{"id":15638,"date":"2021-03-10T00:05:51","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T00:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=15638"},"modified":"2021-03-11T00:00:34","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T00:00:34","slug":"cancel-culture-fake-news-or-opposing-views","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/10\/cancel-culture-fake-news-or-opposing-views\/","title":{"rendered":"Cancel Culture: Fake News Or Opposing Views?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eric Valentine<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Don\u2019t worry Idaho, potatoes are not looking for gender identity. But some are being paraded as symbols of \u201ccancel culture.\u201d Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Relax. Mr. Potato Head isn\u2019t gender neutral.<\/p>\n

Chill out. Dr. Seuss books are not being burned.<\/p>\n

If you read what actually happened\u2014the progressives say\u2014you\u2019ll 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\u2019t you have bigger political-cultural green eggs and fish to fry?<\/p>\n

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\u2014or someone in their circle\u2014did or said in private,\u00a0 <\/span>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 \u201ccancel culture\u201d 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\u2019t do.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s got to go. Most folks also seem to agree that certain behavior that may be perfectly legal and even acceptable\u2014let\u2019s say, high stakes gambling\u2014should tender the resignation of, let\u2019s say, the CEO for a debt consolidation company.<\/p>\n

But do we really need to remove, let\u2019s say, an actress from a TV show because she compared her Hollywood lot in life to that of Holocaust Jews? If \u201capologize and rectify\u201d isn\u2019t good enough in a situation like that, then maybe she actually had a (very poorly articulated) point. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Ah, that\u2019s the rub, isn\u2019t 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\u2014an organic boycott. The Congresswoman doesn\u2019t have a product, because she is the product. She won\u2019t 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!<\/p>\n

If conspiracy theories are your thing, do the following searches on your favorite (and incognito of course) web browser:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Value of Hasbro shares after name change<\/p>\n

\u2022 Chick-fil-A sales after boycott<\/p>\n

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\u2019s not a political statement? Because I don\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019t stop businesses from being corrupt, it just makes the government corrupt.<\/p>\n

Humans are a broken species looking for systems that might make us better. The culture war can\u2019t be won in politics because politics is like a boxer\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eric Valentine Relax. Mr. Potato Head isn\u2019t gender neutral. Chill out. Dr. Seuss books are not being burned. If you read what actually happened\u2014the progressives say\u2014you\u2019ll 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15638"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15712,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15638\/revisions\/15712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}