The Woke King, a/k/a Ta-Nehisi Coates, predictably raised my blood pressure by tepidly praising what he calls “the democratization of cancel culture” in today’s NYT. The rest of the column, however, was not that bad. Coates admits that PC Twitter mobs are “suboptimal” and directs most of his attention to the dispute between Colin Kaepernick and the NFL.
My reactions are as follows:
1. I have always sympathized with Kaepernick, but it has to be pointed out that the NFL has been motivated more by greed and cowardice than spite, because it fears offending the millions of football fans who are decidedly unwoke. In that respect, there is no moral difference between the NFL and the NBA, which responded in the same self-interested way to Chinese anger about the Morey tweet on Hong Kong protesters. I don’t recall ever reading a Coates column on that issue.
2. The legitimate point that Coates should have made, but didn’t, is that PC Twitter mobs may be obnoxious, but you can avoid them simply by turning off your phone. It is a horrible mistake to equate people who have been attacked on social media to the victims of actual lynchings.