Daily Archives: May 3, 2021

To the critics, its political correctness and self-absorption gone absolutely haywire. To the advocates, its a committed effort toward a more inclusive society that respects the individuality of each person and their right to determine who they are.

There are a few layers to it, says Sonya Epstein, a member of the University of Massachusetts Class of 2022 and an advocate of gender pronouns, which have gained widespread popularity on college campuses in particular.

Gender identity has often been based on appearance or name, explains Epstein. Gender as a whole has been a social construct (shared perceptions that exist only because people in a group or society accept they do). But not all of us conform to that.

The more one delves into it, the more the issue of social pronouns becomes less about a trendy college thing, and the more it challenges some of Western societys most fundamental concepts. To the majority, there are men and there are women and yes, for the progressive among us, there are variations that not just explain but validate the LGBTQ movement.

At the 2019 Iowa State Fair, a student asked then-presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr. how many genders existed. At least three, Biden responded. Provoked by the follow-up question of What are they? he snapped, Dont play games with me, kid.

Bidens first answer produced applause from some, and mockery or horror from others. To many in the progressive movement, though, it represented the elusive nature of defining gender - which is why many want the right to choose their own definition of who they are.

Enter gender pronouns. They have been around for a few years, even if they remain unknown to vast numbers of Americans who are either over 25 or unaffiliated with high school or college life.

For the unfamiliar, it goes like this: Im Janet Smith, and my pronouns are she and her (or whatever choices, possibly including they or them, the individual prefers).

I have to admit that until fairly recently, I would have considered the entire concept rather pointless. Even now, including gender pronouns in personal introductions strikes me as ... well, if nothing else, odd to the ear.

When someone says, Im Tom, and my pronouns are he and him, my instinct is to respond that I could have figured as much. But young people see society differently than my generation does. And frankly, after watching our societys corrupt descent into the intensified, unrestrained spewing of anger, resentment, bigotry and hate over the past several years - Im willing to listen.

I came out as non-binary four years ago, as a junior (at Belmont High School), says Epstein, who has been involved with UMass student government and other activism. It needs to be pushed, no matter how much pushback there is. When I first started, some awful comments were said at me.

In the past year, Epsteins sensed a greater willingness by the university administration to accept gender pronouns. That doesnt mean theyre all entirely comfortable with it, let alone be willing to use their own.

This issue relates directly to transgender individuals, but pronoun practice extends far beyond them. My own brief experience is that women find it more meaningful than men, but I have no data to support that and my daughter, who is in college, says many young men follow its practice, too.

So why, as long as acceptance is extended to those who use pronouns, should it matter to the advocates if other people - in fact, I think, most people - do not?

If everybody does it, then no one is singled out, Epstein said. Thats one of two major arguments for pronoun use, to avoid socially isolating (and often ostracizing) those who do not identify with traditional male-female characterizations.

The other reason is advocates conviction that every individual has the right to be viewed as they view and identify themselves, and not by judgments or stereotypes dictated by others.

Perhaps youve noticed that I keep referring to Epstein as Epstein. Here is current Associated Press style guidance on the use of gender pronouns in news stories:

In stories about people who identify as neither male nor female or ask not to be referred to as he/she/him/her, use the persons name in place of a pronoun, or otherwise reword the sentence, whenever possible. If they/them/their use is essential, explain in the text that the person prefers a gender-neutral pronoun.

Epsteins choice to describe, well, Epstein, is they and them. I know what many of you are thinking: those are plural pronouns.

Thats what I always thought, too, but the dictionary says their use in certain singular references is proper. Dictionaries change, and so do other policies. Last year, for instance, the AP formally altered its racial designation from black to Black.

Colleges are taking pronouns seriously - very seriously. Springfield College is not requiring faculty members to use gender pronouns, but is encouraging they do.

Springfield College has an entire web page dedicated to the subject, with guidelines ranging from What if I mistakenly use the wrong pronouns for someone?, to Pronouns dos and donts.

At least one website, MyPronouns.org, is dedicated to the topic. It says, when we refer to personal pronouns ... we mean that they are pronouns referring to a unique and individual person.

Sometimes, of course, pronouns can answer questions before they need to be asked, as with unisex names. When youre called upon to speak with Sam, Bailey, Dana or Jamie, youre left to wonder - or to guess. Thats part of this, but its not what is driving a movement where a generational divide looks inevitable.

Why do we have to go along with this? a fellow Baby Boomer asked me.

Why not? I responded. It hurts no one. It gives identity to people who want respect and ownership of their own identity. I dont usually embrace change, either, but if the only case against it that its never been that way before, thats not good enough as a stand-alone argument to me.

That said, I dont intend to ever do it, and I hope the Sonya Epsteins of the world understand. Whether others do or dont, it doesnt offend or bother me. It doesnt cause to me to lament where America has gone wrong.

In a nation whose strength is its diversity, we havent exactly been treating each other with respect, decency and kindness through time-honored techniques lately. Maybe this will help.

Ron Chimelis is a staff writer for The Republican. He may be reached by email to rchimelis@repub.com.

View post:

Young Americans have reason to think gender pronouns matter: Viewpoint - masslive.com

Black Lives Matter's history from Trayvon Martin to George Floyd

From Trayvon Martin to George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement continues to highlight Black lives lost to police and racial injustice.

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

The Oklahoma House on Thursday passed legislation to prohibit public schools and universities from teaching critical race theory, which examines the way race and racism touchaspects of American history, politics and culture.

The bill, which passed 70-19after hours of discussion and debate, now heads to Gov. Kevin Stitt's desk.

House Bill 1775would prohibitthe teaching of a laundry list of topics, including that one race or sex is inherently superior to another, and that an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive.

The debate among lawmakers stirredfar-reaching arguments about racism, history and societal inequalities.

When a Republican legislator compared the social movement Black Lives Matter to a terrorist organization, a Black lawmaker from across the aisle loudly booed. Rep. Justin Humphrey, R-Lane, also calledthe Ku Klux Klan a terrorist group.

Other legislation: Stitt signs bill to ban abortion if SCOTUS rules

The bill by Rep. Kevin West, R-Moore, and Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, is similar to legislation being proposed in a handful of other GOP-led legislatures across the country.

The trendcomes as the United States is grapplingwith its complicatedracial history amid widespread calls for racial justice andgreater recognition ofdeep-seated racial inequalities.

Nationwide, there's also growing conservative criticism of political correctness and "cancel culture,"in which public officials or groups are shamed for supporting someideas.

West called HB 1775 an anti-discrimination measure to keep schools from teaching racial stereotypes.

Make no mistake about it, hesaid. Were in a fight for the future of our children and our grandchildren. The theories and tenets of critical race theory, that curriculum … that goes against everything this nation was founded on and everything that we, as a nation, have fought so hard to keep.

"The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has no color, has no sex.

Some critics say critical racetheory is based in Marxism.

House Democrats said HB 1775 is an attempt to whitewash history and alleged the bill is a political stunt so Republicans have something to tout on the campaign trail.

"This is one of those bills that will pop up on campaign mailers when it comes to next year's elections," said House Minority Floor Leader Emily Virgin, D-Norman.

When questioned about the bill, West said tenets of critical race theory are being taught in Oklahoma schools and universities, but gaveanecdotal examples that lacked specifics. Without giving details, West said he'd read stories about first-grade studentswho were forced to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities.

Others are reading: Feds extend REAL ID enforcement deadline again

House Democrats expressed concerns that the bill could preventstudents from learning abouttheTulsa Race Massacre, the Trail of Tears or the Osage murders parts of Oklahoma history in which race inherently playeda role.

