Cancel The Cancel Culture And Do It Now
By Bob Small
One of my exercise T-shirts reads “My Governor can beat your Governor”, sent by my daughter from her adopted Minnesota, referencing then Governor (1991-95) Jessie Ventura. Following his Governorship, 1991-95 (from the Reform Party) he ventured into Broadcasting, his latest show being The World according to Jesse. This program is on RT aka Russia Today.
RT, by the way, though disparaged by some as “Putin’s Network” or Russia’s Voice of America, is actually much wider than that, featuring some news stories before their appearance on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc. They are a mix of news and hosted shows.
Now on Jesse’s Sep 18 show, the second half interview segment featured Dan Kovalik, author of Cancel This Book: The progressive case against Cancel Culture. The title is a nod to Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book.
Dan is an American human rights and labor rights lawyer, peace activist, Columbia grad, and the leftist of left.
Dan was inspired to write this book by the “cancelling” of Molly Rush.
Molly Rush, is the 80-something co-founder of Pittsburgh’s Thomas Merton Center. She is perhaps best known for being one ofThe Plowshares 8, along with the Berrigans, civil disobedient anti-nuclear activists. Again, very lefty.
The center is named for a Roman Catholic poet and monk, also known as a non-violent peaceful change activist. Guess this might be lefty, too. See www.thomasmertoncenter.org for a list of activities.
So what did Molly Rush do to deserve canceling. She posted a meme, about one
Martin Luther King, “Looted nothing. Burned Nothing. Attacked No One. Changed the World.”
Molly was then forced to apologize for this posting, which, incredibly, was deemed “racist” and worse. How is any of what she said wrong, in what universe is this not what, one hopes, most of us Lefties (actually most others) believe in and work for? For a full discussion of this incident, go to an article titled How an MLK meme split the Thomas Merton Center.
I have been wondering whether the Left has been infiltrated by those who are trying to make the Left look , well, stupid. If so, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Does the Right also have these problems? Please tell me they do.
Bob Small is a resident of Swarthmore.
