Actor Vince Vaughn looks on prior to the College Football Playoff National Championship game between the Clemson Tigers and the LSU Tigers at Mercedes Benz Superdome in New Orleans on Jan. 13, 2020. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

Time to Cancel the ‘Cancel Culture’

Commentary

In case you missed it (ICYMI, as they say), “cancel culture” is the term used by the self-anointed “woke” for boycotting—essentially turning into non-persons and erasing from public life—people (usually celebrities, but plebes aren’t exempt) who have exhibited what they deem questionable behavior or written something untoward on social media.

It’s our version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: Being blocked on Twitter is the equivalent of being marched around on a stool while wearing a dunce cap.

Ellen DeGeneres was nearly canceled for hobnobbing with former President George W. Bush in October 2019.

The latest target of this despicable trend is the actor Vincent Vaughn, who was caught (on video, no less) chatting and shaking hands (!) with President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at a football game on Jan. 13.

A man named (sorry, I never heard of him before) Timothy Burke wrote on Twitter, “I’m very sorry to have to share this video with you. All of it, every part of it.”

The usual Twitter madness transpired with much back and forth, most attempting to cancel Vaughn. I doubt the actor cared, at least I hope not. He’s a gifted man with a great sense of humor.

But note Burke’s use of the word “sorry”—and mine. Neither of us are. We’re lying.

If Burke were “very sorry,” he would never have posted a virtually silent—you can’t hear a word of what anyone’s saying—video of anything so trivial as an actor chatting with the president. Burke clearly wanted to “get” Vaughn, the scoundrel who supported Rand Paul for president and is well-known to lean libertarian, making him a renegade in Hollywood and therefore not sufficiently “woke.”

As for me, I used the fake “sorry” because I find Burke’s behavior so execrable that I want to give him the pain of anonymity, a severe punishment in today’s world. Evidently, he’s a sports writer.

So I’m part of the “cancel culture,” too. It’s everywhere.

You could even say the impeachment is an attempt to “cancel” Trump, rather than just removing him from office. They want to obliterate him from our consciousness.

If that isn’t enough, some juvenile nincompoop with the Sanders campaign was just recorded by Project Veritas declaring that Trump voters should be sent to reeducation camps. “There’s a reason Joseph Stalin had gulags, right?” this genius said.

Talk about being canceled!

Commenting about Burke, Fox and Friends’ Steve Doocy elaborated on just how extreme things have gotten. “Unless America talks to the other side and we can just talk to each other, this is going to be a country—they might as well split the country right in half, right down the Mississippi,” Doocy said.

I say—enough already. Let’s cancel the cancel culture.

But don’t ask me how. Under present conditions, with the relentless antagonism on social media and the zeitgeist in general, curing cancer may be a walk in the proverbial park by comparison.

Epoch Times senior political analyst Roger L. Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.