West said the bill would not prevent the teaching of history, nor would it prevent sexual harassment and misconduct trainingthat some college students must undergo.

This bill will in no way stop the teaching of history or anything currently in our Oklahoma education standards, including curriculum that shows historical examples of racism or genocide, West said in a statement. This bill simply says that teachers cant force a student to answer that they are inherently racist or sexist or that they must feel personally responsible for things perpetrated in the past by people of a similarraceor gender.

HB 1775 also seeks to prevent Oklahomas public colleges and universities from engaging students in any form of mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling.

If signed into law, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and the State Board of Education would be tasked with creating rules for schools and colleges to follow the law.

College news: Southern Nazarene students start petition to stop potential ban on kneeling during anthem

Virgin, who represents Norman,said she thinks the University of Oklahoma has major objections to the bill.

"They have taken huge strides in making sure that everyone feels welcome on their campus," she said. "That's what freshmen orientation programs are about, is making it clear that this is an inclusive space and an inclusive environment and no one should be made to feel that they don't belong."

HB 1775 included an emergency clause, which means the law could take effect immediately if signed by the governor.

Excerpt from:

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt to decide on bill to ban teaching of critical race theory - Oklahoman.com

Elections will take place across the Black Country and parts of Staffordshire on Thursday

Across the Black Country and parts of Staffordshire more than a dozen parties will be represented when voters head to the ballot box on Thursday.

There will also be plenty of independents hoping they can get elected without the backing of a party machine.

Among the parties standing this year are Reform UK - the new name for the Brexit Party, the Black Country Party, Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, Workers' Party of Britain and Chase Community Independents.

Ukip, a major electoral force in the region up until a couple of years ago, has just a handful of candidates entered this year.

Bill Etheridge, economic spokesman for Ukip, said his party were at the start of a rebuilding process after some "difficult years" following the departure of former leader Nigel Farage.

He said the party was committed to ensuring Brexit resulted in more than just a "superficial change", and would continue to promote British values and oppose "the old enemy political correctness".

The former MEP and Dudley councillor said: "We're on the road back and I would expect the candidates we have this year to do very well as there is clearly still an appetite for Ukip in the Black Country.

"We have been restricted in what we can do campaigning wise because of Covid and these elections are really a springboard for us to move on.

"I think we will start to see more people joining the party in the months ahead."

The Black Country Party, which was founded in 2019, has a new leader in Nick Gregory after Stuart Henley stepped down and joined the Tories.

Black Country Day founder Steve Edwards is one of five candidates standing for the party in Dudley this year and is bidding for the Brockmoor and Pensnett seat.

He says he wants to offer an alternative to mainstream party politics, which had done nothing positive for local areas across the borough.

Mr Edwards said he would offer "a voice on the council which is being shouted by someone who loves the area and has seen the best and worst of Brockmoor and Pensnett".

"I am not just showing up for an election, this is where I was born and raised, my kids home," he added. "It is where all my friends and family are from.

"If I didnt think we could change things I wouldnt put myself forward, but I do think we can change everything. Just like we did with Black Country Day."

In Walsall former Labour councillor Pete Smith is the sole candidate not representing a political party.

Standing in Blakenall, he is campaigning on local issues including bringing back the much-missed Walsall Illuminations, and says politicians in the borough have become detached from the people they represent.

"The present system isn't working to the best advantage of residents," said Mr Smith, who served on the council for 20 years.

He is calling for "local neighbourhood grass roots democracy" where residents can have more of a say in how public money is spent in their areas.

Having run Labour close in previous elections Mr Smith is convinced he has a chance of victory. "Sometimes David can beat Goliath," he said.

Over in Cannock Chase Paul Woodhead is leader of the Chase Community Independents, a breakaway group that currently has five councillors and features former members of Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems.

Councillor Woodhead, who is standing in Hednesford South, said his party wants to see greater collaboration between politicians and communities around the district.

"If you get that right then some of the more difficult decisions that councils have to make are easier for people to understand, because they have been involved in the process," he said.

"National politics gets in the way of all of that, because fundamentally people want to disagree with an idea just because someone from another party has come up with it.

"By working together you get the best ideas and come up with a solution that works for everyone."

Graham Eardley is standing in Walsall Council's Pelsall ward for anti-lockdown party Reform UK, the new name for the Brexit Party.

The party has five candidates in Walsall, and Mr Eardley said that if elected, they will be able to vote how they see fit on council issues to enable them to "truly represent their local community".

"We're standing to win, and with the state of the main parties at the moment we think we have a good chance of doing that," he said.

"We don't believe in putting asylum seekers in four-star hotels, and we believe the time for lockdowns has long since passed.

"People want to see the economy moving again and we're all for that."

Polling stations open in Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Staffordshire on Thursday morning.

See more here:

Local issues on the agenda for minor party candidates across Black Country and Staffordshire - expressandstar.com

The Repositorys publishing Jonathan Vanboskercks opinion pieceon Disney World (April 27) was both disappointing and tone-deaf in the same time period of Derek Chauvins conviction for murder.

To quote Mr. Vanboskerck, Full disclosure: I am a Christian and a conservative Republican … He made abundantly clear in the article that he disapproves of people with tattoos, creative hairstyles and other expressions of individuality in their personal appearance. He attributes the changes at Disney businesses to political correctness, not to the fact that the world has moved on from his world view of what he wants to see everywhere. He proclaims his need to take offense at his fellow humans and any suggestions of his racism.

The truly sad statements that he makes about Splash Mountain and Song of the South in that venue indicate that he has no intention of ever considering what otherpeople might see, hearor feel when specific references are made to slavery having been a pleasant existence. On the Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean similarly demeaning depictions of once-accepted movie characters have been eliminated. He states that this makes the parks less fun.

Instead of his plea to the Disney company to "return to the values and vision"of the past, may I suggest that he examine his position of white privilege and open his eyes to the daily insults that others experience. Contrary to his view that Disney World will make less money, I am hopeful that these small steps in the direction of eliminating racism in all its forms can make the parks be fun for everyone, which they certainly have not been.

I call on the editorial staff of the Repository to refuse to publish further articles that promote racist apologists like Jonathan Vanboskerck.

Wendy Lichtenwalter,Jackson Township

See the rest here:

Letter to the Editor: Columnist's view on Disney World was disappointing - Canton Repository

On Thursday, April 8th, the Society of Fellows hosted a remote lecture via Zoom delivered by Dr. Kiarina Kordela entitled Biopower From Here to Eternity. I attended this event at the behest of our President, as he thought it up my alley, and indeed the premise was greatly intriguing to me, and I would have attended regardless of assignment had I caught the email the first time around. I like to think he nudged me in the direction of Dr. Kordelas talk to make up for the last time I was sent on assignment to a campus event, a two-hour talk and the future of some obscure (or not, I wouldnt know) subcategory of gene editing, in which I was the only undergraduate in attendance, and of which I understood not a word.

Similarly, this time around I was once again the only undergraduate student, to my knowledge, in attendance, though only just; one recently-graduated 20 also sat in. I am happy and relieved to report to the reader that I did, in part, comprehend the context of the lecture, and so will be able to more adequately cover the event in question. My apologies to anyone unfortunate enough to have read my coverage of the biology event, and may this article offer some meager condolence.

I found the meeting felt more like a dinner party, one to which I was lucky enough to be invited and as such stood, enraptured, in the corner of the room, thirstily imbibing the impassioned discussion of the great minds before me, rather than another Zoom meeting.

