As Popeye used to say when astonished, “Well blow me down!”
But in the case of conservative former Pennsylvania US Senator Rick Santorum being fired by CNN – as I was a few years back – astonishment was not my reaction.
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To recall, I was an early target of what we now call “cancel culture” in America. The term hadn’t even been invented back there in the stone age of 2017 when CNN abruptly fired me for having the nerve to write this column at The American Spectator. The title:
Fascist Media Matters Moves to Silence Hannity
Media Matters, of course, is the far-left extremist website that makes it their business to silence conservatives in the media. They do this by setting up campaigns to threaten advertisers of a particular show if the advertiser doesn’t pull its advertising from a show or a show’s host or commentator who appears on a particular network.
In my case, it was verboten to take on Media Matters for doing this because Media Matters is on the left. And to say in print, as I did, that what Media Matters was about – and is still about – is nothing less than fascism with a dose of anti-Semitism? That is a no-no at CNN. It’s plenty OK at the network to say those things about people as long as they are seen as right-wingers. But to point out the obvious of left-wingers? No can do. So, I was abruptly out the CNN door.
When former Senator Santorum committed his “offense” – discussing Native American lack of involvement in the formation of the United States government – the race supremacists went the usual crazy.
Santorum was invited on Chris Cuomo’s CNN show to discuss and said this – my bold print supplied for emphasis:
“I was talking about, and I misspoke in this respect, I was talking about the founding, and the principles embodied in the founding. I would never, and you know, people have said, ‘Oh, I’m trying to dismiss what we did to the Native Americans.’ Far from it! The way we treated Native Americans was horrific. It goes against every bone and everything I’ve ever fought for, as a leader, in the Congress.”
Quite clearly, Santorum was apologizing when saying he “misspoke.”And he made a point of saying:
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“The way we treated Native Americans was horrific. It goes against every bone and everything I’ve ever fought for, as a leader, in the Congress.”
But of course, the entire objection of cancel culture is…to cancel. To silence. And Santorum’s apology and clarification were never going to suffice. So CNN bowed to the woke race supremacy crowd out there and fired him.
The real issue here is not Santorum, or, in 2017, yours truly.
The real issue is the growing thuggish power of cancel culture itself. As I said in that American Spectator article, what we are witnessing is the spread of outright fascism. And as is brutally self-evident with the vicious attacks on Jews in various American cities, it has now become a fascism and racism laced with serious anti-Semitism.
The choice Americans now face is whether to be silent in the face of all of this cancel culture fascism – or fight back.
Americans being Americans? I would say the “fight back” approach is now beginning.
