Cancellation Contrast
An unsurprising tale:
In early January, a day before students returned from winter break, Jeremy Glenn, the superintendent of the Granbury Independent School District in North Texas, told a group of librarians he'd summoned to a district meeting room that he needed to speak from his heart.
“I want to talk about our community,” Glenn said, according to a recording of the Jan. 10 meeting obtained and verified by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Glenn explained that Granbury, the largest city in a county where 81 percent of residents voted for then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, is “very, very conservative.”
He noted that members of Granbury's school board — his bosses — were also very conservative. And to any school employees who might have different political beliefs, Glenn said, “You better hide it,” adding, “Here in this community, we're going to be conservative.”
That's why, he said, he needed to talk to them about some of the books available in the school district's libraries.
(Hixenbaugh and Schwartz↱)
And this goes about where you might expect: While censors "repeatedly said they are concerned only with sex and vulgarity, not with suppressing the views of LGBTQ students and authors", this is never really how it works out, and while Mr. Glenn doesn't want children "reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries",
He also made it clear that his concerns specifically included books with LGBTQ themes, even if they do not describe sex. Those comments, according to legal experts, raise concerns about possible violations of the First Amendment and federal civil rights laws that protect students from discrimination based on their gender and sexuality.
“And I'm going to take it a step further with you,” he said, according to the recording. “There are two genders. There's male, and there's female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they're women. And there are women that think they're men. And again, I don't have any issues with what people want to believe, but there's no place for it in our libraries.”
Three brief notes: This is pretty straightforward, classic American political censorship, and traditionally oriented. It is also different from the complaint against cancel culture, which would concern itself more with objecting to any objections or disapprobation Mr. Glenn might encounter. Additionally, it is as blatant an example as we might find of what a particular range of seething anti-liberalism has advanced with its equivocations and bawling complaints.
Consider, to the one, a prospect of liberal elitism. And then pay attention to Superintendent Glenn, who wants to "call it what it is" when he explains, "It's the transgender, LGBTQ, and the sex—sexuality—in books. That's what the governor has said he will prosecute people for."
And then think it through. How is it elitist, or supremacist, or even victimizing, to refuse censorship? They're conservatives, and so will censor because the conservative government will prosecute them if they don't, yet it's somehow wrong to object to censorship.
This is a basic example of rhetorical dysfunction. This is what it means to pay attention to the function of someone's words. It makes a powerful slogan to posture against authoritarianism and exclusion, but what does such an argument actually do in application? I tell a book-banning story out of Oregon, in which the Christian argues their First Amendment right to free religion is violated as long as another's First Amendment right to free speech and press remains intact. How has that ever been a confusing notion? When someone complains that they are being silenced because they are not allowed to silence someone else, we can only wonder who looks at it and does not see the difference before lending their voice in support.
Basic function:
Conservative: We are going to censor because our political allies will prosecute if we don't.
Liberal: Censorship violates the First Amendment.
"Independent"/"Libertarian"/Antiliberal: You see, this liberal elitism, in silencing others, is the kind of paternalism and condescension that forces people to oppose you.
The weird thing is that on other days, you might be able to get all three of them to agree that censorship is wrong. It's why the complaint against cancel culture is so easily viewed as a rightist invention. And it's easy, too; inasmuch as we are all born into sin, some arguments only lead deeper into our harmful frailty, but there is also an easy attraction, a temptation.
And censorship has a certain basic appeal; pretty much everyone will eventually want to tell someone else to shut up. That's why it's so easy to get people to play along; that's why it's so easy to find people who say they support a cause, but need it to stop doing what it is doing because the prospect of equality hurts someone else's feelings.
That is, sure, we get it, but look at what is being rejected: If you can't censor someone, that apparently is censorship; if you can't exclude someone, that apparently is exclusion; if you can't have privilege over another,
i.e., if you're equal to another, apparently that other has unacceptable privilege over you; such advocacy never really justifies its argument, but just keeps piling on cheap fallacies and desperate pretenses of indignance. And, yes, it is an easy swindle to fall for, especially if one is somehow sympathetically predisposed.
More directly, we might think of the hullaballoo surrounding a recent board editorial from a major newspaper: In the name of free speech, keep your feelings to yourself. Yes, really, that's how stupid the discussion can get: An alleged liberal bastion has taken its cue from the right, and objects to the idea that anyone might shift in their seat as someone else speaks. One no longer need say a damn thing in order to cancel another, but merely change their posture in the way another perceives as expressing or reflecting discomfort. They might silence themselves if they think anyone hearing them disapproves. Meanwhile, in Texas—
In his recorded comments to librarians, Glenn described the review of 130 titles as the first step in a broader appraisal of library content, and a new policy approved by the school board later in January grants him and other administrators broad authority to unilaterally remove additional titles they deem inappropriate, with no formal review and no way for the public to easily find out what has been pulled from shelves ....
.... In a written statement, Glenn said the district was committed to supporting students of all backgrounds. And although he said the district's primary focus is educating students, “the values of our community will always be reflected in our schools.”
“In Granbury and across Texas we are seeing parents push back and demand elected officials put safeguards in place to protect their children from materials that serve no academic purpose, but rather push a political narrative,” Glenn said in the statement. “As a result, classrooms and libraries have turned schools into battle grounds for partisan politics.”
—actual censorship and persecution is occurring. Once upon a time, a headline ran,
"The 'free speech debate' isn't really about free speech"↱, and while the headline still fares well enough, Zack Beauchamp's consideration of employment and cancel culture now seems a sort of overstated handwinging. Still, though, let us try two versions of a sentence. First, "what's being debated is not anyone's right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times", which touches on the question of workplace silencing and cancelation, as well as the role of a newspaper of record. We can also try it this way: "what's being debated is not anyone's right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech … without fear of social backlash". The actual sentence runs, "right to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times without fear of social backlash".
As for the
New York Times, the
Editorial Board↱ has declared the fundamental right of all Americans to "speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned", and, the irony of an alleged liberal conspirator making such a rightist stand really is extraordinary. As
Emma Camp↱ explained for the
Times, "We keep our voices lowered, as if someone might overhear us", especially after "the ostracizing of a student who said something well-meaning but mildly offensive during a student club's diversity training", and, moreover, a friend "shuts his bedroom door when I mention a lecture defending Thomas Jefferson from contemporary criticism" because, "His roommate might hear us, he explains." One time, "The room felt tense", and Camp "saw people shift in their seats." Throughout, certain details remain unresolved, yet the nearest point to specificity, "defending Thomas Jefferson from contepmorary criticism", lacks any nuance,
e.g., what criticism, and what defense. Moreover, how, exactly, does one explain to a self-righteous college student what it means that
timing is everything. The details can be important; to some degree Camp's omission is unsurprising.
It seems a striking contrast between the "cancel culture" complaint and reality.
