You keep framing this as though I’m defending racial slurs, which doesn’t make it easy to discuss.
I think there are a whole range of things that are private entities, and that different norms should apply.
Do you think Google should be screening emails for racial slurs and refusing to deliver emails that contain them?
Do you have the right to post on Giraffe boards? They are just as public as SDMB or twitter, but they say that your posting privileges may be removed arbitrarily and capriciously. If they just don’t like you, have they violated any rights by banning you?
The fact that SDMB and twitter have more fair rules that are followed more carefully doesn’t mean that you have different rights, just that your privilege is more protected.
Agreed.
Adams hasn’t lost the right to express himself at all - he’s free to draw and write whatever he wants, and he won’t be fined or imprisoned for it. He can’t get his stuff published any more, but neither can I. Is my freedom of expression being curtailed because newspapers won’t publish my comics, and it’s simply a justified infringement because my comics are so bad?
That’s just the routine ebb and flow of publishing. It is a rather different thing to cancel someone. It seems to me that the whole idea of canceling someone is that it is a (justified) withdrawal of their right to participate in public discourse.
I don’t think that narrowly publishing comics is specifically something that is aptly called a right, for the reasons you suggest.
But I do think the overall process of canceling is intended to be a withdrawal of someone’s right to participate in public discourse, however that was manifest.
If they don’t represent themselves as being fair, that’s fine. We all have private conversations where everyone is not welcome. If they don’t adhere to impartial norms where everyone has the right to participate unless they break objective and consistenly-applied rules, they won’t have the prestige of a forum for public discourse.
Gods, I hated that comic.
Why would a “privilege” be protected? You are highlighting how these semantics make absolutely no sense.
I’m not sure “he can’t get his stuff published” is even true - it’s not clear to me that “Dilbert” is gone from all newspapers, and Adams is starting a subscription service for his work. Certainly, fewer newspapers are publishing his work - but in modern times, that’s much less of a problem than it would have been in 1900 or 1950, when the cost of creating your own market for your work has dropped considerably.
It’s not like the 1960s when trangressive comedy led to the police arresting both the comedian and the owners of the club; that strikes me as more of an attempt at cancelling than this.
No, they shouldn’t. But they could if they wanted. There are no rights to use Google’s property.
That’s why it’s important to not conflate rights that fall into the broader set of “rights” with the subset of “natural” rights, and to call people out when they try (even if it’s merely to point out that they are “conceptually ethically similar”).
For instance, in the above examples, only the first is going to be placed by reasonable folks into the subset of natural rights.
It is my understanding that we each have a right to party, and that we must fight for it.
He was fired for inappropriate behavior. Trying to make his situation worthy of sympathy by applying the word “cancel”-not gonna work with me. His strip was canceled from most newspapers, but Scotty is still going strong, making his strip pay-per-view and being talked about all over right wing media.
How many times do I have to repeat that I’m not defending Adams?
Nor do I agree with your implication that canceling someone is necessarily wrong.
There was a very stirring speech by a Mr. B.Z. DuBois about that very right, discussing hypocrisy, the unfair confiscation of personal property by authorities, even an oppression of the way you choose to present yourself. I am disappointed that it never was enshrined into the US Constitution, but give it time.
I didn’t imply any such thing. Using the term “cancel” itself is, for the most part, a smokescreen used to hide the fact that someone tried to get away with something and got caught.
Speeches do not make very good Constitutional Amendments.
Why would saying he was canceled evoke sympathy without an implication that canceling is wrong?
I associate this with the inherently pejorative “cancel culture”. In any event, why would you think I was doing this and defending Adams when I said that he was justifiably canceled?
In full, no. But it could be written thusly:
Congress shall make no law prohibiting the right of the people to peaceably assemble in the pursuit of a congenial party.
A prohibition on double-dipping or monopolizing the bathroom could be handled separately by statute.
Umm, because you used the word canceled?