Eventually, they came for Bon Appétit, as we always knew they would.
Cancel culture is a game, the point of which is to impose unemployment on people as a form of recreation. The editor of Bon Appétit has gone down in a recent round that also claimed the editor of Variety, the editor of the New York Times opinion page, an obscure data analyst, and other figures far removed from public life.
The classic canceling episode was the hounding of Roseanne Barr, a past-her-prime celebrity who tweeted a racially insensitive comment in 2018, comparing former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett to a figure from “Planet of the Apes.” Celebrities in decline are an especially tempting target: Harvey Weinstein’s habits were not news to anybody in Hollywood, but the campaign against him did not begin until he was well past the apex of his influence.
But with the protests following the outrageous death of George Floyd, the canceling project now takes in everybody from food writers to woodworkers.
In the course of a week, three editors went down: James Bennett of the Times was canceled for publishing an opinion on the opinion page, Senator Tom Cotton’s defense of the Insurrection Act, which permits the use of federal troops to quell riots; Claudia Eller was pushed out at Variety (suspended, formally, but not expected to return to her position) after penning a white-privilege mea culpa that was found to be unconvincing; Adam Rapoport of Bon Appétit was canned for much the same reason, his offense aggravated by a turn-of-the-century photograph of him dressed as a stereotypical Puerto Rican at a Halloween party.
But racial outrages are far from the only thing that can cost someone a job in these stupid times, and it isn’t only public figures who are targeted. Fender, a guitar maker, exiled a master guitar-builder after he tweeted an ugly joke (a blood-covered Jeep over the caption “What protesters on the freeway?”) at the expense of the recent demonstrations. But better manners won’t save you: A data analyst and veteran of the Obama reelection campaign was fired by Civis Analytics for tweeting a link to a paper written by a well-regarded (and, worth noting, biracial) Princeton professor of African-American studies finding that riots are bad for black communities. No criticism, however respectful or intelligent, is to be permitted.
These men were not fired for using racial slurs or engaging in abuse. They were fired for giving voice to views that the mob wishes to see silenced.
Of course there is rampant hypocrisy. The editor of Bon Appétit had to go, but as recently as 2019 the Liberal prime minister of Canada and the Democratic governor of Virginia both survived blackface scandals resulting from some of those “youthful indiscretions” the politicians are always going on about. Fender will fire a luthier but maintains a relationship with Eric Clapton, who has been known to use racial slurs in vicious denunciation of British immigrants and as recently as 2007 talked up Enoch Powell, the politician whose “Rivers of Blood” speech was a cri de cœur for British racists. Clapton’s name can move a lot of guitars. On the “Animal Farm” of social-media scalp hunting, some animals are more equal than others.
The same progressives who once held themselves out as checks on corporate power now have decided to deputize the Fortune 500 to enforce political and social conformism, making political correctness a criterion for employment — not only in high-status jobs but also for fast-food workers and obscure middle managers. They believe that they have the cultural power, and that this way of doing things will advantage the Left. But culture changes: Today’s social-justice warriors are relying on the same strategy that once kept openly gay actors out of the movies and black musicians off the radio, an irony that is lost on our progressive friends.
The imbeciles on Twitter are unserious people, but unserious people can produce serious problems. There is a word for the situation in which there is no room for disagreement. The word is not “justice.” It is “totalitarianism.” That is what cancel culture is, and we have seen it in highly developed form in such places as East Germany under Honecker and China under Mao and the Cultural Revolution.
No one is safe, not even at such commanding heights of culture as Bon Appétit.
Kevin D. Williamson is the author of the upcoming “Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the “Real America” (Regnery Publishing).