Tucker Carlson recently got canceled, at least to the extent that someone at his level can. A few weeks ago, one of his private text messages from January 7, 2021 “re-surfaced”—meaning that an opponent spent a great deal of time and lucre digging it up—in which the former television host described the multi-person jumping of a black-clad Antifa fighter by the Proud Boys or some similar group as “not how white men fight.” In our race-panicked era, this message was reportedly at least
"The sheer width of the Cancel Shroud is so all-encompassing that relatively innocuous acts are regularly deemed serious enough to upend someone’s life."
As an attorney, I'm a big free speech fan. Everything about this goes against the very creed of liberty. I recall once years ago, using the "N" word in the following fashion: my uncle often made racist comments or jokes against black people, and I found it crude and offensive, but he would just laugh me off. So one day in front of my grandmother (his mother-in-law, in front of whom he would never dream of speaking that way) I had an opportunity to say something to the effect of "Yeah Don, we sure wouldn't want the "N"s around, would we?" She pricked up her ears in shock; he turned beet red in shame. I was a white person using the word for the specific purpose of undermining white supremacy, but this cancel culture makes no such exception. Talk about chilling.... I also remember a white sheriff asking me two decades ago, when I was a criminal defense attorney: "What word can a black man call a white man and go to jail?" Which is to say, the distinction is patently racist.... A criminal punishment meted out (or not) solely based on skin color -- and also without regard to INTENT. Scary times. Great piece!
Reverse racism is just as bad as the original. If certain word are insensitive, they’re insensitive no matter the immutable characteristics of the mouth uttering them - but more importantly, WORDS ARE NOT VIOLENCE. Period.
Absolutely agreed with this sentiment. It’s always been around as far as my experience tells me (my folks were civil rights activists back when it was entirely necessary), and I saw pockets of it then in all races, really. Glad we’ve come so far, but now the DEI and other activists are regressing the progress to a serious degree. We might not have had a complete “melting pot”, but it sure has been a healthy “salad” until the severe activism and neo-woke cancel culture came into play. C’mon, ppl, we are all humans with flaws and strengths, let’s stop creating these unnecessary divisions that actually set us backwards, and figure out how to move forward productively and peacefully without denegrating ANY races.
True story about Prof Skip Gates: I met him once, when I was an undergrad, in front of my dorm, he was an older gentleman and having a hard time with something and I helped him out. He was very kind and thankful and politely chatted with me afterwards. Then, not in a mean way, but more like a serious question, as soon as he heard my name (last name similar to his), he asks something like, “I wonder if your great grandparents owned my great grandparents?”
Now I’m a first generation immigrant, the child of Jews who survived the Holocaust, so no, my ancestors didn’t run a plantation. But I’ve never forgotten that interaction. Imagine how sour/bitter/twisted a worldview you have to have to make every single interaction about racism. He met a young man on the street, they had a friendly exchange, and his mind goes immediately to race. It honestly makes me pity him!
Anyway, unlike Gates and the others you mention in your excellent post, I try to judge people by their souls, not their skins. But if crazy race obsession helps fatally destroy our corrupt institutions, hey, silver lining! So here’s the case for DEI from a person who doesn’t think race matters:
I don't know, in Gates defense, sometimes a person's past or legacy is so overwhelming vis-a-vis their identity ( former POW, child of sex abuse) that it informs every aspect and reaction of their current experience.
Gates is a historian, and realizes that slavery for him is only a few generations back.
Perhaps, he was making a more light-hearted comment, but not seriously asserting a potential master-slave relationship.
I think we need to be clear that it is an error to confuse survivors who actually experienced trauma with people who are borrowing trauma from generationally distant relatives to advance a resource acquisition strategy or ideology.
Back in the day, Jackie Mason (famous Jewish comedian, I mention because relevant to anecdote) had this funny bit about how all his friends who could afford a BMW bought one, but if you couldn’t afford it, you’d take a principled stand: “what, me buy a *German* car!!”
That was in the 80s, making fun of Jews who were still mad over things that happened in their lifetime, possibly to themselves. In my case, trust me, way worse stuff happened to my parents and their families in their lifetime, just a few decades ago, than ever happened to Gates. yet if I went around today suspicious about every potential German American adjacent person I met, they’d probably lock me up in the looney bin!
I get what you’re saying, I’m just saying that when people get in that holding-historical-grudges mindset, they should be discouraged from falling down the rabbit hole because it will drive you crazy. In almost every other case we do discourage it (can you imagine mainstream sympathetic coverage for elderly Americans still mad at Japanese people for Pearl Harbor?), but in the case of the Skippies and the other examples cited above, it is positively rewarded! It’s like society is deliberately fostering mental illness.
