There’s Nothing New About Cancel Culture
It used to be a weapon that only rich and powerful White men used to control the cultural narrative and maintain power
I wonder if Billie Holiday and Eartha Kitt are having a good chuckle in heaven right about now. All these White men in the entertainment industry are freaking out because they know that if they say the “wrong thing” they will face a backlash. They might get cancelled.
I can imagine Billie and Eartha at a fancy jazz club in heaven, sitting side by side at the bar enjoying cocktails while smirking because Shane Gillis and Bill Burr are whining about being held accountable for the lazy, hateful jokes they made which created a public backlash. I can imagine Eartha purring “Ohh you poor baby!”
Cancel culture is nothing new. The term is new, but it’s been around for at least as long as there has been an entertainment industry. Blacklisting, as it was called then, is a weapon used by the powerful elite to control uppity performers, mostly women, who didn’t toe the line. It was used primarily to punish Black women who shared political opinions and White women who refused sexual advances of powerful White men in Hollywood.
Billie Holiday was a brilliant jazz singer who elevated the genre like no other. In 1939…
