Cancel culture
September 23, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Just when you thought liberal-generated faux controversies couldn’t get any dumber, they top themselves. Now it is pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell in the crosshairs. Why? Because he had the temerity to put pillows on sale for $14.88. Seriously: Controversial pillow maker Mike Lindell has gone viral for a promotion many believe is a nod to neo-Nazi slogans — an accusation he denied to The Post on Monday, calling it a
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September 20, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Rich Lowry, Editor of National Review, was on Megyn Kelly’s podcast a couple of days ago. He started to say something about Haitian migrants, and stumbled over the word “migrant,” saying “mig” like you do with immigrant, then corrected himself. Leftists, starting with Media Matters, made the absurd claim that Lowry had said the “N-word,” which he obviously did not. The demand for racism vastly exceeds the supply, which is
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September 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
There has been some salutary progress in recent months shutting down the divisive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” rackets on college campuses in many red states, but after the job of ridding us of the scourge of DEI attention needs to be turned to admissions offices. Thesis: Most admissions offices should be purged wholesale. Not only are most of them likely still violating civil rights law in the aftermath of the
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November 16, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Ferdinand Magellan was one of the world’s greatest explorers. He led the first expedition to sail around the world, although he didn’t finish the voyage, having been murdered by natives in what is now the Philippines. Magellan’s greatness as an explorer and navigator has been recognized in many ways. For example, he discovered the Strait of Magellan at the bottom of South America. And his expedition observed and recorded the
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September 19, 2023 — John Hinderaker
I had never heard of Russell Brand until recently. I take it that he is a British comedian and actor who has generally, for quite a few years, had a terrible reputation. Within the last week or two, several women have “come forward” and alleged that Brand raped them, or otherwise assaulted them, between 2006 and 2013. I subscribe to the London Times and the Telegraph, and they have followed
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July 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The story that has consumed the United Kingdom over the last week or two is the cancellation of Nigel Farage by Coutts, an exclusive private bank owned by National Westminster Bank, commonly known as NatWest. Farage, as you may remember, was a driving force behind Brexit, and Britain’s establishment has never forgiven him. Coutts precipitously fired Farage as a client and canceled his accounts. Later, Coutts lied about the incident,
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June 15, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I had heard vaguely last year a lot of buzz about Tar, the film featuring Cate Blanchett starring as a conductor who gets canceled for some form of impropriety or political incorrectness, but I didn’t see it. I gather a lot of people think Blanchett and the film were passed over at the Academy Awards because it talked back to cancel culture, though I hear more and more rumors out
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April 18, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Since the cancel culture censors have come for Dr. Seuss, Agatha Christie, Roald Dahl, and P.G. Woodhouse (among others), how come they’ve overlooked Evelyn Waugh, for passages like this one—my favorite—in Scoop: Various courageous Europeans in the seventies of the last century came to Ishmaelia, or near it, furnished with suitable equipment of cuckoo clocks, phonographs, opera hats, draft treaties and flags of the nations which they had been obliged
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February 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, has been canceled: More newspapers say they are dropping the “Dilbert” comic strip after creator Scott Adams this week advised white people to “get the f–k away” from Black people. Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the US, has announced it will no longer run the workplace comic “effective immediately” over remarks Adams, 65, made on his online show “Real Coffee with
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December 8, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Douglas Murray has a new venture entitled “Uncancelled History” that some readers may be interested in following. Its opening act is a ten-episode series of interviews with leading contrarian thinkers who take on the woke ideology of historical distortions that everyone knows today. I hope this is the first of several “seasons” of this great concept. The third episode in the series features Power Line favorite Jean Yarbrough of Bowdoin
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July 23, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The skeptical philosopher David Hume is one of the giants not just of the Enlightenment, but of the whole history of philosophy. But that was not enough to save him from being canceled in his native Scotland. At the instance of “woke” students, who wallow in incorrigible ignorance, David Hume Tower at the University of Edinburgh was re-named “40 George Square.” Hume’s offense was that, while he opposed slavery, there
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July 20, 2022 — John Hinderaker
First Avenue is a Minneapolis night club that became famous in the 1980s, largely through the movie Purple Rain. But the days when First Avenue hosted cutting-edge performers like Prince are apparently gone. Comedian Dave Chappelle was scheduled to perform at First Avenue tonight, but evidently he is too hot to handle. Is this because he makes “trans” jokes? Or because he mocks Jussie Smollett? I am not sure. In
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May 22, 2022 — Steven Hayward
As we know, the climatistas have enjoyed great success in getting Wall Street (and big business generally) to drink the climate Kool Aid, and to declare climate to be an investment risk that must be quantified somehow. Stuart Kirk, head of “responsible investing” for HSBC, gave a presentation at a Financial Times “Live Moral Money Summit Europe” a few days ago in which he shredded the climatista claim about financial
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February 4, 2022 — Paul Mirengoff
Josh Hammer has a column for Jewish World Review called “The limits of appeals to cancel culture.” Hammer seems bothered that David French lamented Goldberg’s suspension on cancel culture grounds. Having also objected to the suspension, I want to address Hammer’s column. Hammer argues that “there are certain things that should be canceled.” This is true, of course. Some speech is not protected by the First Amendment — Hammer cites
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November 3, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Periodically you see a poll that suggests support for free speech in the U.S. is weak, and that the First Amendment wouldn’t be adopted by contemporary Americans. But this Rasmussen survey finds something quite different: A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports and The National Pulse finds that 72% of American Adults believe cancel culture – a form of censorship that harms the careers and reputations of
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November 1, 2021 — John Hinderaker
William Hogarth, the 18th-Century British painter and printmaker, was a critic of the milieu in which he lived. In particular, his paintings and etchings satirized the privileged classes of his time. So you might expect him to be popular with contemporary liberals. But only if you didn’t understand contemporary liberals. Hogarth is now being canceled: [A] new exhibition at Tate Britain has suggested that [Hogarth’s] pictures are no laughing matter,
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October 3, 2021 — Scott Johnson
My friend Bruce Sanborn was chairman of the Claremont Institute for something like 20 years, if not more. That is a wild guess — Bruce is traveling in Croatia or I would have the exact number for you. Bruce recruited Tom Klingenstein to the board and stepped down upon the accession of Tom to the chairmanship a few years back. Over that approximately 20-year period, Bruce and I attended the
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