Me, I’ll stick to the Jackie Mason approach, far more mentally/spiritually healthy!
No, I was so taken aback by the question I didn’t go into detail, just denied that I had any Southern ancestors, and he was like “oh well, you never know” or something like that
And maybe his great-great grandparents sold his great-grandparents into slavery in the first place (given the role other tribal groups tended to play in the slave trade in the first place). After all, you never know...
Part of that's obviously tongue-in-cheek, but only partially. Slavery has been with the human race in many forms going back before recorded history, to include many Native American tribal groups.
And be careful about what you wish for when it comes to race-essentialism and corrupt institutions. It tends to be a very slippery slope, and the last group that tried to fix what they felt was a corrupt system using race-essentialism didn't do so well...
This article is "spot on" and deserves much wider circulation. Love to see this as an op-ed in the NYT.
Selectively quoting someone (i.e., Carlson) out of context used to be confined (in my childhood 70 years ago) to selecting passages from an otherwise damming play review for posting on the theatre marquee. Just another indicator of how low our media has sunk...
Very thoughtful piece—tough philosophical and practical issues to navigate thoroughly without some degree of rationality, and rationality, like curiosity, are in short supply when judging and canceling eliminates freedom of thought and speech.
Its surely a great irony that two generations ago, African Americans were attacked in broad daylight, endured actual racism, got through it all, fought wars for the US, bought houses, went to school, made friends with whites and others, and became middle class.
Then, as the vast majority of white people rejected racist attitudes, in the 80s and 90s my generation began complaining stridently about 'structural issues/supposed historical causation/white supremacy.' That generation nonetheless mostly elevated themselves, along with all the other groups of color and poor whites, who had their own histories/struggles.
Now, since the 2000s, a generation with more safety, more material comfort, more support and less racism to find anywhere, constantly yells 'racist'- if one merely uses the words white or black; they call you racist, even if you are an ACLU liberal- should you complain about a black person in the street on Nextdoor / Facebook, simply because you described the persons appearance. They claim there is no way up, ever: all of history is somehow just the (@5% of the Atlantic Slave Trade) African American slave trade; life in the US is forever stuck in a world of white supremacy; and all white people are 'this or that,' essentialized, sinners, stamped for ever by Lord Kendi in the mansion of race huckstership.
Its all inverted. That inversion is the epitome of privilege. There is certainly white privilege, but there are many other privileges, and they are being abused in the DEI/Social Justice/'Woke' realm, daily. I worry about the consequences.
WELL observed and well SAID! I concur, it is the strangest thing to witness when people of all colours were advancing their careers and lifestyles, suddenly we are fighting ghosts of racism past.
I might also add that a male code of honor around violence would actually be a good thing for everyone. It's of course not good at all that he couched it in racial terms but it's also undoubtedly true that a male code of honor around violence is mostly about culture, not law, and so it would not be surprising to learn that different cultural groups have different standards.
Sort of. Some of the rules of engagement that I (53 years old) grew up with included:
1. Never hit a girl. Under no circumstances. No exceptions.
2. Never hit a man when he's down. If the fight is not yet over, then the person down can get back up and the fight resumes.
3. One on one. If two people are in a fight, everyone else present can root for one side or the other, but cannot participate.
4. No "low-blows", you do not hit or kick someone in the balls.
5. Mercy rule. As soon as one of the participants in a fight no longer wishes to fight, the fight is over, and it is the responsibility of everyone there to break up the fight.
I wouldn't be surprised if nearly every man my age remembers and even continues to observe some version of the above.
They do, only the morally corrupt don't. Sadly for some of our younger folk, especially those in 'racialized' urban centres where young men don't have upstanding role models - they see the street gang style of fighting and think it is the model for disputes.
Or they think it's the only way they can prove their manhood, an idea that's perpetuated in much of what's considered urban music. People who don't follow that model are often mocked or victimized, reinforcing the idea that behaving in that manner is the only way they can remain "men" and "safe."
So briefly described and so well said to illuminate the truth behind so much audacious pretense seeping into the culture from the standard bearers of media. Thank you, Dr. Reilly.
How about not reverse-race-baiting with comments such as the one about Kendi and Hannah-Jones? What purpose does it serve, other than fomenting some sort of “mmmhhhmmm, see?” response.
The double standard is not a double standard, get it? I will never get as offended as you do.
Try not getting offended - it’s a privilege, no color implied. Then you’ll have the same privilege as I do. Hold your head up, exist on your merits, and you’ll have the same privilege as I do. Don’t have any merits? Then why are you even speaking? Go back to your tick tack app and crick crack pipe, just not living off the dole, and stay fenced into your neck of the woods where your shrapnel won’t hit my kin.
