Standing up for free speech
In recent days the hordes of social media activists and agitators have been busier than ever intimidating, excoriating and stomping out diversity of thought wherever it appears.
This weekend, the Guardian newspaper published an interview with country music star Shania Twain. She discussed her career, troubled childhood, marriage and other typical areas of conversation and then ventured into politics and, of course, Donald Trump.
“I would have voted for him because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest. Do you want straight or polite? Not that you shouldn’t be able to have both. If I were voting, I just don’t want (expletive). I would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent. And politics has a reputation of not being that, right?”
That was all it took. The songstress, who is Canadian and unable to even vote in an American election, was attacked from all corners and soon came whimpering on to social media to atone for her sins. In a four-part Twitter post she wrote, “I would like to apologise to anybody I have offended in a recent interview with the Guardian relating to the American President,” continuing, “I was trying to explain, in response to a question about the election, that my limited understanding was that the President talked to a portion of America like an accessible person they could relate to, as he was NOT a politician.”
Shania learned a valuable lesson: Reasonable enough is no longer reasonable enough for today’s progressives.
Be warned, too, that humor does not enjoy a special dispensation when it comes to the judgment of the social justice warrior-class. When former NFL kicker and now CBS Sports analyst Jay Feely tweeted a comical picture of himself standing in between his daughter and her prom date, he dared to add an homage to the overprotective father caricature. In the picture, Feely is holding a handgun (finger off the trigger and firearm facing the ground). The tweet reads, “Wishing my beautiful daughter and her date a great time at prom. #BadBoys.”
It didn’t take long for the triggered masses to pile on and by the next morning Feely was either pressured or felt pressured to clean things up. “The prom picture I posted was obviously intended to be a joke. My Daughter has dated her boyfriend for over a year and they knew I was joking. I take gun safety seriously (the gun was not loaded and had no clip in) and I did not intend to be insensitive to that important issue.”
In much of today’s culture, the timeless and droll anecdote about dad showing his daughter’s date his gun collection is now tantamount to a threat of violence and we must all shelter in place until the offender has engaged in enough selfflagellation to satisfy the oversensitive mob.
But maybe things are changing.
When rapper Kanye West tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks,” after watching the African-American conservative commentator challenge a Black Lives Matter protest at UCLA, it was both who were set upon by the Twitter mob. Owens, who often rails against “victim mentality” in the black community, was attacked fiercely with vile and vicious comments, far and wide by anonymous sources and celebrities alike.
The difference in this case, though, is that neither Candace Owens or Kanye West are apologizing. In fact, West appears to be reveling in some of the attention and positively posting online about other conservative voices.
Yesterday he tweeted, “new ideas will no longer be condemned by the masses. We are on the frontier of massive change. Starting from breaking out of our mental prisons.”
Whatever the political ideology, it is refreshing to see Americans stand up to those forces who wish to extinguish divergent speech. The level of ferocity often correlates with the level of threat perceived. All in all, we should feel optimistic that we are seeing more and more examples of strong resolve. Let’s hope we are seeing a positive cultural change on the horizon.