"Recently, the Trump administration faced a similar situation. After Donald Trump purported to rename the Kennedy Center after himself, the jazz musician Chuck Redd withdrew from a planned Christmas Eve concert. The administration's response was somehow both more authoritarian and comic than the one in the movie. The Kennedy Center's president, Richard Grenell, announced that the Center intends to sue Redd for his impudence. Grennell's letter threatening legal action depicts Redd as a sad loser suffering "dismal ticket sales and lack of donor support" and "lagging" attendance whose withdrawal, paradoxically, is "very costly to a non-profit Arts institution.""
"Yet Grenell demands $1 million in damages. Grenell's letter argues not only that Redd has harmed the Center's finances, but that his withdrawal constitutes an "act of intolerance" driven by "the sad bullying tactics employed by certain elements on the left." Grenell vows, "We will not let them cancel shows without consequences.""
"This is a strange interpretation of "cancel culture." The concept, in its original form, described a tendency on the political left to react to minor ideological or linguistic offenses by demanding firings or social shunning, demands often reinforced by outraged social-media mobs. The problem with cancel culture-from the liberal standpoint, anyway-is that it is coercive."
An opening scene in The Death of Stalin shows a violinist refusing to play for Stalin until bribed, providing a parallel to a Kennedy Center incident. Reports said Donald Trump purported to rename the Kennedy Center after himself, and jazz musician Chuck Redd withdrew from a planned Christmas Eve concert. Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell announced intent to sue Redd, described Redd as suffering "dismal ticket sales," and demanded $1 million in damages. Grenell characterized the withdrawal as an "act of intolerance" driven by alleged left-wing bullying and warned against canceling shows without consequences. Cancel culture originally described a tendency on the political left to pursue firings or social shunning for minor offenses, often reinforced by social-media mobs; critics view that tendency as coercive.
Read at The Atlantic
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