Problem is, this message, no matter what form it takes, will always fall on deaf ears, because (a) we’re in an echo chamber here, talking amongst ourselves; (b) the ears we need to reach aren’t hearing it; (c) if they hear it, it’s drowned out by other distractions; (d) they don’t understand the value proposition.
Let me say it shorter: people need therapy. Mostly to acquire some basic coping skills. Then maybe they’ll be able to cope with life in a way that doesn’t backslide them into the bad habits leading to an existence that perpetuates anti-intellectual snake oil salesmen such as Kendi.
For America to foster a true marketplace of ideas, we really need to firmly assert the fundamental power of the 1st Amendment and turn down the volume on hypersensitivity.
Disagreement is necessary and inevitable, but we need to let people talk and write freely.
The extremes define the limits, but we need to keep in mind that sometimes the extremes become mainstream eventually ( gay marriage, legalization of marijuana.)
So glad someone said it. Yes. We need 1 standard for all and kick the ridiculous double standard of the pervasive "n" word and uni-directional ability to level racial slurs towards whites. When I say that this culture war has been divisive, I mean it truly. I have been cautious around blacks and not free in engaging with people regardless of their colour once these double standards became the status quo. I hired a black gal once after all this racial hype started up and that person became the biggest PITA of my career. Any conversations or meetings required extra work to prepare so I could assign work without being accused of micro-aggressions or giving her work which in her view impacted her status negatively, according to our HR department. I had to drag out records to show that my assignment of work had not changed from previous incumbents. It was a massive turn off for hiring. So not sure how this whole thing helps anyone.
In the interest of providing a balanced comment, I’ve also worked with superb people who had merit , work ethic and no entitlement issues. I’m dismayed society has gone in this direction, where people look for problems and when nonsufficient can be found, they invent them
You have to consider the context. Carlson is hardly some innocent victim of a double standard. Carlson willfully lies and poisons the culture. He pushes group identity from the right and is at least sympathetic to the illiberalism of the right.
Professor Reilly, it's thinking like this and the courage to say it that give me hope for our future.
"The sheer width of the Cancel Shroud is so all-encompassing that relatively innocuous acts are regularly deemed serious enough to upend someone’s life."
As an attorney, I'm a big free speech fan. Everything about this goes against the very creed of liberty. I recall once years ago, using the "N" word in the following fashion: my uncle often made racist comments or jokes against black people, and I found it crude and offensive, but he would just laugh me off. So one day in front of my grandmother (his mother-in-law, in front of whom he would never dream of speaking that way) I had an opportunity to say something to the effect of "Yeah Don, we sure wouldn't want the "N"s around, would we?" She pricked up her ears in shock; he turned beet red in shame. I was a white person using the word for the specific purpose of undermining white supremacy, but this cancel culture makes no such exception. Talk about chilling.... I also remember a white sheriff asking me two decades ago, when I was a criminal defense attorney: "What word can a black man call a white man and go to jail?" Which is to say, the distinction is patently racist.... A criminal punishment meted out (or not) solely based on skin color -- and also without regard to INTENT. Scary times. Great piece!
Reverse racism is just as bad as the original. If certain word are insensitive, they’re insensitive no matter the immutable characteristics of the mouth uttering them - but more importantly, WORDS ARE NOT VIOLENCE. Period.
I appreciate your response but ‘reverse racism’ is actually just straight out racism.
Absolutely agreed with this sentiment. It’s always been around as far as my experience tells me (my folks were civil rights activists back when it was entirely necessary), and I saw pockets of it then in all races, really. Glad we’ve come so far, but now the DEI and other activists are regressing the progress to a serious degree. We might not have had a complete “melting pot”, but it sure has been a healthy “salad” until the severe activism and neo-woke cancel culture came into play. C’mon, ppl, we are all humans with flaws and strengths, let’s stop creating these unnecessary divisions that actually set us backwards, and figure out how to move forward productively and peacefully without denegrating ANY races.
True story about Prof Skip Gates: I met him once, when I was an undergrad, in front of my dorm, he was an older gentleman and having a hard time with something and I helped him out. He was very kind and thankful and politely chatted with me afterwards. Then, not in a mean way, but more like a serious question, as soon as he heard my name (last name similar to his), he asks something like, “I wonder if your great grandparents owned my great grandparents?”
