“It feels very Soviet sometimes.”
-Conan O’Brien
#freespeechmtters10.07.2021
You know cancel culture is getting out of hand when two very well-known and well-liked Hollywood liberals agree that cancel culture is getting out of hand. Admittedly, I’ve known for a long time, but my concerns were not shared by those with left-leaning ideologies. Instead, half the country applauded as people got cancelled for comments they made when they were children.
During an interview with Hollywood actor Sean Penn on Conan O’Brien’s new podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” the two discussed absurdities surrounding the current cancel culture and how it is having a major impact on the production of authentic art. Penn played Harvey Milk, a homosexual politicians and gay rights activist, in the 2008 Hollywood film “Milk.”
Penn noted that he would never be selected to play that role in today’s day and age because he is not a homosexual, and the current mob finds it offensive for straight males to portray gay males on the big screen. Nobody ever mentions Neil Patrick Harris, a homosexual male. playing the character of Barney Stinson, a straight, misogynistic male, on the popular television show How I Met Your Mother. The mob behind cancel culture rarely concerns themselves with the entire human race and instead focuses on individuals they can group into victim categories.
Cancel culture is becoming very authoritarian. I can’t tell if these people are genuinely offended, or if they’re being offered contracts from the government to act offended in order to progress the national narrative. It’s an open secret that many protestors are nothing more than paid actors. Anyone who went on Craigslist during the summer of last year could have easily found casting calls for protest participation. Of course I can’t cite my work, because they removed the posts I am referencing.
I do not believe that there is a majority in this country that encourages cancel culture because I have looked at the polling data. Cancel culture’s success can be attributed to the chilling effect it places on speech. While it may be a vocal minority participating in the mob, they are loud and can end your livelihood if they catch wind of your imperfect existence. Cancel culture is also very organized. They target their victims, force them to go viral on liberal social media, and accuse them of every phobia and ism under the sun.
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