Be careful with the cancel culture: honor free speech

Script

You’ve probably heard about cancel culture…..

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From NASCAR’s banning of the Rebel Flag to the tearing down of a statue of George Washington, things in the United States are getting “canceled.” Perhaps somewhere there has to be a point where these things have gone too far. In the current situation where America is focused on the killing of George Floyd, it is the political conservatives who are crying “foul” the most often when it comes to this “cancel culture.”

When Ivanka Trump’s commencement speech was canceled a few days following apparent abuse of protesters outside of the White House, Ivanka Tweeted;

“Our nation’s campuses should be bastions of free speech. Cancel culture and viewpoint discrimination are antithetical to academia.”

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has also chimed in on “cancel culture”

Fox…Ted Cruz tweet.

But wait a minute, Cruz is against kneeling during the National Anthem. I don’t want to get into a legal debate here, but several Supreme Court cases seem to clearly indicate that actions such as kneeling during the national anthem are in fact speech that is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)

Texas v. Johnson (1989)

United States v. Eichman (1990)

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After all, in the 1990s conservatives were once upset about Disney and the Teletubbies being too gay friendly. In 2012, a boycott was raged against JC Penny for naming gay comedian Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson

Insert your cliché here, not having your cake and eating it too, or can’t have it both ways, your choice. Choice, a freedom often celebrated in America. Speech…also a freedom often renowned in America.

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In fact, Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters For America, who arguably, himself, has had issues of insensitivity in the past, appears to indicate why all of these boycotts and protests are taking place, stating “Politics is so broken; people feel impotent and powerless – you call your congressman and nothing happens. There’s something really satisfying and empowering about leveraging your power as a consumer, especially when a multi-billion dollar company replies – it recognizes that you exist.”

[The View_2 clip]

Getting back to Ivanka, and people refusing to listen to what she had to say in a commencement speech.

Perhaps we should consider what Ivanka has to say, because she did Tweet something important. Following her cancelation, she wrote on Twitter, “Listening to one another is important now more than ever”