Now I’m a first generation immigrant, the child of Jews who survived the Holocaust, so no, my ancestors didn’t run a plantation. But I’ve never forgotten that interaction. Imagine how sour/bitter/twisted a worldview you have to have to make every single interaction about racism. He met a young man on the street, they had a friendly exchange, and his mind goes immediately to race. It honestly makes me pity him!
Anyway, unlike Gates and the others you mention in your excellent post, I try to judge people by their souls, not their skins. But if crazy race obsession helps fatally destroy our corrupt institutions, hey, silver lining! So here’s the case for DEI from a person who doesn’t think race matters:
https://gaty.substack.com/p/the-case-for-crt-dei-and-whatever
I don't know, in Gates defense, sometimes a person's past or legacy is so overwhelming vis-a-vis their identity ( former POW, child of sex abuse) that it informs every aspect and reaction of their current experience.
Gates is a historian, and realizes that slavery for him is only a few generations back.
Perhaps, he was making a more light-hearted comment, but not seriously asserting a potential master-slave relationship.
I think we need to be clear that it is an error to confuse survivors who actually experienced trauma with people who are borrowing trauma from generationally distant relatives to advance a resource acquisition strategy or ideology.
Back in the day, Jackie Mason (famous Jewish comedian, I mention because relevant to anecdote) had this funny bit about how all his friends who could afford a BMW bought one, but if you couldn’t afford it, you’d take a principled stand: “what, me buy a *German* car!!”
That was in the 80s, making fun of Jews who were still mad over things that happened in their lifetime, possibly to themselves. In my case, trust me, way worse stuff happened to my parents and their families in their lifetime, just a few decades ago, than ever happened to Gates. yet if I went around today suspicious about every potential German American adjacent person I met, they’d probably lock me up in the looney bin!
I get what you’re saying, I’m just saying that when people get in that holding-historical-grudges mindset, they should be discouraged from falling down the rabbit hole because it will drive you crazy. In almost every other case we do discourage it (can you imagine mainstream sympathetic coverage for elderly Americans still mad at Japanese people for Pearl Harbor?), but in the case of the Skippies and the other examples cited above, it is positively rewarded! It’s like society is deliberately fostering mental illness.
Me, I’ll stick to the Jackie Mason approach, far more mentally/spiritually healthy!
Curious: Did you tell him the real background of your name? And if so, how did he react?
No, I was so taken aback by the question I didn’t go into detail, just denied that I had any Southern ancestors, and he was like “oh well, you never know” or something like that
And maybe his great-great grandparents sold his great-grandparents into slavery in the first place (given the role other tribal groups tended to play in the slave trade in the first place). After all, you never know...
Part of that's obviously tongue-in-cheek, but only partially. Slavery has been with the human race in many forms going back before recorded history, to include many Native American tribal groups.
And be careful about what you wish for when it comes to race-essentialism and corrupt institutions. It tends to be a very slippery slope, and the last group that tried to fix what they felt was a corrupt system using race-essentialism didn't do so well...
Sounds like Prof Gates had a ‘brain fart’. Clearly, blacks are racists too.
This article is "spot on" and deserves much wider circulation. Love to see this as an op-ed in the NYT.
Selectively quoting someone (i.e., Carlson) out of context used to be confined (in my childhood 70 years ago) to selecting passages from an otherwise damming play review for posting on the theatre marquee. Just another indicator of how low our media has sunk...
Very thoughtful piece—tough philosophical and practical issues to navigate thoroughly without some degree of rationality, and rationality, like curiosity, are in short supply when judging and canceling eliminates freedom of thought and speech.
As always, so right.
Its surely a great irony that two generations ago, African Americans were attacked in broad daylight, endured actual racism, got through it all, fought wars for the US, bought houses, went to school, made friends with whites and others, and became middle class.
Then, as the vast majority of white people rejected racist attitudes, in the 80s and 90s my generation began complaining stridently about 'structural issues/supposed historical causation/white supremacy.' That generation nonetheless mostly elevated themselves, along with all the other groups of color and poor whites, who had their own histories/struggles.
Now, since the 2000s, a generation with more safety, more material comfort, more support and less racism to find anywhere, constantly yells 'racist'- if one merely uses the words white or black; they call you racist, even if you are an ACLU liberal- should you complain about a black person in the street on Nextdoor / Facebook, simply because you described the persons appearance. They claim there is no way up, ever: all of history is somehow just the (@5% of the Atlantic Slave Trade) African American slave trade; life in the US is forever stuck in a world of white supremacy; and all white people are 'this or that,' essentialized, sinners, stamped for ever by Lord Kendi in the mansion of race huckstership.
Its all inverted. That inversion is the epitome of privilege. There is certainly white privilege, but there are many other privileges, and they are being abused in the DEI/Social Justice/'Woke' realm, daily. I worry about the consequences.
