Mediaboss Marketing

What a time to be alive.

The last year has brought with it a global health pandemic, racial strife and national reflection, a fraught election and finally a violent assault on the nations Capitol.

This country is divided with various factions of our countrymen ascribing the worst possible motives to others. Many dont just think their neighbors are malevolent, they know it.

Increasingly, the attempt to understand those with thoughts divergent from those we find acceptable is supplanted with an effort to stifle those thoughts and deem them too menacing to be aired in polite society.

Inevitably, activist classes mobilize and the purveyors of unfavorable speech and their enablers are set upon and made to apologize, relinquish their appointments or suffer any sort of cancellation.

This week, the Washington, D.C., site Politico came under fire from both staffers within and pundits on the outside when conservative star Ben Shapiro was allowed to guest-author the newsletter.

Upset staffers vented on a Zoom call, others used the messaging app Slack to lament Shapiros presence in the magazine, one citing Shapiros long history of bigoted and incendiary commentary.

Another commented, This is especially confusing given the newsrooms welcome efforts over the last year to cover issues related to race in a more intentional, elevated, thoughtful way,

In recent weeks, liberal journalists have also authored the newsletter, including MSNBCs Chris Hayes, CBSs Weijia Jiang and PBSs White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor.

Those writers enjoyed little or no controversy as their belief systems and politics fit more favorably with Politicos staffers.

When New York magazine writer Olivia Nuzzi responded to the controversy by tweeting a message meant to convey the importance of listening to those who we disagree with, CNN Fact checker Daniel Dale responded by posting screenshots of Nuzzi praising columnist Ann Coulter more than six years ago.

Im curious if youve ever explained this stuff, Dale posted, in an obvious attempt to redirect the social media mob onto Nuzzi who had merely posted, many years ago at barely the age of 20, positive words about a conservative columnist.

This week, it was Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey who was under fire from progressive media outlets. The Daily Beast ran a story titled, Matthew McConaughey Keeps Flirting With Alt-Right Darlings, which lamented McConaugheys association with comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan as well as Canadian author and professor Jordan Peterson.

Whatever can be said about Joe Rogan, neither he nor Jordan Peterson could be described as Alt-Right. Joe Rogan, who endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2020, in fact shares many political views with those on the left.

But the unfortunate fact is that simply holding a position or two that departs from perfect woke orthodoxy is enough to be branded a bigot, a fascist or a Nazi in todays society. It appears that now any publication or public figure who engages with those pariahs in any way must be similarly tarnished by association.

This is an ever-expanding circle of cancellation that will not stop at Matthew McConaughey or Olivia Nuzzi. We must nip this toxic cycle of progressive purity culture in the bud now before it completely destroys our ability to speak openly to one another.

Read this article:
Conservative views can expect to be canceled - Boston Herald