> For decades now, I've listened to people whine about "political correctness" trying to stir up some fear that it's coming for our favorite jokes or whatever, yet somehow it never arrives.
It has already arrived and getting more and more strict over the years.
Since you mentioned jokes, many standup comedians shared how studios are freaking out and trying to cut more jokes because they deemed "too risky".
Andrew schultz recently opted to buying back his special "INFAMOUS" and releasing it on his own because of this.
Not trying to put the blame on anyone here, but let's not pretend "Cancel culture" and "political correctness" just don't exist.
Not a dig at you personally, but clichés like this amuse and annoy me in equal measure. I've just been reading about how in the 80s Marvel Comics didn't want any gay characters owing to public backlash, and the US armed forces instated "don't ask don't tell" not because they hated LGBT issues but because of a gay man getting "cancelled" from life; the Victorians were infamous for cancelling (with chisels) sexuality in ancient Roman and Greek statues, and also gay penguins when exploring Antarctica; Nelson Mandela was widely condemned as a terrorist; The USA has been trying to "cancel" Cuba since before the moon landings, and McCarthy tried to cancel random people with a list titled, essentially, "people I don't like who I can get away with calling commies"; The Catholic Church cancelled Galileo; The US government cancelled weed and LSD counter-culture, portraying it as devilishly destructive in much the same way that two generations earlier they had done with alcohol, and to much the same ultimate result; Henry VIII and immediate successors kept cancelling and counter-cancelling each other's religions.
And of course the way the etymologically original "political correctness" was used to "cancel" undesirables with a one-way train ride to a gulag in Siberia; albeit my knowledge of that is 50% the way it ended up in the script in Babylon 5, and the other 50% from GCSE history…
The point is not to say that society doesn't cancel things — it does, continuously, harshly, and I dislike the cancellations I've listed — but this is neither new nor one-sided.
Other clichés I don't like: "Everything to the left of me is literally Stalinesque, unless it's gun controls then it's something only the Nazis would do" and use of the term "Liberals" as a slur to mean "anti-liberal" (yes I know the history, also that in the UK/US the badge "conservative" currently means "wants radical change").
It has already arrived and getting more and more strict over the years.
Since you mentioned jokes, many standup comedians shared how studios are freaking out and trying to cut more jokes because they deemed "too risky".
Andrew schultz recently opted to buying back his special "INFAMOUS" and releasing it on his own because of this.
Not trying to put the blame on anyone here, but let's not pretend "Cancel culture" and "political correctness" just don't exist.