ROGER KIMBALL: Peak Cancel Culture? Don’t Bet on It:
Elsewhere last week, I offered a few thoughts about how to cancel cancel culture, with specific reference to President Trump’s vigorous CPAC speech, which took place under the banner “America Uncanceled.” My basic idea was that to challenge cancel culture effectively, one had to have the temerity to stand up to it (“Just Say No,” as Nancy Reagan put it when faced with a different pathology).
Since then, YouTube, a Google (“We Do Evil”) subsidiary upped the stakes a notch by refusing to carry President Trump’s speech because he called into question the fairness of the 2020 presidential election. I guess YouTube won’t be featuring me either, because I continue to believe that the election (as President Trump put it) was “rigged” (here’s how) and therefore illegitimate. Perhaps that belief, or at least my stating it outright, qualifies me as a potential Domestic Terrorist™ or Biden-My-Time Domestic Extremist™. We’ll see. I’ll let you know if Christopher Wray calls to chat about it.
Just a few days ago, in what may seem to be a sillier expression of cancel culture, the world learned that Dr. Seuss Enterprises had decided to stop selling six beloved books by the author of The Cat In the Hat because they contain portrayals of various ethnic groups that are “hurtful and wrong.” This really is, as the Princeton linguist Joshua Katz put it, “beyond madness.”
But the seeming arbitrariness of the interdiction is part of the point. It is, as they say, a feature, not a bug, for the aspiring totalitarians seeking to police what we can read and say and publish. Lenin once said that Communism meant “keeping track of everything.” We don’t call it “totalitarianism” for nothing. What they seek is total control of every aspect of our lives. Last week it was a book by Ryan Anderson and a speech by Donald Trump. This week it is some books by Dr. Seuss.
But the week wasn’t over yet — we’re at an interesting inflection point in the culture when a columnist employed by the New York Times wakes up and decides log into Twitter with the goal of cancelling Warner Brothers cartoon characters:
