Smerconish asks ‘has cancel culture gone too far?’

After a letter signed by a large group of intellectuals on open debate in society was criticized on social media, CNN's Michael Smerconish discusses whether or not the idea of "cancel culture" has gone too far

64 comments

    1. @Thomas Armsworthy Jr wow you covered quite a bit of racist ground in one short comment didnt you, adolf the inbred jr?

    2. @KLQL Kirin as a history major i used to think the red terror was a bad follow up to the french revolution- the opressed becoming the tyrants. But after 3 years of trump and the incessant noise of trumpanzee nation, i kind of wonder how good the silence would feel after a “blue” terror. I know its not nice but so many of the world’s problems would be solved if we just subtracted that group of “people”.

    3. @dikobrazpaul Yes, Trump must be ousted from office. However, let classical liberal Democrats run the country in the immediate aftermath, not the anarchists and socialists with their own totalitarian tendencies. Ultimately, Biden must not cater to the far left of his party because the mirror response is what destroyed the GOP.

    4. Sure it can, by not allowing it to have an effect on you. Cancel culture is only destroying you leftists when you try to do it to each other, because the rest of us, the normal ones, simply don’t care. You won’t buy from me, good luck, there’s half of country that will. Only businesses that were openly leftist to begin with and rely heavily on leftist customers suffer when they get targeted.

    5. @Garry G there’s a growing list of people who feel very different mate. If you want to lump in liberals; people like JK Rowling, Kimmel, Chapelle, Hart etc with CEO’s praising Trump I think the various left wing bubbles and special interest groups are going to start finding less and less support more and more criticism as time goes on.

    1. I don’t think “the real world is too much for them” quite hits the nail. It is tempting to cancel anything you dislike. It is indoctrinated by modern technology. Think about Netflix. Nowadays you can choose what to watch and when. Great! sames goes for YT etc. Modern life pushes us to be more effective. Save time, save energy, etc. thinking about the possibily someone else could have an other opinion and both are right is pretty exhausting. So why not be effective and ignore it?

  1. It is perfectly reasonable for people to vote with their wallets and boycott companies that do not share their beliefs. We should all do it more often.

    1. @Thomas Armsworthy Jr And you are replying to, “It’s perfectly reasonable for people to vote with their wallets…” It goes both ways. Buy Goya if you support them, and others will boycott.

      I see a few white folks buying Goya this week, throwing it in the back of the cupboard, and forgetting.

      I see lots of hispanic families never going back to Goya and they will suffer for it, but oh well, there are lots of other hispanic companies who will appreciate the business and support hispanic people.

    2. Donna..name another Hispanic name brand food product…
      I am going to boycott PepsiCo. Products for retiring aunt jemima

    3. @silverpairaducks he isnt but he dis speak in favor of trump who IS a racist xenophobe. (Do not ask me to explain it to you. Im sick of trumpanzee morons and their “how is trump racist” nonsense.)

  2. Great food for thought. I believe we are at a point where the only thing we ask ourselves to do is think before we speak.

    1. The problem with that is we aren’t having the thought “I wonder if saying this is the right thing to say?”

      The thought we’re having as a result of cancel culture is “I KNOW I believe what I want to say, but there will always be someone out there that will take offense with what I say and that one person will have the power to ruin my life if they get loud and angry enough. So do I say what I believe to be right, or silence myself to conform to someone else’s radical view of the world?”

    2. We already do that, we are at a point in which the loud minority are now very delicate and intolerant that they prefer the authoritarian rule of mob to destroy someone’s life. They might be thinking before speaking but definitely not before acting…

    3. Social cohesion functions a lot better when you think “is this just plain offensive?” About anything questionable instead of “is there anyone in the entire world that could conceivably find this slightly offensive?”.

    1. @Door Spook Spook, thanks for adding the “man”. It lets me know you must just be an old hippie complaining about he free ride you got was not good enough. Hippies constantly complain but never put forward a better idea.

    2. @Lucky Luciano Why? Hypocrisy is the Left’s middle name… heck, it’s their first and last names too!

    3. @Ms W I will now be buying Goya products in bulk! Where do you get the idea that 67% of the country sees a “lack of leadership?” I see a very very left-leaning monopoly try to bully the nation with their lies and cancel culture. Can’t you see how the press is? Or are you one of the 33% of the nation that *hates* the Right?

    4. @Jens Schumacher You don’t get it. You are drinking the poison of the Left. The “cancel culture” does not want to hear opposing viewpoints… that’s the point. Unlike you, the very far left is hell-bent on crafting the conversation, especially the last 3 or 4 months. They WON’T hear oppositional views. They scream over, they turn away, they deny, they cry “lies” etc… just because they want their way, and by golly, they’ll shut up anyone who gets in their way. Tell me how you would feel if there were 3,000 media outlets that called your beliefs “hateful” or just because you believe in conservative principles, you were shamed? Against only 1 or 2 major media outlets that spoke the way you feel? You would feel threatened, wouldn’t you? Well, that’s how I feel.

  3. We The People had to rise up and put the democrats down once so slaves could live a free life,We are prepared to do it again so all Americans can live a free life !!! That fathers day weekend in Chicago should wake everybody up !!! TRUMP 2020 !!!

  4. Cancel culture has gone too far on comics, videogames, movies pretty much all entertainment… enough!!

    1. Mr. Greatness you are too tired and try-hard. You won’t emotionalise this issue. How is that pandemic going for you? The endemic corruption? Racial, social and economic inequalities have been talked through and fixed have they!

    2. Canceling cancel culture is not enough, but a first step. We have to go further, we have to shame and cancel the companies to who fall for and promote cancel culture. Say that they are supporting ideas of Stalin and other authoritarian regimes where diversity of thought, opinion and research is not allowed. Societies where millions upon millions have been unjustly murdered and imprisoned for their views. Attacking cancel culture itself is not enough. We have to make companies scared of supporting them. We have protest against people who use shaming tactics and labelling to shut people down. We must allow the offensive, because mostly it is an opinion what that is!

    3. Cancel culture exists because people can’t talk or have the ability to debate anymore. Plus there is a 15mins of fame mindset too

  5. Imagine saying you want to remain anonymous for fear of losing your job on a letter criticizing people for being afraid of losing their job.

  6. If it wears a cult-member’s uniform, shrieks like a cult and stinks like one, then it probably is a cult …

  7. “Are people doing it wrong when they use personal capitalism and moral standards to finally begin controlling their representatives instead of deferring to their corporate betters?”

    1. This is a very complex question. There has to exist a duality. Both a system of accountability and a system that protects not only speech but speech proliferation. There has to be a system both to challenge the powerful and the people, because neither are always in the right. If you see so called cancel culture as being democratic, how do you account for the masses of people who don’t like it? If we could achieve a utopia where all famous people know better than to say the wrong thing, I’d be all for that. I don’t see that as realistic. So we need to find a medium place where famous people can express all their views, we can discuss them, but not everyone is silenced (of course when something constitutes actual hate speech it’s a different story). When we talk about this we have to avoid black and white assessments. Cancel culture can be both a force for good and be an imperfect idea. The retaliation from those who perceive their ideas to be silenced has the potential to be strong and violent in my opinion. If we don’t extend an olive branch America is going to become divided past the point of conversation. When you lose the ability to have conversation, violence becomes the primary language. You cannot let the right wing scare you, yes this is true, but you can’t push them into a corner

  8. If you have to demand anonymity while defending “cancel culture” to protect yourself from “cancel culture”, you’re kind of making the point.

    1. @Curunir they are already getting cancelled. Look at their crappy ratings compared to other networks.

    2. @Zod 23 the blacks of today in South Africa took that land approximately when white people arrived. No one is really native to that land. They are colonizers as much as the whites.

    3. @Viganch0 oh no how dare you portray black people are something other than innocent and pure?

  9. “Cancel culture” has gone too far in that in it’s most extreme it bans instead of listening (and both sides are guilty of that. Freedom of speech has limits, like all freedom. Freedom of speech and expression should not mean freedom to abuse individuals, groups or nations, or spread hate or violence. It is a cornerstone of democracy and it’s essential for free, democratic societies. But just like democracy it has to be learned. We have to learn how to adequately express our opinions and how to debate them. However, not all opinions are equally valid but the right to have one and to express it, within limitations, is equal.

  10. Of course it has. You know it, we know it, everybody knows it. I won’t participate. Does CNN care? Nope.

  11. Is it ironic that this segment is, tangentially, about free speech; yet the sound has been turned way down?

    1. And the American Left will continue to cannibalize itself as the past deeds of its sanctimonious puritans are dredged and laid bare for the public to see. And it absolutely should be done because these intolerant freaks have endorsed it against others. A taste of their own medicine is progress at this point.

    2. It’s funny how “the right” have to come to CNN to complain about cancel culture because Fox always shuts down the comment section. 🍿

  12. I’ve read the three paragraph letter aptly titled: “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” multiple times. The first two paragraphs are essentially concessions towards our current cultural climate and the last paragraph is a meager ask to preserve civil disagreement before backpedaling at the behest of an angry mob. The opinion that these three paragraphs are in any way controversial is absurd. Much of the hullabaloo is in reaction to the personal characteristics of the signatories and not the content itself because the ask is very reasonable.

    1. All I hear from the mob is _”hurrr durr this former homeless lady, whose books i’ve FINALLY outgrown my unhealthy obsession with, must be punished because now shes a millionaire with millionaire opinions and that makes me aaaaannngryyyy!”_

  13. Isn’t this the guy who spent 10 minutes talking about his own activities, trying to downplay COVID-19, and then had to backpedal within a week?

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