendant; and (4) damage to the plaintiff as a result of the breach of the relationship.” A plaintiff may allege “tortious interference with present or prospective customers but no cause of action exists for tortious interference with a business’s relationship to the community at large.” …

    Garramone does not allege interference with a relationship to the community at large. Rather, Garramone alleges that, due to Noshirvan and his followers’ harassment and false business reviews, it was “forced to prematurely terminate contracts with surgeons, who became fearful of reputational harm by being swept into [Noshirvan’s] net, and many patients terminated scheduled procedure and ended their relationship.” This allegation sufficiently identifies existing business relationships. This allegation, along with other allegations in the complaint, also suffices to allege Noshirvan actually interfered with Garramone’s business relationships.

    But Garramone includes only conclusory allegations about Noshirvan’s knowledge of the business relationships. Plaintiffs claim to have facts to support the knowledge element and request that the Court take judicial notice. The Court declines the invitation to take judicial notice of that information and dismisses the tortious interference claim … without prejudice….

    The court thus allowed Garramone to file an amended complaint (due Dec. 15), and noted that, if the amended complaint adequately alleges tortious interference, it would also adequately allege civil conspiracy:

    Garramone alleges Noshirvan and his followers agreed to engage in tortious interference and committed overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. For example, the amended complaint includes a screenshot of a conversation between Noshirvan and one of his followers. The follower asks, “so we are now working on reviews for his business right?” and Noshirvan responds “Yes.” The amended complaint also includes screenshots of several fake reviews posted by Noshirvan’s followers. These allegations are enough at this stage….

    As to Couture’s civil conspiracy claim, the court held it “needs more work”:

    [Couture] does not sufficiently allege an underlying tort [that defendants were allegedly trying to commit against her]. Plaintiffs argue that Florida’s “economic boycott exception” relieves them of the underlying-tort requirement. Under that exception, “if the plaintiff can show some peculiar power of coercion possessed by the conspirators by virtue of their combination, which power an individual would not possess, then conspiracy itself becomes an independent tort.” Whether this narrow exception applies here is unclear. And Plaintiffs have not sufficiently alleged this exception in the amended complaint.

    Moreover, the Court should not address the exception now…. Couture may be able to sufficiently allege other underlying torts. For instance, she alleges that Noshirvan participated in campaigns to “damage her business and professional reputation, and to tortiously interfere with the business relationship between Jennifer Couture and her clients.” The amended complaint does not sufficiently develop how damage to Couture’s reputation, perhaps a reference to defamation, or tortious interference serve as underlying torts supporting her conspiracy claim. Nor does Couture sufficiently allege agreement between Noshirvan and his followers or which overt acts were committed in furtherance of the conspiracy. The Court dismisses without prejudice Plaintiff Couture’s conspiracy claim [which means that Couture could try to file an amended complaint making the requisite allegations -EV].

    Plaintiffs also sued TikTok and ByteDance, TikTok’s parent corporation, but the court threw out that claim under 47 U.S.C. § 230:

    Nor do TikTok’s monetization features transform it into a developer rather than publisher of Noshirvan’s content. Viewing the amended complaint in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs, they allege (at best) that TikTok promotes Noshirvan’s videos generally. Afterall, Noshirvan is an eligible creator, and TikTok makes money from his videos. But Plaintiffs cannot show that TikTok “contribut[ed] materially to the alleged illegality” of the videos at issue here. TikTok’s monetization features turn on the popularity of a video, not its content. And “providing neutral tools to carry out what may be unlawful or illicit [content] does not amount to ‘development’” of that content.

    TikTok’s knowledge of Noshirvan does not change this analysis…. At bottom, TikTok’s role in the alleged wrongdoing was publishing Noshirvan’s content. So Section 230 bars Plaintiffs’ claims. See McCall v. Zotos (11th Cir. 2023) (“Lawsuits seeking to hold a service provider like Amazon liable for its exercise of a publisher’s traditional editorial functions—such as deciding whether to publish, withdraw, postpone, or alter content—are barred.”)….

