Let’s hope feckless companies are paying attention to Netflix.
The popular streaming service this week provided the zeitgeist with a example of how to handle woke totalitarians who demand that lives and careers be ruined over innocuous words.
A cadre of intolerant activists invented an outrage over Dave Chappelle, before encouraging low-level employees to also behave like vicious goons. Netflix neutralized the left-wing threat, and thus quickly extinguishing the problem.
.@Netflix gets it. Angry Internet People have no power unless you give them power. https://t.co/krnIQmQeax
— John Noonan (@noonanjo) October 11, 2021
“You must cancel Dave Chappelle!” the churlish mob bellowed after the comedian claimed “gender is a fact” during his new Netflix special, “The Closer.”
Chappelle, it should be noted, is on the political left and considered an ally of the gay community. He said nothing any reasonable person would find irksome. He makes “controversial” remarks about all groups, including Jews, but apparently, only the LGBT radicals can’t tolerate it.
Most of America — from small businesses and corporations to major media institutions and even the president — frequently cave while under attack via Twitter or assorted social media.
Instead, Netflix co-CEO and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos released a sensible statement explaining, “Some talent may join third parties in asking us to remove the show in the coming days, which we are not going to do. Chappelle is one of the most popular stand-up comedians today, and we have a long-standing deal with him . . . As with our other talent, we work hard to support their creative freedom — even though this means there will always be content on Netflix some people believe is harmful.”
He clarified that Netflix doesn’t want to be associated with so-called hate speech, but noted that Chapelle isn’t guilty of that. Since wokesters have no sense of humor or interest in facts, they ignored Chappelle’s serious sensitivity about transgender issues when discussing his friendship with a trans comedian who committed suicide in 2019.
“I don’t know what the Trans community did for her,” Chappelle said, “but I don’t care, because I feel like she wasn’t their tribe. She was mine. She was a comedian in her soul.”#TheCloser #DaphneDorman pic.twitter.com/tFIy4VBUqj
— DearBookClub (@DearBookClub) October 8, 2021
Anyway, Sarandos is not exactly a soldier charging a hill at Gettysburg, but it takes some courage to stand up to the left in an age when so few have common sense.
Netflix, far from a conservative operation, even suspended three internal critics — one a “trans activist” who went into a hysterical Twitter rage storm about Chappelle — after they crashed a meeting to which they weren’t invited.
People can and should disagree with one another, but canceling speech is not an argument. I hope corporations, newspapers, politicians, and especially universities observe the lesson Sarandos offered: When everyone is acting like a child, deciding to be an adult is still possible.
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