Most people are in favor of cancelling. For example, I am in favor of newspapers canceling Scott Adams' Dilbert strip, if they want too. I am in favor of having Kanye West face the consequences of being anti-Semitic in an open way. Practically nobody is against it, as a matter of principle. People just differ on what kind of cancelation is legit, what specific offenses count.
Adams has been semi-loco for a while, with Trumpism and other kinds of weird things. His strip is funny, I guess, if you work in an office, though he cannot draw. I don't believe in saying he is not funny, simply because he is also racist. In the past I have enjoyed his strip, and I find most comics today not particularly good, but it is not in the same class as Calvin and Hobbes.
The first amendment is about the government. A newspaper can cancel a comic strip that it publishes, and it is not censorship. On the other hand, I can put a Dilbert panel on the door of my office, and the University cannot tell me to take it down. I'm not going to do it, because I don't have things on my door, and if I did it wouldn't be someone who just came out explicitly as a racist.
Private universities can censor, since they are not governmental, but many of them claim to follow 1st amendment principles, and in that case they can be called out on that.
No comments:
Post a Comment