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Frankly, Ivanka, I don't give a damn

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I've noticed the term "cancel culture" being thrown around a lot recently.  An upset Ivanka claimed to be a victim  when the Wichita State University President decided to cancel her commencement speech at this year's graduation ceremony.  He's now under heavy fire from the school's board, which has received a sizable amount of money from conservative donors like Charles Koch, who probably suggested her in the first place.

Tom Cotton went on for 10 grueling minutes on the Senate floor, claiming the Democrats were engaging in "cancel culture" in the wake of the George Floyd protests, whereby they were giving countenance to the vandalism of statues and the desecration of our democratic values, with Maoist and Jacobin references thrown in for good measure.  It's enough to make you barf, but he has an audience that licks this vomit up.

I suppose you could argue that the first daughter's cancellation is a product of cancel culture as the university chose to dump her because of her association with her father, who has become a universally reviled figure.  As for Cotton Tom, he's speaking more about anarchy, although it is a bit of a stretch to claim these Civil War monuments, Confederate flags and other symbols of oppression as something most Americans value.  They are specific to the South and even there not equally shared.  So, he does the next best thing by absurdly trying to equate the decision to remove a Statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond to renaming the Washington Monument the "Obelisk of Wokeness."

A more appropriate use of the term is what we have seen recently in regard to Ellen Degeneres.  It stemmed from her impromptu appearance beside George Bush at a football game last October, which many of her supporters found deeply offensive, given Bush's track record on LGBTQ rights.  She staunchly defended her right to be friends with whoever she liked, but then came further stories of how badly she treated her employees, despite the enormous "giveaways" on her show.  This led many of her once avid supporters to launch a campaign to cancel, or disassociate themselves, from her.  Basically, it is a form of boycott.

Since then, Ellen has been doing segments on "cancel culture," which I assume Ivanka and Tom have been watching.  Her thoughts on the subject ring pretty hollow, but she has friends in very high places who came to her defense.  Michelle Obama has long been known for her strange and affectionate relationship with George Bush and is a frequent visitor on Ellen.

We all understand that these celebrities and politicians move in a rarefied air, and that they form very odd relationships.  For instance, Ted Kennedy, the bastion of liberalism before he died in 2009, was a great friend with Orrin Hatch, as staunch a conservative as you are likely to find.  They didn't make their friendship public, but the two exchanged love songs in the Senate.  It makes you start to wonder how deep their relationship went?

However, if you are appealing to a specific audience you have to be careful who you identify yourself as friends with, and Ellen obviously crossed the line.  George maybe a compassionate conservative on the inside, but he was anything but as POTUS, presiding over one of the roughest eight-year stretches for gay rights activists.

One may argue, as former President Obama has done, that we shouldn't be feeling too "woke" these days, as the world is messy and full of ambiguities.  True enough, but we should strive for at least some consistency in our words and actions.  The lack thereof has led to a lot of cynicism among the electorate, which has a hard time figuring out where any of the politicians truly stand on key issues.  They say one thing on the campaign trail then end up caving on these issues when in office.  Trump was able to cash in on this deep-seated cynicism in 2016 and "steal" the election from Hillary.

Nearly four years later, we find Trump was no better at keeping his word as were his predecessors, so now he finds himself a victim of "cancel culture" that has led once adoring fans to rail against him.  Some high-ranking Republican leaders like George Bush and John Kasich are toying with the idea of giving their support to Joe Biden.  We even saw GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski recently express this herself, which earned her the public scorn of His Emptiness.

I guess Ivanka didn't expect this anger to be reflected on her.  After all, she has been busy promoting women's rights in third world countries and considers herself progressive in her views.  The general feeling however is that it is all an act.  At heart, she is daddy's little girl, and the only thing she is really interested in is fashion brand trademarks.  Not exactly the type of person you want giving a commencement address.

As for Tom, he should put his Ivy League education to better use.  He reads too much like a Southern planter's son who was sent to Harvard to try to give the family an air of respectability and have a good lawyer on the side.  Being from Arkansas, he holds onto all the iconography of the antebellum past because this is where he grew up, but the fact is none of these statues and certainly not the Confederate flag have any value in today's society.  It represents the "Lost Cause," one we should have buried long ago, but thanks to movies like Gone with the Wind live on forever.

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