(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) It seems oddly fitting that the German language is the only one, to my knowledge, that has a word for the delightful phenomenon of seeing one’s enemies engaged in a circular firing squad of self-cancelation.
Schadenfreude—or malicious joy—encapsulates that gloating sensation of “I told you so,” but oftentimes with a more sinister quality of poetic justice.
Who else might be more deserving of such a response than the very architects of cancel culture—the radical Left—who stand ready to unleash a Blitzkrieg of boycotts upon anyone who haplessly intersects with their identity-politics goose-stepping?
Those wondering who sits atop this hierarchal chain of command finally got their answer after black Jewish woman Whoopi Goldberg came crossways with Jewish blackface-wearing woman Joy Behar on Monday’s broadcast of “The View.”
The two—who normally parrot each other’s talking points in perfect, harmonious accord—came to what may be friendship-ending loggerheads over a finer point of Semitic semantics: whether Jews could be classified as their own race.
Goldberg’s assertion that God’s chosen people were a subordinate class of oppressees, secondary to victims of racial identity, evidently did not go over well with the top brass.
On Tuesday, she was given a two week suspension for her “wrong and hurtful comments.”
While ABC just hired its first black-woman CEO, Kimberly Godwin, the network is, itself, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, which has shockingly sparse representation of the gentile variety.
Indeed, one must go to at least the third tier of Disney’s corporate ladder to find a person of color—namely, Chief Diversity Officer Latondra Newton.
Goldberg has wavered between apologizing and defending herself over the scandalous remarks.
“But you’re missing the point,” she said during the original discussion.
“The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley,” she continued. “Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. It’s a problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, because black, white, Jews … everybody eats each other.”
Yet, the more correct she was in her analysis, the deeper a hole that Goldberg dug for herself.
“This will cast a shadow over everything for a while,” an ABC insider told Page Six.
“Even Joy Behar was heard saying backstage that Whoopi is ‘dead wrong’ and may not ever recover from this,” the source added. “Joy found this particularly troubling and couldn’t believe Whoopi wouldn’t stand corrected until she was forced.”
BABA’S DREAM GONE AWRY
Of course, it’s a moot question whether or not Goldberg’s point was valid in the context of the Holocaust. The story has since evolved into yet another cautionary tale about the perils of political correctness.
There are too many layers to even begin to unspool this perverse paradox, in which uber-privileged classes of wealthy individuals debate the censorship and cancelation of another wealthy, privileged individual for daring to assert that her tribe’s victimhood was greater than theirs.
Suffice it to say, it all seems a bit Nazi-esque.
But to put it into even greater perspective, one must look back to an interview with Barbara Walters explaining her reasons for creating “The View” in the first place.
“I’ve always wanted to do a show with different generations of women and different backgrounds and different personalities, and that’s what we did,” she said.
Walters noted that, in the Jerry Springer-dominated world of daytime TV circa 1997, there was no forum for the sort of straight-talking coffee klatch she envisioned.
“What mattered was these four wonderful women and their relationship and their chemistry,” she continued. “… And it’s also paved the way for a different kind of television show, where people can just talk.”
WHINING IN THE FREE WORLD
But “The View” is not the only liberal bastion to have lost its way.
Whoopi Goldberg’s misfortune eclipsed only briefly the fracas at Spotify that began with classic-rock fossil and cantankerous grump Neil Young giving the streaming platform an ultimatum over its airing of a podcast by vaccine-skeptical libertarian Joe Rogan.
Young’s music always had a whiny edge to it, with the embittered Canadian constantly yearning to identify with the causes célèbres of injustice.
From his posh bungalow in Laurel Canyon, he would fantasize of being shot at in Ohio or lynched in Alabama.
As the activist father of two children born with disabilities, Young might easily have been the self-righteous pitchman for the anti-vax movement just a few short years ago.
Now, though, the “Heart of Gold” singer finds himself on the other side of the power-dynamic, demanding that the already downtrodden and vilified class of unvaxxed citizens (many of them black and Latino) be further scapegoated and oppressed by having one of their few champions silenced.
There is very little at stake, since any fans who made the conscious decision to suffer through Young’s largely legubrious catalog have already dug in their heels.
Thus, his slow-churning boycott may yet prevail as other aging singers who find themselves on the cusp of irrelevance—having faded away rather than burned out—hop on board Young’s publicity stunt.
But oh—you mean Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash and Nils Lofgren also come with the package?
Alas, Mitchell would do well to heed her own famous musing: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
BIG RED TAXI
Casting their lot with the Establishment leaves these free-spirited ex-iconoclasts not only devoid of fans but rudderless in the long run, having abandoned the very principles that defined them.
And the more that denizens of the illiberal Left decide to cancel each other, the more red-pilled defectors, wanting nothing but the opportunity to express a different point of view, will find themselves reluctantly cast under the big net of the Grand Old Party.
While some, such as Fox News commentator Joe Concha, are relishing in the chance to turn the tables on Whoopi Goldberg, denouncing her gaffe as “antisemitism in broad daylight,” the best thing that conservatives can do is to let the Left self-destruct on its own.
Even if Goldberg manages to weather the current storm, by virtue of her past service to the Party agenda, it is against her very nature to be silenced.
It’s only a matter of time before she goes the way of Bill Maher, Bari Weiss, Alan Dershowitz, Glenn Greenwald, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and many other top-shelf trophies who have decided that enough is enough.
Welcome to the party, Whoopi—or should we call you by your God-given name, Caryn?