The event was small and intimate, or as intimate as one can get in a Zoom meeting room, and we totalled nine, including Dr. Kordela herself. It was organized and hosted by Dr. James A. Godley, a postdoctoral scholar of the Society of Fellows here at Dartmouth, whose dissertation examined the religious structure of mourning and grief in postbellum America, a subject matter that became quickly cogent to the meeting toward the close of the event. Dr. Kordela in turn comes from Macalester College in St. Paul, where she is a Professor of German and the Director of the Critical Theory Program. The content of her lecture was developed, for the most part, in her book, Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx-Freud-Lacan: The (Bio)Power of Structure, which was published in 2018.

Dr. Kordelas insight in this context comes primarily from her synthesis of the works of Spinoza, Marxist economic theory, and contemporary psychoanalysis in the vein of Lacan. She finds that Marxs conception of commodity fetishism maps quite nicely on to Spinozas depiction of being and extension, or being as self-actualization, and thus the monism of Spinoza offers insight into the dynamics of linguistic structuralism and contemporary political discourse. For in Spinoza, being also includes the power of self-actualization, not the mere physical moment of being, and thus commodification must capture both being and power, or body and extension. The being is converted, under a capitalist framework, into Value, an abstraction of the being, and thus linguistic structuralism arises as capitalism arises in order to offer a framework for dealing with abstractions. Power, then, becomes the object of, and is subsumed in, biopower, the control governing bodies or systems exert over bodies.

I have read a fair amount of theory in my day, from the obfuscating and tedious words of Hegel, to the existential pragmatism of Fanon, to the winding and illuminating histories of Foucault. I find that, among these writers and thinkers, the most memorable of them stand out not only for their ideas but for their grasp of writing, for their employment of narrative, for their craft. Dr. Kordela places herself squarely among the best in terms of oratory; she weaves stories of her own discovery of the ideas she discusses with the ideas themself, she embellishes with humor and charisma, and she leads her audience on a journey alongside her, as opposed to beating them over the head with her theory. As a result I found the meeting felt more like a dinner party, one to which I was lucky enough to be invited and as such stood, enraptured, in the corner of the room, thirstily imbibing the impassioned discussion of the great minds before me, rather than another Zoom meeting.

Particularly engaging was the fact that the subject matter of the meeting was at all moments tied to the present and beyond. This became immediate and explicit as the basics of her ideas were cemented and their utility in examining contemporary political discourse and the figure of Trump became central. She traces the development of various biopolitical technologies and their attempt to repress power through the offer of what Lacan calls the semblance de jouissance. Political correctness, she notes, stood as a powerful technology of power wielded in liberalism, one around which political discourse revolved certainly since the mid-twentieth century and perhaps before. Yet Trump emerges, shocking everyone, as an appeal to sovereignty, a political technique more akin to the demagogues of the 18th and 19th centuries. His explosion onto the political scene and subsequent election enabled the release of a jouissance of racism, of populist xenophobia and anti-intellectualism, all sentiments that had been previously repressed for generations under political correctness.

Political correctness, she notes, stood as a powerful technology of power wielded in liberalism, one around which political discourse revolved certainly since the mid-twentieth century and perhaps before.

The important thing to note is that in either of these cases biopower above all values life (or perhaps vitality in the case of Trumpism), values power, the extension of the body. It aims to erase mortality, to obfuscate death among statistics and abstractions, to, as Dr. Kordela notes, prevent the body from risking itself for some greater aim. The fear of death, she illustrates, ultimately means that some form of exploitation must always be accepted by the body.

It is here the project takes a radical turn, and though it may be inappropriate to deem it utopian, it feels so in spirit. Professor Klaus Mladek, of the German Studies and Comparative Literature departments, who is in attendance (and is also, I add in the spirit of transparency, one of the best professors I have had the good fortune to learn under in my time at Dartmouth), brings up the term melancholic revolution. This is a phrase he has coined, or helped coin, and comes from a project he is currently co-authoring with Professor George Edmondson of the English department entitled A Politics of Melancholia. The project, as I understand it, and my sincerest apologies to Professor Edmondson and Professor Mladek if I misrepresent, aims to show melancholia to be not a malady of the individual but a manifestation of the spirit of a community, a necessary response to and powerful tool against coercive forces. The melancholic revolution describes a resistance of the community that is fueled by their very melancholia, a despair which stands in opposition to the fear of death and thus hopes to shrug off the chains of biopower.

The lecture comes to a close, and I leave these comrades of the melancholic revolution, Kordela with her radical insight, Godley with his preoccupation with mourning, Edmondson and Klaus with their melancholic revolution, and, though merely exiting a Zoom meeting, feel myself a bit lighter on my feet, a bit more equipped to throw my grief into the collective melancholia.

The rest is here:

Dr. Kiarina Kordela and the Comrades of the Melancholic Revolution - Dartmouth Review

You know who's not canceled? The endless parade of conservative pundits and politicians complaining about "cancel culture." You know who is canceled? George Floyd is canceled. Breonna Taylor is canceled. Ma'Khia Bryant is canceled. Andrew Brown Jr. is canceled. They are the true victims in America's longest-running culture war. Anyone who tells you different is just gaslighting. You want "cancel culture"? America isplagued with cancel culture. And no one is more American than conservatives, as they never cease reminding you.

Despite earlier boutique appeal,the term "cancel culture" had only faintly registered with the broader public before the July Fourth holidaylast year (Google trends), when then-President Donald Trump gave a speech at MountRushmore, warning of "a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for," and saying that his opponents' "political weapons" included''cancel culture' driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees."

It was a ludicrous accusation coming from the man who's signature line "You're fired!" was the quintessential expression of actually-existing cancel culture. More recently, Trump had beenthe main driver of the cancellation of NFL Colin Kaepernick, demanding not just that the NFL quarterback befired, but driven fromthe country. Thatabsurdity prompted CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale to post a list of people or institutionsTrump had called out to cancel on Twitter over the years, ranging from corporations like AT&T, Appleand Macy's to newspapers like the Dallas Morning News and the Arizona Republicto liberal commentatorslike Paul Krugman and Tourand even conservatives like Karl Rove, Rich Lowry, Charles Krauthammerand Jonah Goldberg.

But now that Trump himself has been canceled by the votes of 81,268,924 Americans, "cancel culture" has become a go-to weapon of choice for Trumpian conservatives, fueled by a branded string of stories in conservative media, including the New York Post, Breitbart, the Daily Caller and the Daily Wire. With Trump himself no longer dominating news cycles 24/7, there's a huge void to fill. Conservative "cancel culture" panic helps fill that void by providing a shared cookie-cutter framework to both fuel and give shape to that panic which is in fact a genuine cultural panic about the white right's loss of power to impose itsworldview, and resulting judgments, on others. To hold onto power, conservatives arecommitted to building the "cancel culture" narrative, casting themselves as victims along the lines of my December Salon story on perceived victimhood.

A meaningfully meaningless term

As Media Matters editor Parker Malloy argues, regarding the terms "cancel culture,""woke"and "identity politics": "Whatever real definitions these words had before they were co-opted by the right have been diluted to the point of meaninglessness." For conservatives, thatmeaninglessness is a feature, not a bug. Those wordsmean whatever a right-wingaccuser needs them to mean in the moment. They are talismanic terms, representing the verycultural power the right feels itselflosing in today's rapidly changing world. "Cancel culture" in particular has a profound Orwellian or even Nietzschean power: a transvaluation of values, transforming a moment of existential loss into one of triumph, at least for as long as we let them get away with it.

