By Eric Valentine
Relax. Mr. Potato Head isn’t gender neutral.
Chill out. Dr. Seuss books are not being burned.
If you read what actually happened—the progressives say—you’ll learn that the Hasbro corporation simply changed the brand name to Potato Head, and that Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head are still as is as always. And, those no-longer-to-be-published Dr. Seuss books were not the ones you ever read anyway. So, since they had some verbal and visual slurs, the estate of the author exercised its free speech in a free market. Now, don’t you have bigger political-cultural green eggs and fish to fry?
Yet, take a few scrolls through your news feeds and it seems like a plethora of folks are resigning, firing, and at the very least apologizing for things they—or someone in their circle—did or said in private, sometimes many years ago. And it spans the action-thought spectrum. Ask left-leaning politician Andrew Cuomo, progressive comedian Louis C.K., and Democratic comedian-turned-politician Al Franken if the words “cancel culture” ever rang a little true. College football coach Les Miles had to part ways with his University of Kansas team this week because he was inappropriate with a girl years ago when he coached at LSU. His denial of the allegation wouldn’t do.
Where, then, is the line in the sand? Surely, most folks agree that some behavior is so egregious in and of itself that if committed by someone holding an important post, that person’s got to go. Most folks also seem to agree that certain behavior that may be perfectly legal and even acceptable—let’s say, high stakes gambling—should tender the resignation of, let’s say, the CEO for a debt consolidation company.
But do we really need to remove, let’s say, an actress from a TV show because she compared her Hollywood lot in life to that of Holocaust Jews? If “apologize and rectify” isn’t good enough in a situation like that, then maybe she actually had a (very poorly articulated) point. It’s not like she was a now-Congresswoman promoting the idea that the historic amount of wildfires in California were caused by laser beams from space funded by Jews on Earth.
Ah, that’s the rub, isn’t it? The actress works directly in the world of capitalism. She has a product (the show) that could stop making money if enough regular folks are turned off enough to turn her show off—an organic boycott. The Congresswoman doesn’t have a product, because she is the product. She won’t play well in certain circles, but find a demographic niche, and you can be elected in the U.S. House of Representatives. Caution: You might have your committee seats canceled. But your cushy office and instantaneous press coverage stays!
If conspiracy theories are your thing, do the following searches on your favorite (and incognito of course) web browser:
• Value of Hasbro shares after name change
• Chick-fil-A sales after boycott
When a society values the dollar over morality, its morality will be conformed by the dollar. That is not a way-too-righteous political statement, it is an economic truth. How do I know it’s not a political statement? Because I don’t think a full rebuke of capitalism would be the appropriate answer. Yes, as someone who leans to the left, my tolerance for little rebukes of capitalism (so it doesn’t go unhinged) is higher than those of you who lean to the right, perhaps. But in no alternate universe can I imagine humanity doing better morally if the means of production and the right to ownership only existed in the hands of the government. History has taught us that doesn’t stop businesses from being corrupt, it just makes the government corrupt.
Humans are a broken species looking for systems that might make us better. The culture war can’t be won in politics because politics is like a boxer’s speed bag, forever seeking equilibrium to the punches of art from the left and the punches of economics from the right. So here we are, with ratings, readerships, and dollars to cast our votes. And the show must go on.