Mobs die from cannibalism. Cancel culture, like every other mob, eats its own. Because mobs only target the weak, and because mobs lack structure or leadership, there is nothing to keep the virus from attacking itself.
In the first week of June, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon™ and coward, couldn’t shout his virtue signaling from the top of his digital castle loud enough that he had voluntarily abdicated his role at Amazon™ and put Black Lives Matter™ in charge, placing BLM™ political messaging on the Amazon Video splash page and changing the algorithm to feature BLM™ “approved” films. When customers voiced their completely reasonable opinions, Bezos labeled their opinions as “hate.” Despite his best efforts, however, in the first week of July, the mob came for him, setting up an apparently functioning guillotine outside Bezos’ Washington, D.C. home. Sorry Jeff…you showed weakness to the Mob. To quote a protester at the scene, “When…we have no voice, the knives come out.”
Jimmy Kimmel saw the writing on the wall as soon as he saw the villagers lighting up the torches and sharpening the pitchforks and he Got The Fuck Out of Town. He may have even fled the country. His press release said that he was just suddenly taking some time off from his show to “spend time with the family.” The next day came the “blackface” photos from The Man Show, and the outrage, natch, but Jimmy pivoted and issued another statement saying that he wouldn’t be apologizing because, basically, it would make the wrong people (the people he’s used his show to hypocritically criticize for more than a decade now) happy. He didn’t actually say. “Now don’t call me at this number again,” but he has not been heard from since.
Then some shitty country group who has made an obscene amount of cash trading on the name Lady Antebellum™ figured it was only a matter of time before the Mob came for them, so taking a page out of Bezos’ Big Book of Bullshtty Virtue Signaling, apologetically announced that they had apparently been rabid racists their entire career but had suddenly seen the light and we changing their name to Lady A, thus ending racism. And their rather pathetic and meaningless gesture would have worked, dammit, if it hadn’t been for a rather inconvenient black lady named Anita White who’s been performing under the name Lady A™ professionally since 1987. So upon finding this out, rather than having a band meeting and deciding that since we obviously can’t use the name Lady A, why don’t we just call ourselves Lady Guilty White Liberal, they instead decided to SUE ANITA WHITE! Yeah, the rich white people are suing the black woman to give up using the name she’s used professionally for 33 years because it’s interfering with their virtue signalling. Thankfully, Anita White is not the sort of lady to Put Up With This Shit, and is fighting this nonsense: “They claim to be allies and that they wanted to change their name out of the racist connotation, and then they sue a black woman for the new name. They wanted me to make them look good in the eyes of the public.” Sorry, Anita, but that is all this is about: appearances. The people gesturing the hardest are the ones who care the least about actually fixing any racial issues. If Lady Antebellum’s™ empty gesture was accompanied by some real world action that backed up their new “woke” words, like, say, donating ALL of the millions of dollars they earned as racist country singers to Black Lives Matter™, maybe their gesture could be taken seriously. But they won’t. Fuck no. The same way not one of the college educated white people who has told me about white privilege has ever given up their place in their college class or the tuition they paid to an underprivileged person. Not one. The same way not one white person who I’ve ever heard bemoan the plight of the American Indian has even contemplated gifting their house and property back to the tribe that most recently owned it and leaving the country (because, of course, moving in anywhere else in America would just be stealing land from another tribe). Not one. Ever.
Anyway, the following week featured a seemingly endless stream of footage of groups of white women screaming at black police officers about lack of college education and nose size. Seriously. Because Black Lives Matter™.
Oh, and then there was this weird rash of actors quitting roles because they (the actor) were not actually the character they were playing (?). So some voice-over actors apologetically announced they would no longer voice characters that were races other than what the actor was. Halle Berry very publicly apologized for taking a transgender role because apparently she is not transgender. So, what…is acting just over now? I thought pretending to be something other than what you were was more or less the definition of acting.
Anyway, right around then, The Mob (or at least 100+ of its more “intellectual” members (i.e., folks whom, with very good reason, knew they would very soon themselves be on the cancellation chopping block) noticing that it was consuming itself at an alarming rate, got together and penned a rather pitiful (and dreadfully hypocritical) letter in Harper’s in an attempt to disperse The Mob. To no avail.
The following week saw the chief along with some of the other top brass of the NYPD who had humiliated themselves and their departments weeks before by kneeling before protesters beaten by the same protesters with a bat in the middle of the day on live TV.
Mayors who have voiced support (or at least tolerance) for the violent protests in their cities have been turned on as well. Libby Schaff, the mayor of Oakland, was terrorized when a group of protesters showed up to her house at 02:00, shot projectiles at her house, set off fireworks, and vandalized her house. Ted Wheeler, the idiot mayor of Portland tried to have a “listening session.” Now that was funny. “Fuck Ted Wheeler! He doesn’t get to speak, he’s a fucking fascist. Fuck Ted Wheeler. Fuck Ted Wheeler in his fucking ass!” The “listening session” quickly devolved into a riot. People starting throwing bottles at the mayor. Wheeler’s security team (always be wary of people who talk about defunding or scaling back the police who have their own private security detail) ended up having to pull him into a nearby building and shut the door against fighting protesters (but not before he was teargassed with the rest of the rioters). “Fuck you…your house is next,” they yelled. “See you tomorrow night, huh?” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who joined the demonstrations in his city early on was booed out of the last protest he tried to attend.
This week, TV ratings for the previous quarter came out. Since the chickenshit idiots at A&E stupidly, pointlessly, unilaterally, and capriciously canceled Live PD, their ratings have tanked, dropping a full 50%. To which I say good. I have seen so much abject cowardice the last several weeks, it’s become impossible to keep track of which incident is the most egregious or embarrassing, but A&E’s cancellation of Live PD and Paramount’s cancellation of COPS have to be down there amongst the worst. What these networks and companies like Bezos’ Amazon™ will come to learn eventually is that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In their cases, this reaction will come in the form of the relationships they try to rebuild and then sustain with the customers they so quickly sold out in a moment of panic. Where there once was loyalty and maybe even respect, now there is only resentment and ire.
N.P.: “If I Had A Heart” – Fever Ray
