Remember all the times activists forced celebrities into apologies?
Wendy Williams begged the “cleft community” for forgiveness and donated twice to cleft-palate associations after she misattributed Joaquin Phoenix’s “odd [attractiveness]” to his cleft palate. The actor later clarified that the mark he has is a birthmark, not a cleft lip. Williams also delivered a heartfelt apology to gay fans for asking them to stop celebrating Galentine’s Day. Former Bachelor contestant Victoria Fuller was canceled for a past modeling campaign in which she wore a shirt that said “White lives matter” — the photoshoot was for an organization that supports the endangered white marlin. Cosmopolitan pulled her from the cover of its magazine. Vanessa Hudgens drafted a full Notes-app apology after she said Covid-related deaths were “inevitable” and that lockdowns were “a bunch of bull.”
Those are just a few ridiculous examples out of many. George Floyd’s death and the summer race riots prompted more cancellations — with every misstep, stars groveled. Evan Peters was slammed for retweeting a video that condemned looters, as was Lana Del Rey for circulating a video that showed criminal’s faces. Mobs accused anyone who countered cancel culture of policing black people’s emotions and triggering an entire race.
If ever the media apparatus that deems itself responsible for “speaking up” could be effective, it would be now, as the world defends terrorism. Most notably, powerful voices at American universities and Congress refuse to condemn Hamas. Activists who issue trigger warnings to create “just” societies could care less about the students who march in support of Hamas barbarism or the professors and politicians who justify terrorist attacks.
Charlie Cooke writes this morning:
It was all stuff and nonsense, wasn’t it? All that talk of “hate speech” and “accountability culture” and “systemic oppression” and the need to ensure that everyone in the community feels “safe” at all times? It was all guff, flotsam, baloney. About 15 minutes passed between the news of the atrocities committed by Hamas and the crumpling of the progressive creed. Rarely has jetsam looked so vile. . . .
In Israel last week, we witnessed a heinous terroristic attack on one of the most relentlessly targeted groups in human history. The civilian victims were raped, mutilated, beheaded, and set on fire by a group of perpetrators that, by its own admission, does not consider its targets human and desires to extirpate their kind from the Earth. That the group that was affected by this abominable crime was not covered by the censors’ expansive protective superstructure — indeed, that, instead, that superstructure was hastily abandoned — reveals how worthless and self-serving the whole edifice was, and how cynical its designers have been. Had the progenitors of “belonging” been acting in earnest, the moment would have prompted a Dunkirk. Instead, we got a lot of hemming and hawing, followed by a Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
There is no “woke code of morality,” as Charlie aptly labels it. That trigger-happy activists won’t apply their own cancellation standards to terrorist sympathizers is further proof there never has been.