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NICOLE CARROLL“USA TODAY hopes to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation.” – Allen H. Neuharth, Founder, Sept. 15, 1982OPINION
MIKE THOMPSON/USA TODAY NETWORKSarah Silverman has been canceled.
A Hollywood director fired the progres-
sive comedian because of a sketch she
performed a dozen years ago.
“I recently was going to do a movie ...
a sweet part,” Silverman said on a pod-
cast this month. “Then, at 11 p.m. the
night before, they fired me because
they saw a picture of me in blackface
from that episode.”
The Comedy Central sketch lam-
pooned a well-intentioned liberal who
stupidly wore blackface to better empa-
thize with African Americans.
“I was doing an episode about race,”
she explained. “It was like, I’m playing a
character, and I know this is wrong, so I
can say it. I’m clearly liberal. That was
such liberal-bubble stuff, where I actu-
ally thought it was dealing with racism
by using racism.”
Silverman may have lost a movie
role, but at least she still has a career.
Not everyone targeted by the “cancel
culture” has been so lucky. Just look at
Roseanne Barr, who was fired from her
TV show for a bad tweet.
All comedians are watching their
backs. Kevin Hart was fired as an Os-
cars host because of old jokes, and Aziz
Ansari spent a year in professional hid-
ing after a date gone wrong got him
lumped in with the #MeToo backlash.
Silverman now regrets the blackface
skit but fears more fallout. “I think it’s
really scary, and it’s a very odd thing
that it’s invaded the left primarily and
the right will mimic it.”
She didn’t have to wait long for con-
servatives to join cancel culture.
A trailer for the upcoming film “The
Hunt” was released online and contro-
versy followed. The horror film shows
wealthy liberal elites hunting a ragtag
group of red-state “deplorables” before
the backwoods heroes start fighting
back. Despite its portrayal of rural con-
servatives taking down villainous pro-
gressives, several right-wing media
stars were outraged.
Even the president joined the back-
lash. “Liberal Hollywood is Racist at the
highest level, and with great Anger and
Hate!” President Donald Trump said onTwitter. “They like to call themselves
‘Elite,’ but they are not Elite. In fact, it is
often the people that they so strongly
oppose that are actually the Elite. The
movie coming out is made in order to
inflame and cause chaos.”
The movie didn’t seem to deal with
race one way or the other, but the studio
took the hint. Within a day, it pulled the
film.
Cancel culture is spreading for one
simple reason: It works. Instead of de-
bating ideas or competing for enter-
tainment dollars, you can just demand
that anyone who annoys you be cast
out of polite society.
Way back in the mists of time, say
five years ago, if you didn’t like a TV
show or movie, you wouldn’t watch it.
Now you can ensure that no one
watches it, just by slinging some out-
rage on social media.
Our woke mentality is America’s
new Puritanism. Instead of a handy list
of sins written thousands of years ago,
modern sins are ever-changing. A joke
that was deemed progressive a decade
ago is retroactively condemned as hate
speech.
“If you say the wrong thing,” Silver-
man said, “everyone is, like, throwing
the first stone. It’s a perversion. It’s
really, ‘Look how righteous I am, and
now I’m going to press refresh all day
long to see how many likes I get in my
righteousness.’ ”
When the mobs burn one witch, they
tighten the buckles on their hats and
pore through old YouTube videos for
their next victim.
It’s time for the perpetually offended
on the left and right to bring back two
concepts the Puritans were at least fa-
miliar with: grace and forgiveness.Jon Gabriel of Mesa, Arizona, is edi-
tor in chief of Ricochet.com and a con-
tributor to The Arizona Republic, where
this column originally appeared.Welcome to America,
the ‘cancel culture’
Left and right just get
whiny and offended
Jon GabrielSarah Silverman. ROBYN VON SWANK/HULUYOUR SAY
Rapper and business mogul Jay-Z
partnered with the National Football
League for entertainment advising and
social justice advocacy.
Mike Jones’ column, “Jay-Z deserves
the benefit of the doubt as he joins
forces with the NFL,” says Jay-Z should
be given a break for working with the
NFL — but he shouldn’t. Jay-Z, a would-
be warrior in the struggle, is co-opted by
the dominant culture. And while his
“we’ve moved past kneeling” statement
is great verbal theater, we aren’t past
doing all we can to support the good and
to assist those who stand up for justice.
It’s astonishing that Jones seeks to
defend the indefensible. Colin Kaeper-
nick, former NFL player and leader of
the kneeling movement, makes the
point that our system of justice dispro-
portionately and unfairly targets people
of color. It doesn’t matter what commu-
nity one comes from if you support op-
pression. No one gets a pass. Jay-“Me”
should be calling for a boycott of the
league until Kaepernick is calling plays.
Alonzo C. Pruitt
Chicago, Ill.Jay-Z shouldn't be given a break on NFL
LETTERS
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to 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA, 22108.President Donald Trump often
boasts that he has done more than any
other president. “Nobody has even
come close,” he told reporters outside
the White House last month.
And there’s no question, he has been
a very busy fellow.
