Could we helpfully split the argument about speech and cancellation into two distinct parts: 1) Grief on Twitter, which is absolutely impossible to ever stop when you’re talking to a global audience and 2) Fear that management won’t have your back, which can actually be addressed
Fear that management won’t have your back is absolutely legit, because firing you is likely to be easier than digging in heels. The easy solution to this is legislation, pressure on employers and/or unionisation, it’s *very* noticeable that there’s basically no interest in that.
The lack of any interest in it tells us the basic demand is that the public should be compelled to stop getting annoyed at minor celebrities and seriously, good luck trying to make several billion people sit still and behave. Others have tried, with varying success.
Workplace protection is one thing and while it’s true that the entitlement of e.g. shithead commentators to be openly racist in the pages of a national newspaper overlaps, eliding the two is maybe the worst possible way to address the former. And probably not accidentally, either
It is, for instance, very telling indeed that almost none of the loudest political commentators are at all bothered by *newspapers* intentionally turning specific people into Public Enemy Number One on flimsy pretexts, and that it’s only members of the public that concern them.
I’m not a fan of guilt-by-proximity, quote-mining the past for denounceable comments, calls to disassociate, intentional misunderstanding or any of that malarkey but again - it wasn’t the public who decided these were acceptable behaviours, it was MPs and the damn national press.
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