There are, however, two modest constraints on meaning we can observe: the notions that cancel culture is something new, and that it comes exclusively from the left. The reality is exactly the opposite.For as long as culture has been changing, conservatives have tried to stop it bysuppressing or demonizinganything that challenges their worldview. Not all conservatives, of course, and not in all ways. But this has been a central thrust of conservative thought, not just in the modern political era, when the terms "liberal"and "conservative"emerged, but as far back as ancient Greece, as Eric Alfred Havelock showed in "The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics."

In American history we can see dramatic examples of conservative cancel culture in the Alien and Sedition Acts, in the 4,743 post-Civil War lynchings to terrorize and suppress black political power, in the post-World War I Palmer Raids, in which 10,000 were arrested and 556 deported, in the McCarthy era, during which hundreds were imprisoned and 10,000 to 12,000 Americans lost their jobs including the long-neglected anti-gayLavender Scareand in the FBI's COINTELPRO Program, which targeted the 1960s civil rights and anti-war movements, labelling Martin Luther King Jr.'s SCLC as a Black nationalist "hate group." Trump's obsession with canceling people he fears fits squarely within this historical tradition. After all, his political mentor and second father-figure was Joe McCarthy's lead investigator, Roy Cohn. We shouldn't be the least bit surprised or confused by the cancel culture hysteria being promoted today as a front for the same evils it pretends to be fighting against.

Still, the term itself is newcompared to this centuries-long history, so it warrants clarification. In early April, the Washington Post's Clyde McGrady provided an excellent guide, "The strange journey of 'cancel,' from a Black-culture punchline to a White-grievance watchword."McGrady offersa concise cultural history, from legendary songwriter/producer Nile Rodgers' experience with a bad date, rendered into the 1981 Chic song "Your Love Is Cancelled"to its appearance in"New Jack City" a decade laterto 2000s songs "Hustler's Ambition" by 50 Cent and "I'm Single" by Lil Wayneand finally to Black Twitter.

"Declaring someone or something 'canceled' on Twitter was not really an attempt to activate a boycott or run anyone from the public square," McGradyexplains. "Saying someone was 'canceled' was more like changing the channel and telling your friends and followers about it than demanding that the TV execs take the program off the air."

It's worth highlighting that Rodgers' bad-date experience at the root of all this sprang from his working-class common man rejection of tossing his cultural weight around:

[A]t heart, he was still a humble kid whose parents had struggled with drug addiction and who felt fortunate to have made it as far as he did. So, when his date asked the matre d' to remove people from a table so they could sit there instead, Rodgers bristled.

Her attempt to use his celebrity to push people around was a dealbreaker. "No, no, no, I don't do that," Rodgers remembered explaining. "I don't play that card."

In short, canceling everyday people in the way that conservatives portray "cancel culture" to work wasthe exact opposite of what motivated Rodgers to coin the term in the first place, as well as how it's been used on Twitter. Think aboutthat anytime you hear the term used.

You should also think of everything conservatives are doing or trying to do right now to cancel the views of those they disagree with. The following are just a few prominent examples. In each case, it's about those who wield power "canceling" or at least trying to cancel those who would challenge them. Their efforts to cancel democracy at the ballot box (with 361 bills in 47 states as of March 24) and in the streets (81 anti-protest bills in 34 states as of April 21) are deadly serious threats to American democracy.

But the right's most persistent, long-running cancel-culture attacks center on education. As Fairness and Accuracy In Reportingnoted on William F. Buckley's death, "Buckley's career began in 1951 with the publication of 'God and Man at Yale,' an attack on his alma mater that urged the firing of professors whom he felt were insufficiently hostile to socialism and atheism."

Cancel culture in education

In March, Boise State University abruptly suspended all 52 sections of a required general education course, "Foundations of Ethics & Diversity," citing "allegations that a student or students have been humiliated and degraded in class on our campus for their beliefs and values." Suspending 52 sections of a required course without investigation for perhaps a single student complaint is of course wildly out of bounds, as pointed out by John K. Wilson at the Academe blog:

Even if one instructor had done something terrible in one class, that would only justify (in the most extreme cases) suspending that instructor temporarily and finding a substitute to continue the class. It could not justify suspending all 52 classes in which there was no evidence of any misconduct.

Shedding light on the over-reaction, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reported, "The cancellation of the classes comes after more than a year of lawmakers' efforts to rein in classes at Idaho universities and colleges." But the legislature wasn't acting on its own, as Wilson made clear:

The Idaho legislators are being pressured by right-wing nonprofits who demand censorship of liberal ideas on campus. A December 2020reportfrom the right-wing Idaho Freedom Foundation and the Claremont Institute declared that "eliminating social justice initiatives at Idaho's universities is necessary for meaningful reform, as well as disrupting their ability to provide stable careers for social justice advocates." The report called for the state legislature to act by "penalizing universities that continue to emphasize social justice education." This report urged the state legislature to violate academic freedom and ban classes it deemed too liberal: "Direct the University to eliminate courses that are infused with social justice Ideology." Leading right-wing think tanks are actively demanding a ban on courses based on their ideology. This is an example of conservative cancel culture far more extreme than anything pushed by left-wing activists.

The report doesn't just call for eliminating individual courses, however. It calls for the elimination of five whole departments Gender Studies, Sociology, Global Studies, Social Work andHistory that it claims are infused with "social justice" ideology. (A sixth blacklisted department has since been added: Criminal Justice.) Eight other departments (later updated to nine) are on a watch list of sorts, judged to be "social justice in training." What conservatives want here is strikingly similar to what Viktor Orbn has done in Hungary, where he's just announced the privatization of 11 public universities, to be run by political allies.

Boise State's recklessly illegal actions are just the tip of the iceberg. On April 15, Education Week reported that Republican lawmakers in eight states (including Idaho) have drafted bills restricting how teachers can discuss racism and sexism. "The bills use similar language as an executive order former President Donald Trump put in place to ban diversity trainings for federal workers," it reported.

Georgetown political scientist Donald Moynihan saw all this coming years ago. In a New York Times op-ed just before Trump took office,Moynihan then at the University of Wisconsin focused attention on what was really happening where he worked.

"At least three times in the past six months, state legislators have threatened to cut the budget of the University of Wisconsin at Madison for teaching about homosexuality, gender and race," his article began. All the discussions focused on the dangers of "political correctness" (the buzzword of choice before "cancel culture")bore no relation to his own experience teaching at public universities in three states over 14 years. "Students can protest on the campus mall, demanding that policies be changed; elected officials can pass laws or cut resources to reflect their beliefs about how a campus should operate," he wrote. "One group has much more power than the other."

I asked Moynihan about how he came to write that piece when he did. Here's what he said:

I was first engaged on speech issues when the then-governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, proposed to remove "the search for truth" from my university's missionstatement. (He would later claim it was a typo.) He thenreduced tenure protections for faculty and new policies that would have made it easier to bring guns on campus. Republican politicians would talk about free speech on campus, but seemed to be intent on eroding the conditions to protect such speech. Politicians were also willing to target faculty members. The chair of the Assembly Higher Education committee started monitoring faculty syllabi and calling for the firing of faculty whose courses he did not like.

That was when I spoke out. It seemed deeply unfair that state officials would so blatantly use their power to determine what was, and what was not, acceptable speech. ...