WELL observed and well SAID! I concur, it is the strangest thing to witness when people of all colours were advancing their careers and lifestyles, suddenly we are fighting ghosts of racism past.
Thank you.
I might also add that a male code of honor around violence would actually be a good thing for everyone. It's of course not good at all that he couched it in racial terms but it's also undoubtedly true that a male code of honor around violence is mostly about culture, not law, and so it would not be surprising to learn that different cultural groups have different standards.
Chivalry?
Sort of. Some of the rules of engagement that I (53 years old) grew up with included:
1. Never hit a girl. Under no circumstances. No exceptions.
2. Never hit a man when he's down. If the fight is not yet over, then the person down can get back up and the fight resumes.
3. One on one. If two people are in a fight, everyone else present can root for one side or the other, but cannot participate.
4. No "low-blows", you do not hit or kick someone in the balls.
5. Mercy rule. As soon as one of the participants in a fight no longer wishes to fight, the fight is over, and it is the responsibility of everyone there to break up the fight.
I wouldn't be surprised if nearly every man my age remembers and even continues to observe some version of the above.
They do, only the morally corrupt don't. Sadly for some of our younger folk, especially those in 'racialized' urban centres where young men don't have upstanding role models - they see the street gang style of fighting and think it is the model for disputes.
Or they think it's the only way they can prove their manhood, an idea that's perpetuated in much of what's considered urban music. People who don't follow that model are often mocked or victimized, reinforcing the idea that behaving in that manner is the only way they can remain "men" and "safe."
So briefly described and so well said to illuminate the truth behind so much audacious pretense seeping into the culture from the standard bearers of media. Thank you, Dr. Reilly.
Bravo!
How about not reverse-race-baiting with comments such as the one about Kendi and Hannah-Jones? What purpose does it serve, other than fomenting some sort of “mmmhhhmmm, see?” response.
The double standard is not a double standard, get it? I will never get as offended as you do.
Try not getting offended - it’s a privilege, no color implied. Then you’ll have the same privilege as I do. Hold your head up, exist on your merits, and you’ll have the same privilege as I do. Don’t have any merits? Then why are you even speaking? Go back to your tick tack app and crick crack pipe, just not living off the dole, and stay fenced into your neck of the woods where your shrapnel won’t hit my kin.
Problem is, this message, no matter what form it takes, will always fall on deaf ears, because (a) we’re in an echo chamber here, talking amongst ourselves; (b) the ears we need to reach aren’t hearing it; (c) if they hear it, it’s drowned out by other distractions; (d) they don’t understand the value proposition.
Let me say it shorter: people need therapy. Mostly to acquire some basic coping skills. Then maybe they’ll be able to cope with life in a way that doesn’t backslide them into the bad habits leading to an existence that perpetuates anti-intellectual snake oil salesmen such as Kendi.
It’s likely they would think differently today? Are you serious?
I would be surprised if Kendi still thinks that whites are descended from aliens, but the fact that he ever thought that is pretty telling.
Yeah, that was the one I was like, ummm... Pretty sure they would (have?) double(d)-down on all of it!
The rest was spot on!
For America to foster a true marketplace of ideas, we really need to firmly assert the fundamental power of the 1st Amendment and turn down the volume on hypersensitivity.
Disagreement is necessary and inevitable, but we need to let people talk and write freely.
The extremes define the limits, but we need to keep in mind that sometimes the extremes become mainstream eventually ( gay marriage, legalization of marijuana.)
So glad someone said it. Yes. We need 1 standard for all and kick the ridiculous double standard of the pervasive "n" word and uni-directional ability to level racial slurs towards whites. When I say that this culture war has been divisive, I mean it truly. I have been cautious around blacks and not free in engaging with people regardless of their colour once these double standards became the status quo. I hired a black gal once after all this racial hype started up and that person became the biggest PITA of my career. Any conversations or meetings required extra work to prepare so I could assign work without being accused of micro-aggressions or giving her work which in her view impacted her status negatively, according to our HR department. I had to drag out records to show that my assignment of work had not changed from previous incumbents. It was a massive turn off for hiring. So not sure how this whole thing helps anyone.
In the interest of providing a balanced comment, I’ve also worked with superb people who had merit , work ethic and no entitlement issues. I’m dismayed society has gone in this direction, where people look for problems and when nonsufficient can be found, they invent them
You have to consider the context. Carlson is hardly some innocent victim of a double standard. Carlson willfully lies and poisons the culture. He pushes group identity from the right and is at least sympathetic to the illiberalism of the right.
From your pen to God's ears.