In the past week alone, Trump lob-
bied Israel to bar visits by two Muslim
members of Congress; railed against
his hand-picked Federal Reserve chair-
man for not lowering interest rates
enough; floated the idea of buying
Greenland; delayed tariffs on China to
clear a path for cheaper Christmas toys;
and obsessed over the size of his rally
crowd in New Hampshire.
Whew, that’s a lot. Except — there’s
plenty that Trump didn’t do last week.
Or any other week of his 2 1/2-year-old
presidency, for that matter:
❚He didn’t keep his presidential
campaign promise to erase the deficit
and pay off the national debt. The def-
icit — the difference between what the
federal government spends and what it
brings in — is projected to hover around
$1 trillion this year, and the U.S. debt
has ballooned to a record $22 trillion.
❚He failed to rebuild the nation’s
crumbling infrastructure, instead side-
lining a legislative proposal for desper-
ately needed repairs and improve-
ments to the power grid, highways,
bridges, water systems and broadband.
❚Despite a rash of mass shootings,
he hasn’t endorsed even one major gun
control law, slavishly deferring to the
gun lobby over the 90% of Americans
who favor, for example, universal back-
ground checks for firearm purchases.
Where Trump has truly been miss-
ing in action is on climate change, even
as last month was the hottest in record-
ed history.
Not only has he ignored what has be-
come an existential threat to the United
States and the world as global temper-
atures rise, but under the vaunted ru-
bric of deregulation, Trump has all but
worked to promote climate change.
He has started pulling the United
States out of the Paris climate accord;
worked to ease proposed emission lim-
its on vehicles and carbon-pollution re-
strictions on power plants; weakened
the popular Endangered Species Act of
1973; and sought to open up the Arctic
wilderness for offshore drilling.
Meanwhile, he has done nothing in
response to the consensus among fed-
eral agencies and international scien-
tists that major steps must be taken
soon to control greenhouse gas emis-
sions, or risk rising temperatures that
could create catastrophic changes in
the decades to come.
Climate change isn’t some distant
threat; it’s here and now. A Washington
Post analysis published last week
shows how 34 million Americans live in
regions of the lower 48 states where av-
erage temperatures have already risen
by or near 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 de-
grees Fahrenheit), creating profound
seasonal changes.
Richard Nixon’s first attorney gener-
al famously advised the press to “watch
what we do, not what we say.” For
Trump and his appointees, it’s just as
important to watch what they don’t do.TODAY'S DEBATE: TRUMP INACTION
Our view:Watch what
the president doesn’t do
Protest in Chicago in 2016.
NAM Y. HUH/APActivists and Democratic politicians
like to portray President Donald
Trump’s withdrawal from the ineffec-
tual and counterproductive Paris
Agreement as an example of his “inac-
tion” on the environment.
In reality, the quality of our air and
water has only improved since he took
office. Carbon emissions fell 2.7% in
President Trump’s first year. While
emissions rose in 2018 due to robust
economic growth, carbon dioxide is
projected to decrease in 2019 and 2020.
Driving these results are meaningful
policies. In June, the Environmental
Protection Agency finalized its new Af-
fordable Clean Energy Rule (ACE) to re-
place the Obama administration’s un-
workable Clean Power Plan (CPP).
The CPP not only proved to be un-
constitutional, but it also unnecessari-
ly destroyed thousands of mining and
extraction jobs without obvious benefit
to the environment.
ACE, by contrast, will ensure that by
2030, carbon emissions from the
American energy sector will drop by up
to 35% below 2005 levels.
Elsewhere, President Trump has
taken decisive executive action to pro-
tect America’s natural gas boom from
overregulation. Natural gas power
plants produce between 50% and 60%
less carbon dioxide than equivalent
coal plants.
Nuclear energy, meanwhile, still
provides about one-fifth of all U.S. elec-
tricity. For the time being that virtually
carbon-free bulwark is safe — but only
because of the president’s determined
resistance to anti-nuclear activists.
Use of renewables has also con-
tinued to grow since President Trump
took office, but there is no silver bullet
— least of all in the multitrillion dollar
“Green New Deal.”
Donald Trump chose a better direc-
tion. It’s not “inaction” but a realistic
plan to get us clean and affordable en-
ergy, reduced greenhouse emissions
and economic growth.Mandy Gunasekara, a veteran Re-
publican climate and energy strategist
and communicator, served in the
Trump administration EPA as the prin-
cipal deputy assistant administrator
for the Office of Air and Radiation.Opposing view:Trump policies
spur environmental progress
Mandy Gunasekara
Anyone who doesn’t believe the Re-
publican Party is controlled by the Na-
tional Rifle Association must look at the
Assault Weapons Ban of 2019. The bill
makes it illegal to “knowingly import,
sell, manufacture, transfer or possess a
semi-automatic assault weapon or large
capacity ammunition feeding device.”
After recent mass shootings, one Re-
publican, Rep. Pete King, N.Y., signed on.
The GOP is apparently taking its cue
from President Donald Trump, who said
there isn’t a “political appetite” for anassault weapons ban.
But according to a Politico/Morning
Consult poll this month, 70% of voters
want an assault-style weapons ban. The
poll also found that 64% of GOP women
support it. Trump and the GOP are in
lock, stock and barrel with the NRA.
Walt Zlotow
Glen Ellyn, Ill.Republicans, help ban assault rifles
LETTERS
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