Soon after a Ben Shapiro talk was interrupted for about 10 minutes the legislature proposed and the conservative Board of Regents adopted a new set of policies that they said protected free speech but effectively forced campuses to punish students for protest. Our Board of Regents was almost uniformly conservative appointees who seemed to see it as their job to attack the institution they had been appointed to represent.

I'll have more to say about Shapiro's role below. But it's part of a broader campaign. "Conservatives have been successful at demonizing the people who work on campus faculty, staff and students as threats to free speech," Moynihan told me. "Attacking universities became a staple of the far right, propelled by an entire ecosystem of media funded by donors like the Koch or DeVos families, such as Campus Reform. [More on them below, too.] Tucker Carlson had a themed segment called 'Campus Craziness.'"

Worse than that, Moynihan said:

The mainstream media bought it. It wasn't just on the right. Journalists at the Atlantic or writers in the New York Times told us that students were becoming dangerously intolerant, and faculty were brainwashing them. My op-edin the Times was one of the few that pushed against that general narrative. The dominant narrative, even in places like the New York Times, was that conservative speech was being suppressed, and the students and faculty were the villains. Someone counted this! They found that over an 18-month stretch, there were 21 op-eds about the suppressionof conservative speech but just three, including mine, on conservative threats to speech.

Remember: Moynihan's op-ed ran just days before Trump took office, having made complaints about "political correctness" a recurrent campaign theme.

"Once the general narrative was established, even trivial examples students at Oberlin complaining about food names - were presented as serious and representative threats to speech," Moynihan continued."There were also a series of college tours by people like Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter andBen Shapirowho said offensive things designed to enrage people, and then generated protests and interruptions thatembellished theirbrands asfearless free-speech champions."

In March 2018, Sanford Ungar reported on results from the Georgetown Free Speech Tracker:

[M]ost of the incidents where presumptively conservative speech has been interrupted or squelched in the last two or three years seem to involve the same few speakers: Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray, and Ann Coulter. In some instances, they seem to invite, and delight in, disruption.

At Vox, Zack Beauchamp put a finer point on it:

What Ungar is suggesting here is that the "campus free speech" crisis is somewhat manufactured. Conservative student groups invite speakers famous for offensive and racially charged speech all of the above speakers fit that bill in a deliberate attempt to provoke the campus left. In other words, they're trolling.

Trolling takes other forms as well, as Alice Speri reported for the Interceptin early April. Her story carried the subhead, "Campus Reform and its publisher, the Leadership Institute, are siccing armies of trolls on professors across the country." Campus Reform purports to expose "liberal bias and abuse on the nation's college campuses," but regularly relies on misrepresentation, first to elicit faculty comments and then to mis-report them, making them seem as sinister as possible. "Over the last several years, Campus Reform has targeted hundreds of college professors," Speri reported, "leading to online harassment campaigns, doxxing, threats of violence, and calls on universities to fire their faculty."

A Trinity College assistant professor, Isaac Kamola, "has tracked more than 1,570 stories posted on Campus Reform since 2020 and surveyed the 338 individuals they targeted." He "found that at least 40 percent of respondents received 'threats of harm' following a Campus Reform article, mostly via email and social media." She goes on to say, "Less than half the people surveyed by Kamola reported receiving support from their universities' administrations, and more than 12 percent reported facing disciplinary action as a result of a Campus Reform story. Three people said they lost their jobs."

In short, they were canceled.And no one put them on national TV to talk about it. That's just one more way in which conservativegaslighting about cancel culture advances the very thing conservatives claimto beconcerned about.

"Having created the narrative of the intolerant liberal campus as a problem, conservative politicians could propose a solution," Moynihan continued. "They could make a case for why their policing of speech on campus was actually protecting free speech. They effectively persuaded many that politiciansshould be trusted to monitor speech on campus, more than the people who lived on campus and have historically done a pretty good job of protecting speech."

But none of this matched reality."Wisconsin has a long history of protest and counter-protest on campus, some of it quite violent. The idea that students had suddenly become aggressiveseemed clearly wrong to me," Moynihan recalled. "These terms I kept hearing just did not fit with my experiencewith the students I engaged with. The gap between my lived experience on campus and what was being portrayed in the media was large."

At the same time, "I looked around the world and saw a very disturbingtrend: Authoritarian governmentsin places like Hungary, Turkey and China were policing speech on campus as part of their effort to stifle dissent, using many of the same tools that U.S. state legislatures are adopting," Moynihan said. "For example, a bill in Florida encourages studentsto record and monitor their professors to expose their views. What could be more chilling to speech in the classroom? This is the same tool that China uses to control universities: Student informers report any dissent against the party."

Canceling democracy at the ballot box

Trump's refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 election was the epitome of attempting to cancel democracy. But it was only an intensification of processes already underway. Republicans have only won the popular vote for president once in eight elections since 1988. They have not represented a majority of voters in the Senate since 1996. Their $30 million REDMAP project in 2010 created the most sweeping partisan redistricting of the House in US history, as former Salon editor in chief David Daley recounted in "Ratf**ked." Baseless claims of voter fraud have been repeatedly invoked in justifying and motivating voter suppression efforts. More broadly, a new study of state-level democratic backsliding since 2000 found that "Republican control of state government, however, consistently and profoundly reduces state democratic performance during this time period."

Still, what's happening now goes considerably further. A majority of Republicans refuse to believe Biden legitimately won the election, leading to an avalanche of new voter suppression bills 361 bills in 47 states as of March 24, according to the Brennan Center, which reported:

Most restrictive bills take aim at absentee voting, while nearly a quarter seek stricter voter ID requirements. State lawmakers also aim to make voter registration harder, expand voter roll purges or adopt flawed practices that would risk improper purges, and cut back on early voting.

Sharply underscoring the cancel culture motivations the conflict between established state power and shifting public opinion the report continued: "The states that have seen the largest number of restrictive bills introduced areTexas(49 bills),Georgia(25 bills), andArizona(23 bills). Bills are actively moving in the Texas and Arizona statehouses, and Georgia enacted an omnibus voter suppression bill last week."

The most infamous aspect of the Georgia law is its restriction ongiving waterto people waiting in long lines to vote. But as election law expert Rick Hasen explained in a New York Times op-ed, there's something even more sinister involved, a "new threat of election subversion" that "represent[s] a huge threat to American democracy itself." Specifically, "The Georgia law removesthe secretary of state from decision-making power on the state election board," which is aimed at Brad Raffensperger, who refused to "find" 11,780 votesto overturn Biden's victory. "But the changes will apply to Mr. Raffensperger's successor, too, giving the legislature a greater hand in who counts votes and how they are counted," Hasen explained.

It's hardly an isolated case, he noted:"According to a new reportbyProtect Democracy,Law Forwardand theStates United Democracy Center, Republican legislators have proposed at least 148 bills in 36 states that could increase the chances of cooking the electoral books." More precisely, the press release says:

Many of the bills would make elections more difficult to administer or even unworkable; make it more difficult to finalize election results; allow for election interference and manipulation by hyper-partisan actors; and, in the worst cases, allow state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters and precipitate a democracy crisis. If these bills had been in place in 2020, they would have significantly added to the turmoil of the post-election period, and raised the prospect that the outcome of the election would have been contrary to the popular vote.

This is what a real cancel culture crisis looks like. And it's 100% conservative from top to bottom. There are of course some individual conservatives who strongly object but nowhere near enough.

