NPR blames the Right for cancel culture
July 14, 2021
Some journalists are starting to worry about Cancel Culture.
Most, sadly, support the toxic trend and have little reason to wish it away. What they’re seeing, though, is a smattering of voices standing up to its freedom-snuffing measures.
The latest example? The very odd duo of Conan O’Brien and Sean Penn. One’s an iconic talk show host and former “Simpsons” scribe who remains far less political than his late night peers. The other is an Academy Award-winning actor whose politics are socialist leaning, and that’s being generous.
Conan O’Brien and Sean Penn are united in their disdain for cancel culture, calling it "ludicrous" and "very Soviet."
"Empathy is a very important word and also forgiveness." https://t.co/RwtwLSqH4k
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) July 7, 2021
Together, they tag-teamed against Cancel Culture in ways that drew headlines across the news landscape. O’Brien called the woke scourge “very Soviet,” while Penn said he wouldn’t be able to play the title character in “Milk,” for which he won his second Oscar, in today’s climate.
Enter NPR.
The liberal news outlet’s new conversation on Cancel Culture attempts to pin the term, and its misuse, on the Right to protect progressives from any cultural fallout. To do so, NPR gathers several clearly left-leaning sources (where’s the diversity of thought?) to concoct a narrative as phony as the White House suggesting Republicans want to defund the police, not them.
Let’s start with Nicole Holliday, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Holliday makes a direct connection from the politically correct concept of the 1990s (Remember “PCU?”) to the current woke wars, just “dialed up to 11 because of the influence of social media.”
“So conservatives have picked it up not to just mean boycott but rather to say our value system is under threat by these people who want to deplatform us because we have unpopular opinions. That’s the way that I think they frame it a lot these days,” Holliday says.
Host Ari Shapiro, as biased as Rachel Maddow if this segment is any indication, frames the conversation around Cancel Culture being a new version of “political correctness.” Shapiro says the right-wing media weaponized the term then to attack liberals.