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    Eugene Volokh

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  • Lizzo Says Cancel Culture Is ‘Appropriation’: ‘It’s Become Trendy, Misused And Misdirected’

    Lizzo Says Cancel Culture Is ‘Appropriation’: ‘It’s Become Trendy, Misused And Misdirected’

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    By Sarah Curran.
    Published:

    Lizzo is sharing her thoughts on cancel culture. 

    The “Truth Hurts” singer took to social media on Sunday, Jan. 8 to discuss the controversial topic with her fans.


    READ MORE:
    Lizzo Gets Emotional About Owning A Mansion After Sleeping In Cars: ‘It’s A Milestone’

    “This may be a random time to say this but it’s on my heart.. cancel culture is appropriation,” she wrote.

    “There was real outrage from truly marginalized people and now it’s become trendy, misused and misdirected.”

    Lizzo added, “I hope we can phase out of this & focus our outrage on the real problems.”


    READ MORE:
    Lizzo On ‘Milestone’ Of Buying Lavish Home 10 Years After Couch Surfing, Sleeping In Her Car

    The Grammy-winner has never been shy about speaking out on what she believes in. 

    Lizzo recently shut down sexualization criticism and accusations her music is for a “white audience”.

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    Sarah Curran

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  • Madonna Takes A Bigger Risk on Dredging Up the Sex Book in the Present

    Madonna Takes A Bigger Risk on Dredging Up the Sex Book in the Present

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    While it’s nice to see #JusticeForErotica happening after thirty years, Madonna’s decision to dredge up her accompanying project of the day, Sex, proves, perhaps more than anything else, that she might truly believe herself immune to cancel culture. Presumably because of the “carte blanche” that is imagined to come with being amid the last of the living legends. But as a film like Tár recently proved, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve contributed to society—there’s always an occasion to be cancelled.

    As something of the “companion” to the Erotica album, Sex was originally published in October of 1992 by Madonna’s then-new company, Maverick, in collaboration with Warner Bros. and Callaway. And the images and excerpts pulled from it caused even more of a stir than Madonna getting her drag on in the “Erotica” video as a riding crop-toting dominatrix named Dita (an alter ego inspired by actress Dita Parlo). Although her publisher was concerned about unleashing the content—afraid that they had possibly given Madonna too much “free rein” (no riding crop pun intended)—the coffee table book was an immediate success.

    In mere days, it sold over a million copies worldwide (no small feat considering its cumbersome design) and topped The New York Times Best Seller list for three weeks. It all seemed to prove what Madonna wanted to hold up as a funhouse mirror to conservative America (itself the biggest “undercover” batch of pervs) worked like a charm. She would go on to assert in a 1998 episode of Behind the Music (complete with a talking head segment from Harvey Weinstein), “I was really being explicit about my own sexual fantasies, turning my nose up at the whole idea that, you know, women aren’t allowed to be sexual and erotic and provocative and intelligent and thoughtful at the same time.” Yet, that was a bit of a “smokescreen” for a more authentic underlying motive. As for the “fantasies,” Madonna has appeared to execute one of them throughout most of her real life—this being a strong penchant for younger, non-white men. Which she’s displayed with every boy toy since her divorce from Guy Ritchie, from Jesus Luz to Brahim Zaibat to Timor Steffens to Ahlamalik Williams.

    Within the pages of the Sex book itself, this is where she continues to take the greatest risk in the present in terms of having her words used against her in a more crescendoing way than before. Specifically, such assertions as, “One of the best experiences I ever had was with a teenage boy… He was Puerto Rican.” The specification of his ethnicity adding to the notion that this isn’t really “just” a fantasy. For Madonna was known for prowling the Lower East Side in the 80s to pick up underage Puerto Rican boys with her then go-to cohort, Erica Bell.