Canceling democracy in the streets

But democracy doesn't begin and end at the polls. The First Amendment protects basic freedoms that make meaningful democracy possible, including "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Republicans have been busy trying to cancel our democracy on this front as well, with81 anti-protest bills introduced in 34 states during the 2021 legislative session, "more than twice as many proposals as in any other year, according to Elly Page, a senior legal adviser at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law," the New York Times reported on April 21. (Those laws are tracked here.)

"Republican legislators inOklahomaand Iowa have passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets," the Times reported. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. "We've seen at least 15 bills introduced that would create new immunity for drivers who hit protesters with their cars," Page's colleague Nick Robinson told Democracy Now! on April 26. Thatjust one of many objectionable features in a recently-passed Florida bill that Gov.Ron DeSantis signed while claiming it wasas "anti-rioting." The ACLU of Florida characterized it instead as "anti-protest."Just three people would be enough to constitute a "riot" and 26 wouldconstitute an "aggravated riot," potentially facinglong prison sentences.

"Under this new bill, let's say you just go to a protest, and a handful of people kick over a trash can. Just by being part of that crowd, you can be arrested and prosecuted for rioting and face a felony," Robinson explained. "Actually, under the law, no one actually has to commit any violence at all. If there's just a danger to property, then people can be arrested for rioting."

In short, thisa naked governmental power grab, meant to squelch popular protest, and aimed specificallyat Black Lives Matter protesters. How do we know? Florida lawmakers said as much, and they included a provision blocking any Florida city or county from cutting police budgetswithout explicit permission from the state.

Conservative anti-protest cancel culture is nothing new, of course. The Palmer Raids were supposed to headoff a Russian Revolution-style violent uprising, but only turned up a total of four pistols from thousands of arrests. More recently, Republican state lawmakers have focused on criminalizing climate activism, as the Brennan Center reported in March:

Since 2016,13 stateshave quietly enacted laws that increase criminal penalties for trespassing, damage, and interference with infrastructure sites such as oil refineries and pipelines. At leastfive more stateshave already introduced similar legislation this year.

The laws are based on post-9/11 national security legislationto protect vital physical infrastructure, "but moststate critical infrastructure lawsfocus more narrowly on oil and gas pipelines," the Center noted. "While protecting critical infrastructure is a legitimate government function, these laws clearly target environmental and Indigenous activists by significantly raising the penalties for participating in or even tangentially supporting pipeline trespassing and property damage, crimes that are already illegal."

And there's one final conservative cancel culture twist: the question of who's calling the shots:

Many laws are modeled ondraft legislationprepared by the American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC, a powerful lobbying group funded by fossil fuel companies likeExxonMobil and Shell.

Cancel culture In Congress

Those are three broad areas where conservative cancel culture is both widespread and deeply dangerous to democracy. But that's hardly the whole story. Consider what's happened with two key Biden appointments, Vanita Gupta, for Associate Attorney General, and Kristen Clarke to head the DOJ Civil Rights Division. Both were subject to dishonest, racistright-wing smear campaigns, as CNN reported, and Gupta was confirmed 51-49, with just one Republicanvote(Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska)on April 21. Both were relentlessly portrayed as dangerous extremists, when they've actually been leaders of mainstream civil rights organizations the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (Gupta) and Lawyers' Committee on Civil Rights Under Law (Clarke). Both were attacked for supposedly being anti-police (no racial stereotyping there, right?) even though both had been endorsed by police organizations, including the Fraternal Order of Police (Gupta) and the Major Cities Chiefs Association (Clarke).

The attacks on them were part of a broader pattern of attacks on nominees who are women and/or people of color, including Xavier Becerra (Health and Human Services), Deb Haaland (Department of Interior)and Neera Tanden (Office of Management and Budget). Becerra was confirmed 50-49 with Sen. Susan Collins of Maine as his only GOP vote while Tanden's nomination was withdrawn.

All this is simply accepted as normal now, but it's prima facie evidence of a concerted conservative cancel-culture effort to stifle the voices of key Democraticconstituencies. It's visible in the broad reach of voter suppression efforts, of protest suppression efforts and curriculum suppression efforts as well. They've all but given up on advancing anything like a governing agenda. At the Atlantic, Ron Brownstein observed:

With their opposition to President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, Republicans are doubling down on a core bet they've made for his presidency: that the GOP can maintain support among its key constituencies while fighting programs that would provide those voters with tangible economic assistance.

To accomplishthat, they have to cancelreality itself. No problem Republicanshavebeen doing that for decades. The only difference now is that they've stopped doing anything else.

Link:

Conservatives claim to hate "cancel culture" but it's the heart of the right-wing agenda - Salon

Could we trace a direct line from Rush Limbaugh, Americas most popular talk radio host until his death in February, to Donald Trump, the worlds least qualified leader since Kaiser Wilhelm II and Americas most destructive president?

We could start this circuitous but plausible journey in 1988, when Limbaughs flagship talk show for WABC in New York made its debut, and end in 2020 with Trumps final State of the Union address, in which he awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the day after the right-wing shock jock revealed that he had lung cancer. Along the way there have been many imitators, including Mike Pencewho before being Trumps vice president hosted a radio show that he dubbed Rush Limbaugh on decaf for WRCR-FM in Indiana. Limbaugh has also served as inspiration for Fox newscasters like Tucker Carlson and the hard-right website Breitbart News, which from 2012 was led by Steve Bannon, who went on to become Trumps chief strategist.

The first thing to note is that if your plan is to change the radio discourse, migrate that change onto TV, render the unsayable sayable in public, influence a major political party, anoint your chosen leader and finally take charge, its going to take a very long time. But it is also eminently possible. Like many US cultural trends, right-wing shock jocks have already arrived on these shores and the fear is that, unless were very careful, they could push our politics towards ever- greater polarisation, and a barren sourness in which compromise cannot grow. This is the environment in which GB News hoves onto the horizon, headed by former Sunday Times editor and Spectator chairman Andrew Neil, respected as a BBC interviewer but never short of a strident conservative opinion. He promises an altogether different kind of rolling TV news commentarymore exciting, robust. Ofcom would once have prevented this unfurling into a homegrown Fox News. But will it still?

Some of the conditions that created shock-jockery and amplified its power were distinctively American. None of it would have been possible without President Reagans cancellation of the fairness doctrine governing radio output in 1987, whereas herefor the momentwe still have Ofcom to cover radio and television and a BBC that maintains strict impartiality rules. (Podcasts, though, are growing and are an unregulated wild west.) To attract listeners and therefore advertising revenue, US radio stations needed a lot of people to be driving long distancesnot just for the share-of-ear but also because many of those calling in to vent their spleen were reluctant to do so in front of their families. The rise of the mobile phone was key to Limbaughs early success: his network did a deal with the phone companies to make it free to call. Contrast Britain, where taxi drivers still have disproportionate representation on call-ins; nobody else spends enough time in the car.

Yet the UK copycattery was almost immediate: by 1988, James Whale of the now defunct Radio Aire hadinfluenced by Howard Stern, a loudmouth of the New York airwaves who regularly hosted Trumpchanged his radio-schtick to become much more controversial. That year Whale also got his radio show simulcast on Yorkshire TV, and before long his mix of rage, blokey humour and climate change scepticism were familiar nationwide.

I once pestered LBC to audition me for a phone-in slot of my own. I didnt get the gig

But while priding themselves on pricking liberal pieties, neither Stern nor his English imitator were movement conservatives like Limbaugh. Nor was Whale quite a slam dunk commercial success. He didnt have an army of disciples and inevitably fell foul of Ofcommost expensively when he told listeners to vote for Boris Johnson in the run-up to the 2008 London mayoral election, costing talkSPORT 20,000 in fines. It was not until the run-up to Brexit that controversialists started to proliferate on our airwaves.

