David Marcus of the New York Post highlights the political left’s demands that people express woke beliefs.
In the United States, we have the right to remain silent. That is, unless you are a celebrity, a major corporation, a professional sports league or almost any other public entity when a social-justice panic occurs.
Any time the national spotlight lands on alleged racism or sexism or any ism, “silence is violence” and everyone with a platform must say all the right things, even if those things are ridiculous.
This is how Disney wound up in a cultural firestorm after a small group of employees demanded the company commit a hair-on-fire attack against Florida’s popular parental-rights legislation. Back in March, CEO Bob Chapek wisely said he didn’t want to wade into the issue and make the Mickey Mouse brand a “political football.” But then he caved to the loud lefties, the Disney stock fell off a cliff, and people all over America started rethinking vacations and streaming bundles.
We saw this in the wake of the George Floyd protests when the NBA and the NFL wnet all in on BLM. Black Lives Matter was emblazoned everywhere, and rich donations proffered that we now know went to buy a luxury mansion for the group’s founders. Rather quickly, ratings plummeted — it turned out nobody really wanted their sports with a side of radical Marxism.
Examples of this virtue-signaling abound: Think of every horrible video with endless Hollywood celebrities profoundly and sincerely decrying whatever the outrage du jour is. The issue here isn’t really “cancel culture,” it’s whether we can have entertainment and corporate spaces that are free of politics.
This is part of a weird larger trend in corporate America in which it is no longer enough for companies to sell us soap and smartphones; they also must be saving the world, leading the way for cultural change or standing up to this, that or the other thing. Why? Why can’t they just sell us a widget and shut up?
