So-called “cancel culture,” mob mentality and/or the almighty dollar have struck again. As most of you will know, Sirius XM radio’s Road Dog Trucking channel canceled a well-known talk show host, Kevin Rutherford. (Rutherford is back to broadcasting this week via a live sreaming program at his Let's Truck site.) The precipitating reason for the end of his long-running program there was a comment Rutherford made about a congressman’s own statement on Twitter. As noted in the explanation of the situation written by Overdrive’s Todd Dills two weeks back, Gallego himself had let fly provocative commentary on truckers then planning to protest against vaccine and other COVID-related mandates, suggesting their trucks should be impounded and given to others.
Rutherford’s own provocative statement about this Congressman’s comment, delivered on his show, may well have been over-the-top and construed as a threat, but to me this is just another example of an overabundance of a dangerous mentality when it comes to the speech rights of individuals.
Merriam-Webster defines the cultural phenomenon directly, as noted above, but it also refers to it in its very definition of the verb cancel itself, definition 1e to be exact: “to withdraw one’s support (for someone, such as a celebrity, or something, such as a company) publicly and especially on social media.”
There’s another phrase for it out there, directed at those quick to take offense and do the canceling: snowflake mentality.
Fundamentally, though, to me cancel culture is in fact a kind of rule of the mob to silence an individual. It can be extremely dangerous, as we have seen it played out over the centuries, from the death of Christ to the hangman’s noose of the old West and riots burning our cities throughout history.
Yet mob mentality can also play out for the good – we’ve seen it in our country from the Revolutionary War to protests for equal rights and bringing awareness that every life is precious.
[Related: What the cancelation of Kevin Rutherford's Sirius XM show might teach us about the outrage machine]
