seanessay.com
Anyone who reads my essays probably takes a grown up interest in the news, and has heard how this summer a 24-year old man tried to murder Salman Rushdie in public, onstage, for a novel published back in the 20th century. I was not surprised to learn that the grown adult who attempted to cancel Rushdie from this earth had not read the book. Censors, like cancel culture demons, commonly commit the classic Sin of not taking responsibility to read or view that which they would hide from the rest of us.
As for cancel culture, the voices against it are few and dim these days. Like being against McCarthy witch hunts back during the 1950’s, or being against political correctness back in the late 20th century. At the hight of PC, an anti-racism group on my campus showed the film Mississippi Burning. The PC crowd would like the film because the white film makers do not try to script or show, as in “speak for,” Blacks. Yes but today some critical thinkers would say that Diversity is severely lacking in that film: Pity the PC guys; it doesn’t pay to be too arrogantly PC. Meanwhile, arrogant young voices in favour of cancelling still seem to be very strong, judging by what I read on the screen and in newsprint.
Scholars more fearful than back in high school
For example: Perhaps from fear of being accused, rather few seem to defend J.K Rowling for her comments or beliefs about transexuals, while the ire of young college age Harry Potter fans is so strong that they recently took issue with playing that game where they ride broomsticks. Potter fans say it should still be played, but now be played under a different name, as part of cancelling Rowling. I find the mental reasoning to be problematic, but then again, I am old, and haven’t even finished the series. (I intend to)
While canceling can be for, say, being anti-Jewish, just now a lot of storm and thunder seems to about transexuals. I fear that many of the cancelers are like the strident communists and other leftists of my youth: being unkind towards sections of my community, such as nice people I know with more money than me. Or towards folks “who desire equal rights for women,” if I might avoid saying “feminists.”
The smoking brand, or smoking gun, of hysteria, whether for the east coast witch trials, or the west coast communist trials, was that if you defended a fellow actor from the label of “communist,” then it meant a loud accusation that, “You must be a communist too!” Hysteria puts us all in a Crucible. (My college put on the witch hunt play—very moving)
We will never all have the same opinions, but I draw the line at a 1950’s style blacklist today that is secret, and told to neither to a middle aged LGBTQ actor, nor to his agent. The poor actor (picture above) had to ask. What I ask is: How can an offence be worth canceling a human being but not worth any publicity or the common courtesy of telling an actor or his agent. In fact, his “crime” was so minor, I would invite you to hear it for yourself, by clicking on the picture. It was from him that I learned that Rowling wrote an essay, reasoned and considered, a grown up essay too long for twitter and social media and any youth who are “attention span challenged.” Hence I am troubled.
J.K. Rowling’s essay concerns her opinions that caused all the fuss, that now has young cancelers telling each other that Rowling is anti-transexual and deserving of cancellation. Here’s what troubles me: Could all those hot blooded young people, many of them capable of reading the Harry Potter books, many of them in higher education, who are accusing Rowling of “thought crime,” …be themselves “criminally negligent” by not reading her essay? Could they be as negligent as that knife wielder who tried to cancel Rushdie?
Some of the biggest lies start with “They say”
I am not saying we should never accuse Rowling of being the twin sister of Putin and old what’s-his-name in Iran. I’m saying that before we accuse, we should go to the black and white source. And if we engage in rebuttal, then instead of fantasizing what she wrote or meant, we take the time to focus our brains by quoting, word for word, the parts we disagree with. (For young students, trained to dispassionately document and footnote, calmly argue and refute in the classroom, this should be easy, unless they are warped by hatred)
Personally, I find it ironic that many young fans of Star Wars and Star Trek will remember the oft-rerun episode where Captain Kirk is in trouble in court, with the main witness against him being the objective recordings of the ship’s computer. His trial on the planet is adjourned, and reconvenes up on the USS Enterprise, because the computer is up there on the ship— Because of our Magna Carta (Great Charter) right that the accused must be permitted to face his accuser.
If you can’t face Rowling, telling her what you think and hearing what she thinks, then at least reading her actual words, and quoting word for word what you disagree with, is the next best thing for respecting everyone’s Magna Carta right.
I daydream about a liberal arts professor having her students read aloud, one paragraph at a time, Rowling’s essay—or would the poor prof be accused? By profs in other classrooms? Profs who would propagandize their students? With the poor lady not being allowed the academic courtesy to confront her accusers?
Here (link) is Rowling’s essay.
… …
God save the king.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
In the great white north
October
2022
Note: Also see Barbarians at the Campus Gate October 10, 2021
Footnote: I wish I was exaggerating about leftists fantasizing when they read but the experience of web essayist Pail Graham “blew my mind,” as shown in the footnotes to his essay (link) Economic Inequality. The partial remedy, ‘honesty by quoting,’ is from Graham. (ref Russel Okung)
Note: Graham’s recent essay on Heresy is pertinent to today’s post too. In my mind’s eye many young scholars would rather play with broomsticks than think about the concept of heresy—even if they are implicated as being the bad guys.
