A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

There Is a Cancel Culture, and It's the Right That's Advancing It

From banning books to dictating curricula, Republicans are the real
cancelers, not that the MSM recognizes that.

Today we turn, yet again, to the conundrum of "cancel culture." Take
a look at the books that were most targeted to be banned according to
the American Library Association
.
What do they have in common? Virtually all deal with the lives of Black
and LGBTQ people (plus one about a Native American). These efforts
surged in 2021.

Now examine the facts presented in this New York Times article on recent
legal restrictions placed on "classroom instruction, youth sports and
health care" in red-state America
.
These efforts focus on two issues. The first is "efforts to restrict
transgender youths' health care and participation in girls'
sports." According to the Human Rights Campaign, a record 79
anti-transgender bills were introduced into various state legislatures
in 2021. This year, that number is already 140. And yet we're only at
the beginning of this story. The Republican National Committee recently
promised to continue to focus its efforts to oppose "attempts to force
conversations around sex and transgender issues on our youngest
children."

The second major conservative cancel culture campaign, being pushed
especially by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is aimed at prohibiting
classroom instruction

about "sexual orientation and gender identity in some elementary
school grades." According to a Washington Post report
,
"His press secretary and national conservatives are attacking foes of
the bill, formally known as the Parental Rights in Education measure,
for allegedly promoting 'grooming' children by exposing them to
teaching on sexual identity to 'separate' them from 'a normative
sexual and gender identity,' according to the American
Conservative's Rod Dreher, who labeled Democrats the 'party of
groomers.'"

Let us take a moment to note that the Post reports these crazy comments
as if they were completely normal, sensible political observations,
without further need of explication, much less alarm, as well as the
fact that, as The Atlantic's Olga Khazan explains here
,
sex ed is the opposite of grooming. Alas, MSM reporters long ago decided
not to allow reality to interfere with their dogged commitment to
bothsidesism.

Now, it is one thing to say we cannot be certain about the age at which
students should be instructed about complex issues about sexuality and
identity, issues that have likely arisen as long as there have been
people. And it is also understandable that both parents and students
would have complicated, perhaps conflicting, feelings about how to
handle the issue of transgender participation in sports. But the
conservative push is not really about addressing these issues. It is
about (a) exploiting the discomfort they raise among parents with
dishonest scare tactics and made-up stories and (b) shutting down all
discussion that might imply acceptance of such discussions, or even
encourage tolerance among the previously prejudiced on matters of race
and sexuality.

These goals have long been arrows in the conservative quiver. What is
new is the discovery, post-Trump, of how far the right can take them and
how cooperative the mainstream media will be with their "both sides"
reporting on these and related topics.

In his new book, which will likely soon be assigned reading in Tennessee
public schools, lunatic playwright David Mamet "complains about the
'plandemic' coronavirus lockdowns, decries 'the Left's
anti-Trump psychosis' and suggests that it was Democrats and the media
who threatened 'armed rebellion' in the event that their preferred
candidate lost the 2020 election." He then told Fox that "teachers
are inclined, typically men because men are predators, to pedophilia.
"
But if you think Mamet lost his metaphorical marbles only recently,
well, "Think Again
."
(Ahem. That was the name of my CAP media column, but I see that it is
missing from the archived version.)

For some historical perspective, I recently came across this fascinating
story put up online in a blog published by the Yale Daily News
.
The extremely long, historically focused article begins with a speech
made at the late-2021 National Conservatism Conference by J.D. Vance,
whom it accurately describes as "the former 'Never Trump'
conservative who, over just a few short years, has metamorphosed into a
lib-owning pugilist running for Senate in Ohio." According to Vance,
"universities do not pursue knowledge and truth-they pursue deceit
and lies." The piece followed that with coverage of a conference
celebrating the career of William F. Buckley, sponsored, ironically, by
the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program, a generously funded student
organization founded in 2010 by Lauren Noble '11, who still serves as
executive director. The program's stated mission, the article reports,
is to "promote intellectual diversity on Yale's campus." That
gathering featured John Burtka, president of the Intercollegiate Studies
Institute, who had also spoken to the "National Conservatives" with
Vance. Burtka helpfully explained, "We must wield the state ... I want
to wield political power to fire bad professors and academics who are
brainwashing children and harming their education."