    In 1998, when Madonna was still in the process of perfecting her “softer” side in the wake of all that bond-age rage, she positioned the Sex book in the same Behind the Music interview as being less a political statement and more an act of rebellion, noting, “It was an act of rage on my part. In the beginning, everyone agreed that I was sexy, but no one agreed that I had any talent. And that really irritated me. And the Sex book was sort of the pinnacle of me challenging people and saying, ‘You know what? I’m gonna be sexually provocative and I’m gonna be ironic and I’m gonna prove that I can get everybody’s attention and that everybody’s gonna be interested in it and still be freaked out by it.” Yet, hadn’t she already done that many times over by 1992? From “Like A Virgin” to “Like A Prayer” to “Justify My Love,” her visuals had consistently been sexually provocative while incorporating an ironic tone. Which is why the excuse she gives for doing it doesn’t quite track. Complete with her assessment, “And it was sort of like my way of saying, ‘See? The world is hypocritical.” But who among any of us is truly immune to a little hypocrisy? Which Madonna engaged in a lot during the early 90s when she grafted much of her work from other, far less famous people (usually BIPOC and/or queer).

    Enter another reason the book is a sore/risky subject to bring into the light again so flagrantly: the salt in wound it might add to someone like Judith Reagan. An editor at Simon & Schuster in 1991, it was Reagan who approached Madonna with the idea for the book. Madonna likely thought what she had in mind was too “staid” and decided to take the bare bones of the project and go to another publisher: Callaway. The entity that would also go on to publish Madonna during her children’s book phase in the 00s. Reagan would later state in one of the few comprehensive biographies of Madonna (written by J. Randy Taraborrelli), “She had obviously taken my concept, my photos and ideas and used it as a proposal to secure a deal with another publisher. I never heard from her, not a word of gratitude, or an apology, or anything. Frankly, I thought it was in poor taste.” But, as is no secret by now, Madonna has never given much of a fuck about “good” taste when it comes to advancing her career.

    Indeed, by essentially admitting, beneath all the posturing about making a political statement, that she wanted the attention, Madonna played right into her long-standing psychological analysis. The one that dictates when a child loses a parent too early, they’re destined to spend the rest of their lives testing boundaries, seeking approval and wanting to be lavished with an amount of adoration that only fame can vaguely fulfill. You know, interminable void-wise.  

    With the reissuing of Sex in conjunction with Yves Saint Laurent curating an exhibit for it at Art Basel, Madonna, once again, appears to be courting the attention she can’t resist, even at such a dangerous time in the history of U.S. witch-hunting. To be sure, the book does continue to push the envelope, even to this day. Unfortunately, its “reboot” comes at a time when the Gatekeepers That Be would prefer that envelope to remain firm in its place—ironically, even more so than in 1992, at a theoretical height of oppression. However, with only eight hundred copies reprinted at a price of almost three thousand dollars, maybe Madonna is actually playing it safe. Re-releasing Body of Evidence, on the other hand… that would be bold.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Don’t Hate Taylor Because She’s Thin And Still Feels Fat: “Anti-Hero” and Its Cacomorphobia Interpretation

    Don’t Hate Taylor Because She’s Thin And Still Feels Fat: “Anti-Hero” and Its Cacomorphobia Interpretation

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    For some reason, it was only about two or so seconds of the “Anti-Hero” video that stood out to many viewers. Particularly, let’s say, more zaftig viewers who took one look at the scale that read, “FAT” and said to themselves, “How could she?” Not only because Taylor Swift embodies one of those rather vexing skinny bitches who feigns having to worry about their weight like any other garden-variety fatso (read: most of America), but because, in the present climate, it seemed incredible that she thought she’d be able to get away with it unscathed, innocuous as it may have seemed to her. This perhaps being a product of both her foolishness in thinking that uncensored self-expression is part and parcel of what art is and being surrounded by too many cloying sycophants to be properly forewarned. One would sub out “cloying sychophants” with “skinny people” were it not for the fact that Lena Dunham is one of Swift’s “besties,” and she didn’t seem to take offense.

