Major League Baseball recently decided to relocate the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver, because of Georgia’s new voting law. The Georgia Legislature would have you believe that the new regulations improve voting, and they do — for Republicans. Let’s face it, they lost the presidency and two U.S. Senate seats, because Black voters turned out for the Democrats. So to mix our sports metaphors, the Republicans decided to move the goal posts by changing the law to make it even harder for poorer people of color to vote.
This has in turn led Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines to join MLB and others in denouncing the new voting restrictions and Republicans to denounce the denouncers. They are but the latest salvos in the cancel culture war, which is heating up internationally as human rights groups urge nations to boycott the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
I’m not a fan of cancel culture in general. There is no one and nothing that is not deserving of our withholding in some way. If we apply absolute standards, who would escape opprobrium?
On the other hand, there is no limit to the excuses that can be made by the true fan. There will always be people who love President Donald J. Trump, regardless of his cruelties. There will always be people who listen to Richard Wagner despite his anti-Semitism. There will always be people who read Ernest Hemingway despite his racist, misogynistic narcissism.
We pick and choose whom we will cancel, and perhaps that’s how it should be. Why throw the baby out with the bathwater? Just because Hemingway was an extremely difficult person doesn’t mean he wasn’t a great writer. Indeed as Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s fascinating new PBS documentary on the writer suggests, the single-mindedness that made Hemingway a great writer was precisely what made him a challenging husband, father, friend and colleague. As I’ve said time and again, qualities are neither good nor bad but context makes them so.
There are, however, some situations that defy choice. The Georgia voting law is one. For years, Georgia and all of the South have made it difficult if not impossible for Blacks to find their place in the sun. All of us deserve the opportunity to find that place. But with the new law, Georgia has doubled down on limiting that opportunity. The law deserves some canceling.
As for the notion that corporations shouldn’t get involved in politics — except when they’re making contributions, right Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell? — corporations are not interested in politics. They’re interested in money. And you don’t make money if you alienate your customers.
Do Coca-Cola, Delta and MLB risk alienating some of those customers? Of course, but who cares? Those corporations have obviously scented which way the wind is blowing. They’ve already calculated that they stand to gain more than they will lose. And they know, too, that rejecting someone after you’ve been rejected is just weak.
As usual, the Republicans have missed the point: In any cancel war skirmish, you have to be the first to do the canceling.