The more than 7,000-word article then traces conservatives' efforts to
control both speech and thought by doing everything they could think
of-just as Buckley did-to undermine liberal education. (As another
Yale conference speaker, Michael Knowles, noted, "'Today, so many
people invoke William F. Buckley Jr. as this wonderful, moderate,
anodyne-type figure who was so open-minded to everyone.' Alas, he
insisted, 'this would have been news to William F. Buckley Jr.,' who
'hated academic freedom' and 'did not support the open
society.'"

There is a lot more in this piece, which is understandably focused on
the history of the issue as it relates to Yale, where the right's
success has been mixed at best. But the conservative efforts to remake
the university into a place that hews to its distorted precepts are
growing in power as elected officials appear ready to take up the
challenges laid out for the movement in the speeches described above.
The Times recently reported on a project undertaken by Hillsdale College
,
a refuge for far-right quasi-academic quacks dedicated to battling
"progressive" and "leftist academics" to build a national
charter school network. So far, it has succeeded in creating 24 schools
in 13 states. Recently, however, Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee invited the
college to start 50 such schools, using public funds-that is, charging
taxpayers to make their kids more ignorant and misinformed, and almost
certainly more malevolent, than before they went to school; and to do so
every day.

This is, of course, a great way to advance indoctrination for a party
that pledges itself to inculcate ignorant, malevolent tropes among its
young people, especially if that same party undermines honest elections
in its state at the same time to its own advantage. But here is my
question: How is it possible that the words "cancel culture" are
among the most potent weapon of hysterical right-wing hucksterism when
applied to liberals when these very Republican accusers are, far and
away, its most potent purveyors. This accuser-as-perpetrator phenomenon
is the case with many issues, the most obvious being voter fraud. The
right is far more guilty than the left of the crime of "cancel
culture," and yet they have successfully crafted a narrative that
makes them out to be the victims and sold that narrative to the public,
via both the mainstream media as well as their own.

Why are liberals so damn bad at politics in this country? And why does
the MSM respond only to right-wing working of the refs, but never to
that of liberals and left-wingers? (I have some ideas, but not much
space left.)

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Irony alert: Former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block once accused me of
antisemitism when I argued that some right-wing supporters of Israel
were trying to get the United States to attack Iran. Who's the
antisemite now
, boychik?

I used to live on St. Marks Place in the East Village, and despite the
people who occasionally peed on my doorstep, I was proud of my block's
history. It had been home, in the past, to both W.H. Auden and Leon
Trotsky. It was also once the red-hot center of Ukrainian exile culture,
as New York magazine reports this week
. One
holdover, where I spent a great deal of time, was the restaurant
Vaselka, founded in 1954, and purveyor of always, um, interesting and
often unpredictable Ukrainian food. It is still there, right down the
street from a club I have come to appreciate, even though I've long
retired to the Upper West Side.

That place, called Pangea, was also there back then. It has been around
for more than 30 years, hosting an extremely eclectic brand of
entertainers. Back in November, I caught the act of a fun, all-female
Tom Waits cover band with the wonderful name Vicki Kristina Barcelona.
Last week, I saw the often imitative, but always inimitable, Tammy Faye
Starlite doing a new show that was so much fun and so weird I cannot
really describe it well enough to do justice to it. In the past, Tammy
has starred as her own versions of Nico, Marianne Faithfull, and
Marianne's ex-boyfriend Mick Jagger, in the surprisingly great "Mike
Hunt Band." Now she has created her own character she calls
"Tamar," a nutty Israeli legend in her own mind, who puts on a show
called "Yesterday, Today and Tamar!" She describes it as
"Ashkenazi-textured Europop," and believe me, you will never hear
"Nights in White Satin" the same way ever again (should you wish
to). Here
's
more on Tammy-and here

are some videos-but I also want to note that Pangea only survived the
pandemic because of a GoFundMe effort by its supporters in and around
the neighborhood-not one of whose contributors, I'm betting, is a
groomer, much less a pedophile.

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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