Former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins was given her first regular show on LBC in 2016. A year later she was swiftly removed after calling for a final solution on Twitter following the Manchester Arena bombing. Prior to that, her suite of interests was strikingly similar to that of the American right: antipathy towards Islam, a drumbeat of she-asked-for-it misogyny and sideswipes at the obese. It is interesting to read her quotes in cold print; theyre so extreme that in a liberal (like me) they stimulate a visceral but excited disgust, like hearing an intruder. Presumably, for those who agree with her, shes provoking a similar reaction except without the disgust. Such thrilling reactions make sense of what is otherwise puzzling: at its beginning, ultra-conservative speech radio in the US was almost equally popular with Democrats as Republicans. Crucially, though, Hopkins skated too close to literal fascism; a signature of successful shock jocks, both in the US and the UK, is that under the cover of straight-from-the-hip authenticity, theyre always careful not to sound like Hitler.

In the past five years, however, voices who used to be more emollient or at least more veiledNigel Farage, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Mark Dolanhave become more strident, while counter-shocks from the left arrived. Actually, that shouldnt be in the plural: its basically just LBCs James OBrien.

Inspired by OBrienit was exhilarating to hear his dramatic style deployed in the service of decency rather than divisionI once pestered LBC to audition me for a phone-in slot of my own. I did a role-play with a producershe pretending to be Helen, a Southampton nativist who wanted to know why immigrants were allowed to come over here and exist. I cannot begin to describe how difficult this conversation was: never mind landing a point, it was hard keeping my voice level enough so that I didnt sound like a smurf. Helen was taking a very recognisable stance, taken straight from the columns of the Daily Mail; but the conversation was also fragile. Like many callers, she didnt have the rhetorical clout of the average Oxbridge-trained debater. So the presenter has to treat the caller decently, while stoutly rebutting their point of viewall without laughing or swearing. Needless to say, I didnt get the gig.

OBrien, who has been doing an LBC show since 2003, shot to prominence by handling these conversations flawlessly, but also with his pithy, impassioned monologues against Brexit. He notes to me neutrally: I was the first in the country to use the tactics of the shock jock in the service of the opposite agenda.

What used to check campaigning broadcasting from the right or the left were strict impartiality rules, but technology is breaking down the old certainties. When the majority of under 25s are getting their news from either social media or YouTube, the idea that one regulator can ensure balance is fanciful. In February 2020, it was announced that Ofcom would be put in charge of regulating the internet in the UK. All the discussion was around harmful contentinciting violence and self-harm, child pornography and so onrather than disinformation and fake news, let alone political balance. The internets problem is that it sprawls around the world, and theres so much of it. Ofcom enforcing a fairness doctrine would be like trying to turn the ocean vegan. Plus, with former Mail editor Paul Dacre poised to become the bodys next chair, can the organisation really be relied on to fight its corner as it used to, and cleave to the old principles?

he appeal of shock jocks has increased at the same time as both the US and UK have become more diverse and their mass media more sensitive to accusations of prejudice. A functioning and inclusive civil sphere requires that certain opinions can no longer be aired out loud. From views on stop-and-search rules to women wearing miniskirts, the lines of taboo are drawn and redrawn. The list of unsayables necessarily has to be exhaustive if it is to be universal. There are always going to be people who think its gone a bit far; its salutary to note that when Limbaugh first started out, 62 per cent of Republicans but also 48 per cent of Democrats thought the mainstream media had too much liberal bias. So there was definitely a gap in the market. As one radio executive, David Hall, said of Limbaugh, he was always looking to turn somebodys sacred cow into some delicious hamburgers and a couple of steaks.

We havent just imported this trend from America: there is a native tradition of railing against political correctness as it was once called, or woke culture as it has come to be known. OBrien is insistent on this point: We were already much further down the road to Fox News than I thinkanybody realised because the process was so incremental. Ever since Murdoch bought the Sun in 1969, that tabloid sensibility has been very dominant I came from a middlebrow tabloid background: I had an ability to use those tactics but I cared what was true. So I could get a big emotional response without lying to people about a refugee who was going to steal their sausages.

In other words, the radio shock jock was less shocking to a UK audience than youd expect because the red tops had been fulminating against various groups for years: it was often migrants, as well as single mothers and other demonised figures. The first week that I started work at the Evening Standard in 1996, one splash was about a refugee from sub-Saharan Africa getting free HIV treatment on the NHS.

Claiming it couldnt happen here is unsustainable when it already has. Indeed, the Great British media has already crowned a king, only he came from print rather than broadcast: a columnist who never cared much about the truth of what he wrote has become our prime minister.

Successful media personalities quickly realise there is little to gain from complexity, no incentive to compromise, no requirement to be consistent and nothing to be held accountable for. For the tabloid columnist craving eyeballs or the shock jock needing callers, simple solutions are attractive. When you transfer that sensibility into politics, you might end up promising to make Mexicans pay for a wall to keep Mexicans out of America, or float the idea of building a bridge over the Irish Sea to sort out Brexit.

The snare, however, on which shock-jockery as governance will unravel, remains the truth. When those unkeepable promises fail to come off, the people who were angry to start with become angrier. Many will stick with their shocker-in-chief but, as Trump learned to his cost last year, many others may be motivated to vote against him. And it is not only in politics, but also in the broadcast market where there could be limits to jockery. While we perceive ourselves to be more and more polarised, the talk radio we listen toand the expectations and relationships we have with ittells a different story.

Commercial radio has its largest audience share ever, but in terms of speech output, LBC outstrips talkRADIO by some margin (respective reach is 2.8m against less than 500,000). Most of those who fit the shock jock criteria are now at talkRADIOHartley-Brewer, Dolan, Whale, James Max. (Nigel Farage was ditched by LBC last year for comparing Black Lives Matter to the Taliban and so far hasnt been picked up elsewhere.) And talkRADIO was briefly taken off YouTube last year for spreading coronavirus disinformation.

LBC, meanwhile, has become much more podcast-like, with intense, intimate conversations. People imagine that if youre on speech radio you have to be a zealot or an ideologue to get the numbers, says Iain Dale, a Conservative who has turned out to be a pluralist behind the mic, but that is simply not the case. When I was on Drive, I trebled the numbers in three years. If people trust you as a presenter, if you havent got a threatening voice, if you dont shout at people, you will get them to open up in a way that they havent done to their own best friends. If youre doing a phone-in thats quite delicate, you dont need a full switchboard. All you need is four or five people who you give time to breathe.

Call-ins are like Victorian fairgrounds: people throw themselves into a boxing ring with a pro. The amateur never winsand no ones rooting for them

Phone-ins are a co-produced drama: the caller arrives with a clear sense of what the host wants. You may not realise how fine that attunement is until the host changes and the callers take a while to catch up. Shelagh Fogarty, who situates her politics thusIm not particularly a leftie or a rightie. I was probably the perfect BBC presenterjoined LBC from Radio 5 Live in 2014, feeling that as she approached 50 she wanted to express her own opinions more freely. She remembers that in the first months, some of the callers would be really coming at me. You know that sense of going quite red with shock in a conversation? Theyd be ringing to accuse me. OBrien calls this a gladiatorial format: the callers I wanted put through were the ones that were convinced that theyd get the better of me.

