Displaying items by tag: cancel culture

DURHAM — Canadian professor, author, and psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson on Thursday offered a non-political and largely academic lecture on the psychology of beauty, dreams, and purpose. The reaction from city officials and activists to the address at the Durham Performing Arts Center was night-and-day from the one leading up to his appearance four years earlier. 

A bill before the South Carolina Legislature seeks to affirm a sacred American right — the right to our conscience. Co-sponsored by every Republican member of the subcommittee — the legislation is a reaction to a Columbia city ordinance that restricts a counselor or therapist’s ability to bring in biblical worldviews on issues related to human sexuality and sexual orientation.

As political strife intensifies and people are increasingly canceled for their opinions, the reality of Christmas should ground us in deeper truths.

Comedians have always played a unique role in western society. Armed with humor and wit, it is their job to push the envelope, holding a mirror up to society and speaking truth to power. 

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson saying controversial things could be a reality show. There’s easily enough content for multiple seasons. After all, his ascendency in North Carolina politics emerged from his confrontational speaking style. His mouth is what makes him so popular and disliked at the same time. Robinson even dares to weigh in on specific social issues where only one opinion is allowed now in the public square.

WILMINGTON — Describing a culture of silencing conservative voices at UNCW, one trustee was driven to quit last week with an openly critical post of Seahawk nation on Facebook. Former UNCW Board of Trustees member Woody White revealed what he sees as a troubling trend in treatment of conservative faculty and students.

As an academic dean of library services for the past 40 years, I think I have a good eye for what constitutes censorship. Cancel culture, a new term for an old and deadly form of silencing your enemies has recently shown its ugly face and has unmistakably assumed the role of free speech bullies. Not since the McCarthy Era have we seen such proscription of speech, and it appears to be unrelenting. The eagerness with which these new speech bullies seek to prohibit ideas is now ubiquitous, and the desire to cancel scores of individuals from Washington State to, well, the heart of the reddest of Red States, Rock Hill, South Carolina, where I live, is raging.

Up in Surry County, the local GOP leadership is making fools of itself. The county board of commissioners passed a ban on Coke machines on county property to show those bigwigs down in Atlanta that they weren’t taking lightly the company’s opposition to Georgia’s voter suppression law. But the Atlanta company doesn’t own the machines. A Charlotte-based company does and the move threatened jobs in the rural county. 

I guess I have to be the one who wants to say what we all have been wanting to say in the last few weeks. Of course, the majority of you don't have a public forum to spout off in, so I guess I'll take one for the team. 

On March 2 — the late Theodor Seuss Geisel’s 117th birthday — Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that, some time last year, it ceased publishing/licensing six of the popular author’s children’s books which “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”