    In the past, Swift has been known for “carousing” with fellow tall, thin people (often referred to as models), most of which were represented in the “Bad Blood” video, including Cara Delevingne, Gigi Hadid and Karlie Kloss. The backlash that her “girl squad” received, however, was also rooted in a public disdain for Swift parading a homogenous standard of beauty. Swift eventually responded to the reaction by remarking, “I never would have imagined that people would have thought, ‘This is a clique that wouldn’t have accepted me if I wanted to be in it.’ Holy shit, that hit me like a ton of bricks.” And yet, for someone whose songwriting is so frequently about being an “outsider,” one would think she could tend to imagine it. But that’s the thing: she’s the type of “outsider” frequently presented in rom-coms of a bygone era. You know, the sort of girl who is only “ugly” because she has glasses and her hair hasn’t yet gotten a blowout. Naturally, Swift wouldn’t and couldn’t see it that way, just recently singing things like, “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid/So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since/To make them love me and make it seem effortless” on Midnights.

    And one aspect of the “effortlessness” of “making someone” “love” you, in this world of peddling brainwashing ads about how to be “beautiful,” is “keeping fit.” Something Taylor has been made hyper-aware of in her role as a monolithic celebrity, dissected and picked apart as much for her looks as she is for her personal life. Understandably, this would warp her perspective even more than the average self-hating girl. And for those who wish to seek a better, more tasteful insight into that than “Anti-Hero,” it can’t be emphasized enough to listen to and watch the video for Tove Lo’s “Grapefruit.” A track that speaks to the raging sense of body dysmorphia that exists inside so many women. Though, to be more “feminist,” Xtina’s “Beautiful” video also calls it out in men as well. So yes, there is an honesty to what Taylor is portraying on that scale. How, no matter what size we are, we’ve been conditioned to see it as being still too “FAT.” Regardless of simply being a healthy weight.

    Alas, even Taylor Swift can no longer have her nice things, namely freedom to express her subjective thoughts and feelings without it being shat upon by people who are ultimately jealous of her figure and enraged by the fact that she doesn’t appreciate it. It’s ironic, of course, that in declaring in the very same video, “It’s me, hi/I’m the problem, it’s me,” Taylor should make good on that assertion by being the “problem” for many an “overweight” person whose own insecurities she tapped into with use of the word “fat,” in addition to conveying it as a source of ultimate fear. This playing into the inherently fatphobic (cacomorphobia, if you prefer) nature of society. One whose “values” Taylor is both a product and purveyor of. So why should she be muzzled when it comes to mentioning how she feels about that? Least of all held responsible for single-handedly eradicating the concept of body-shaming. Something that will never go away. And certainly not with the dominance social media, the premier conduit for comparison and self-loathing, here to stay for the foreseeable future.

    Nonetheless, Swift was shamed for her purported body-shaming. To the extent that she actually altered the video almost right away (proving once again that most “artists” of the present are fucking pussies that won’t stand by what they’ve said or done when it’s poked at too much). To this end, in the current era of automatically “erasing” or “deleting” something that causes a backlash, it leaves one to wonder if art—in its undiluted form—can even exist anymore. Not to mention how it highlights that we live in a dystopian-level society that can and will censor at the drop of a hat.

    To boot, “making people forget,” as though they’ve been exposed to the neuralyzer from Men in Black, doesn’t truly make the “problem” go away, it just buries it to the point where everyone becomes more passive aggressive in their expression of authentic internal feelings. And, by the way, it bears noting that Men in Black was released at a time when, evidently, the neuralyzer wasn’t as needed. For people are far more sensitive now than they were in 1997. Their delicate sensibilities constantly shot and rattled to the extent that, if they really were using the neuralyzer to have their memories of unwanted portrayals erased, they’d be operating with a practically lobotomized brain at this juncture. With Taylor now being yet another person to wield the ice pick by promptly removing the offending image. In turn, she’s effectively used it on herself as well, manifesting her ism, “I’m the problem, it’s me” by backing down on her own genuine emotions. And no, this not the same as Ye refusing to back down on his genuine “emotions” about Jewish people.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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