More than gladiators, it reminds me of the Victorian fairground, where people would throw themselves into the ring with a professional boxer. The amateur never winsand no ones rooting for them. But theres also a moral dimension: listeners come to witness hubris being bested and strength celebrated. Like the fervent monologues that have always been a signature of conservative radio but have taken on a new energy and reach since theyve been filmed, clipped and shared on social media, such moments create communities. People use the phrase echo chamber pejoratively despite the fact that it is a deeply human urge to be among people who have the same values and laugh at the same things.

Yet radio is a versatile medium: there are ways besides combat to create communities. Recently the unguarded personal encounter has become a signature of political discussion. Theres a world of difference between frankness and picking fights for their own sake, and even LBC breakfast host Nick Ferrari now sounds mellower, more curious. Meanwhile, OBrien says: Ive had a ton of therapy over the last few years, and Im very different now to how I was even in 2015. I was a very combative individual, I spent my life with my fists up, thinking that was normal. Then I stopped asking what people think and I started asking why they think it What I try to provide now is common ground and solace. Its still going to boil the piss of your average racist, but its not going to boil the piss of your average Brexit voter. Theyre just going to have to admit that Im right.

The dominant mood of commercial radionot to mention the much more regulated BBCis moving on from the controversialists. In the US, shock jocks (Limbaugh until his death and Sean Hannity) occupied spots one and three on the most listened-to formats in the country, with around 13m weekly listeners each; public news was at spots two and four. But in the UK, BBC audiences tower over their rivals. Radio 4s weekly reach was nearly 11m by the period after the 2019 election, and its not even as popular as Radio 2.

So while commercial radio has enjoyed spikes in growth, its unsurprising that Mohit Bakaya, controller of Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra, sounds sanguine. We dont tend to do as well on social media [as commercial] but its a mistake to think we have to emulate it, or chase its audience on those terms. Wed lose something that, once wed lost, wed never get back. Even so, this idea that every programme within itself has to be 100 per cent balanced, thats just not true, Bakaya says. Rather, the mission is to create a public square for civilised, decent conversation, in which the highest value is whats true and whats meaningful.

Frankly, you could argue the finer points of what the BBC deems meaningful. Not to mention how it arrives at its editorial priorities, including the extent to which it follows the lead of a mostly right-wing print media andsince former Tory council candidate Tim Davie became director-general with major Tory donor Richard Sharp as chairwhether or not it accepts an agenda laid down by the government.

Yet what you couldnt do is discern much influence from more controversial speech radio: barring the odd 5 Live presenter such as Stephen Nolan, the BBC hasnt tried to mimic controversy-seekers. Listener habits and the ecosystem of British speech radio tell a complicated story, one that challenges the assumption that theres a geyser of unheard rage and division just waiting for its political explosion. Regulation may no longer be able to save us, but empathy is playing bigger at the box office. The shock jocks moment may have come and gone.

See the article here:

Rise of the British shock jock - Prospect

As a schoolboy, Britains prime minister Boris Johnson appeared to be convinced that the normal rules did not apply to him.

I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else, wrote Johnsons Eton College house master, Martin Hammond, in 1982, as quoted in Andrew Gimsons biography of the premier.

The approach seems to have stayed with Johnson throughout his career, repeatedly landing him in hot water. For weeks, the government has been fending off allegations of sleaze -- British shorthand for scandals of corruption, questionable sexual behavior, or other shady dealings. Adding to the impression of disarray, it emerged that Johnsons cellphone number is still available on the Internet, from a press release published 15 years ago.

U.K. Parliamentary Sleaze Watchdog May Investigate Boris Johnson

The political donations watchdog has now opened an official inquiry after concluding there were reasonable grounds to believe the law had been broken in the way refurbishments to Johnsons apartment were paid for.

Potential penalties include fines or criminal charges, depending on which rules may have been breached. On the face of it, just a week away from crucial local elections on May 6, the political price could be high.

Johnson insists he broke no laws and is complying fully with the rules on political funding and the investigations into what happened. I dont think theres anything to see here, he said on Thursday, describing the row as a farrago of nonsense.

While most Conservatives believe their leader will ride out the storm, few are happy about it. One senior Tory figure attributes the premiers difficulties to his casual approach, which has become worse since the pandemic suspended or compromised the usual procedures for holding ministers to account.

In the words of one of Johnsons own ministers, this ridiculous row about expensive wallpaper in the Downing Street flat is typical of the premiers carelessness and shows he probably didnt think through the implications of his actions.

Yet overall, Johnson seems to have been right. So far in his career, his disregard for the normal rules of engagement has not held him back for long. In fact, it has been a large factor in his appeal as a politician who isnt part of the mainstream.

For Gimson, author of Boris: The Making of the Prime Minister, one reason why Johnson is so popular and has won over people who voted Labour all their lives is because he deliberately shuns political correctness, speaking out controversially and obviously flouting normal rules.

Boris makes things interesting, sometimes by things going wrong, Gimson said. He has never really been at all conscientious about following rules and he is obviously more tolerant of chaos and strife around him than other people.

Johnson plays up the performance, too. When he is getting ready to be photographed or to appear on television, the prime minister does the exact opposite of a slickly-styled politician. Instead of tidying himself up for the cameras, he runs a meaty hand through his blond hair to make it messy.

He shrugged off allegations of an affair with American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri, who was given taxpayer funding while Johnson was Mayor of London. None of this mattered much in 2019, when he led the Tories to a historic 80-seat majority at the general election.

Tory MP James Sunderland said voters are very supportive of Johnson and want a prime minister who is visual and outspoken. Boris Johnson is a personality.

He said voters are not bothered by the row over the apartment because this is just another attempt to find sleaze and scandal when its just not there.

One senior party official said the premier would be fine as long as next weeks elections in local English districts go well. Johnson and the Conservatives are ahead of the Labour opposition in opinion polls, with a YouGov survey for the Times giving the Tories an 11-point lead on Thursday.

But the sheer weight of allegations piling up against Johnson and his Conservatives remains a risk. For one thing, regulators may be less tolerant than voters. In 2018, parliamentary authorities rapped him for repeatedly being late in disclosing payments hed received.

In another report in 2019, the authorities were even less impressed that he had failed to register his ownership of a share of a house in the countryside. Parliaments Committee on Standards concluded with concern that these two investigations demonstrated a pattern of behavior by Johnson.

While he wasnt trying to hide anything, Johnson displayed an over-casual attitude toward obeying the rules along with a lack of effective organization within his office, the panel said. Further breaches could lead to more serious sanctions in future, it warned.

The big danger for the premier is that the investigations into the Downing Street flat take months or longer to conclude, while the drip-drip of allegations continues. Johnson has made an enemy of his former aide, Dominic Cummings, who is now on the warpath and ready to give evidence under oath.

If this episode hurts him, it will be because it bolsters an impression of untrustworthiness and of casualness that the Lex Greensill lobbying affair and other recent disclosures have fanned, said Bronwen Maddox, director of the Institute for Government. After a year when many people have lost relatives and friends to the virus or lost their jobs and struggled to support themselves, revelations that the prime ministers girlfriend has recruited a designer to overhaul the flat, spending tens of thousands of pounds, will seem graceless.

In the end, even with a forgiving public, the most popular prime ministers run out of road, according to Gimson. Every sort of charm wears off eventually.

With assistance by Kitty Donaldson, and Alex Morales

(Updates with PMs phone number online, latest poll numbers from third paragraph)

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Chaotic Johnson Always Struggled With Rules, and U.K. Voters Love It - Bloomberg