I remember stuff like this being given attention by ratings-chasing media back then, but then equal attention was also given to people laughing at them.
The author of The Bell Curve was famously cancelled, but there were a few "debates" with opponents of the book on daytime TV and it seemed pretty obvious that the people attacking him were stupid and ridiculous. You could tell the TV hosts enjoyed the spectacle. It wasn't an issue of "moral superiority". It was media nonsense that normal people didn't take seriously. We probably should have paid more attention to academia instead of laughing at them.
So the PC craze happened, but it was clear to most people outside of California that you still had a right to offend, and being offended wasn't a virtue. Also the thing that really pisses me off about today's culture, which didn't happen much back then, is that big companies are cancelling individuals for no reason - just because some group complained. That's a dangerous precedent. You can lose your bank accounts and travel privileges and become persona-non-grata just for being disliked by someone somewhere.
Trent Lott was another, Greaseman was another. They kept ratcheting down which behavior counts as "racism" until its basically Cardinal Richelieu saying how he can find a reason to hang a man in any 6 lines of text that he wrote.
Once you accept the premise that people can be fired for subjective reasons unrelated to job performance then every interaction degenerates into who has the power to direct the mob.
Here is an InfoGalatic link because Wikipedia is ran by Woke garbage.
https://infogalactic.com/info/Water_buffalo_incident
Ah yes, that well-known insult for Africans, 'water buffalo'.
Plus there was no social media. There have always been people whining. Now for some reason being offended or outraged is a sign of moral superiority
I remember stuff like this being given attention by ratings-chasing media back then, but then equal attention was also given to people laughing at them.
The author of The Bell Curve was famously cancelled, but there were a few "debates" with opponents of the book on daytime TV and it seemed pretty obvious that the people attacking him were stupid and ridiculous. You could tell the TV hosts enjoyed the spectacle. It wasn't an issue of "moral superiority". It was media nonsense that normal people didn't take seriously. We probably should have paid more attention to academia instead of laughing at them.
So the PC craze happened, but it was clear to most people outside of California that you still had a right to offend, and being offended wasn't a virtue. Also the thing that really pisses me off about today's culture, which didn't happen much back then, is that big companies are cancelling individuals for no reason - just because some group complained. That's a dangerous precedent. You can lose your bank accounts and travel privileges and become persona-non-grata just for being disliked by someone somewhere.
It worked because they weren't used to having people fight back. Intersectionality was probably born on the back of incidents like this
This is the first incident I recall: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-01-17-sp-36803-story.html
Trent Lott was another, Greaseman was another. They kept ratcheting down which behavior counts as "racism" until its basically Cardinal Richelieu saying how he can find a reason to hang a man in any 6 lines of text that he wrote.
Once you accept the premise that people can be fired for subjective reasons unrelated to job performance then every interaction degenerates into who has the power to direct the mob.
Im not anti-cancel culture, im pro-canceling the right things.
We used to cancel commies, philanderers, drunkards, drug users, gays, prostitutes, and all kinds of degenerates. Now we have an inversion of that.