She might be pointing a way forward, to fight back against Cancel Culture.
Canada’s National Post is a mere shell of its former self—embarrassing to those of us who watched it, during the early years of this century, force the national “monopoly” Globe and Mail to become a better paper or just crawl away and shrink. Now they’re both fishwrap. Why does that matter?
Because, as they succumb more to Cancel Culture in the newsroom, they lose the people readers want to read. Shrill, nagging harpies remain. Barbara Kay, the National Post’s not-yet-cancelee, explains:
Thanks to the excommunication of James Bennet and (effectively) Bari Weiss from The New York Times, the vicious hounding of Margaret Wente at Massey College, and the CBC’s sadistic shaming of veteran broadcaster Wendy Mesley, the poisonous phenomenon I am describing here is by now well-known. Every editor feels like he is one Tweet away from getting mobbed and fired. And so the range of permissible opinion shrinks daily. Many columns now read as if they were stitched together from the same few dozen bromides that one is still allowed to say. In a Canadian media industry that regularly lauds itself for courageous truth-telling, the goal is now to hide one’s true opinion rather than declare it.
National Post editors Matt Gurney and Rob Roberts did their best to support me in recent months, even when my columns on charged topics were delayed or spiked. Days would pass between submission and publication, during which time the column shuffled from one editor to another for review.
As recently as today, my editor assured me that my job was not at risk. But every week seems to deliver new restrictions and anxieties. And a writer shouldn’t have to feel like she is imposing on her editor, or asking him to exert himself as a special favour, merely so she can give voice to mainstream principles that most Canadians believe.
Barbara Kay, “Why I’m leaving the National Post” at The PostMillennial
The Canadian taxpayer is forced to fund the the Big Media spouts of elite dogma. Otherwise, those media would find a natural end.
But there’s an alternative. Indie media is booming. And much more interesting to read.
I’ve been noticing for a while that much of the best writing about Canada is increasingly taking place on platforms that didn’t exist until recently (and in some cases aren’t even Canadian). Numerous international writers whom I admire have decided to find new ways to reach their audience. I will now join their ranks.
The rise of popular new online sites shows that Canadians are eager for fresh voices and good reporting. Rather, legacy outlets are collapsing from within because they’ve outsourced editorial direction to a vocal internal minority that systematically weaponizes social media to destroy internal workplace hierarchies, and which presents its demands in Manichean terms.
Barbara Kay, “Why I’m leaving the National Post” at The Post Millennial
In any country with a free press, the solution is simple. Deny the nasty little twits at the Big Media your time. Soon most of the people who have much to say that is worth hearing, who can deal with an honest argument, will be writing for someone else. Find out who they are writing for and go there. Just because the former Bigs are (or will be) a tax burden doesn’t force you to also give them your time.
Incidentally, the last column Kay submitted to the National Post was about neuroscientist Debra Soh’s new book, The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity, which Simon and Schuster, so far, as not canceled, despite the fact that progressives are apt to be enraged by it. At any rate, here is the review at the The Post Millennial:
Most authors dedicate their books to loved ones or inspirational teachers. Debra Soh, sexologist and neuroscientist, dedicates her new book, The End of Gender: Debunking the myths about sex and identity in our society to “everyone who blocked me on Twitter.”
It’s a fitting tribute, since aggressive opposition to Soh’s spirited defence of science against the prevailing theory-based doctrines of the trans movement has guided Soh’s professional trajectory for a number of years now.
As Soh informs readers at the outset, she left her eleven-year research career in academia, because it was clear her field had been compromised by trans activism, and her freedom to explore her subject—gender, sex and sexual orientation—was continuously shrinking.
Barbara Kay, “REVIEW: The End of Gender by Debra Soh” at The Post Millennial
Soh became a journalist and now an author, likely reaching a wider audience than if she had just been left alone in her university office.
Soh crossed our radar twice before:
– In 2017, when she wrote in the Globe and Mail,
By now, most of us have heard about Google’s so-called “anti-diversity” manifesto and how James Damore, the engineer who wrote it, has been fired from his job.
Titled Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber, Mr. Damore called out the current PC culture, saying the gender gap in Google’s diversity was not due to discrimination, but inherent differences in what men and women find interesting. Danielle Brown, Google’s newly appointed vice-president for diversity, integrity and governance, accused the memo of advancing “incorrect assumptions about gender,” and Mr. Damore confirmed last night he was fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.”
Despite how it’s been portrayed, the memo was fair and factually accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.”
She could be wrong about innate sex differences in the brain but people whose main achievement in life seems to be smashing things and getting people fired have nothing to contribute to the discussion.
– In 2018 when she tried to make sense of Cancel Culture’s mobbing of Bret Weinstein: “Within the text of the Evergreen report, one finds muddled acknowledgment of the need to preserve “freedom of expression” and viewpoint diversity on campus. But there is no systematic effort to explain how this battle can be won in the face of increasingly intolerant student and faculty activists, who regard heterodox opinions as a form of violence. One of the prescribed changes is an “ethnically, intellectually, and ideologically diverse faculty, administration, and staff.” But if the mob could successfully target Weinstein, a liberal whose only sin was to protest a day celebrating the racial segregation of Evergreen’s campus, how could the school possibly attract a legitimately “ideologically diverse” academic staff?”
The thing to see here is that, as competent people move on to better venues, the Raging Twits of Cancel Culture will inherit rotting edifices that no one really wants to fund and certainly not to read, though progressive governments may force you to do the former. And then, boy, will the Cancels really want Revolution. But it will be increasingly clearer why they do want it.
See also: ID folk know a fair bit about how Cancel Culture works: As more and more normal people are Canceled for doing normal things, it will become progressively clearer that the nasties of Cancel Culture are at direct odds with the welfare of any normal enterprise they attach themselves to, whether it is a newspaper or a science. Finally, one must choose between catering to them and tending to the welfare of the enterprise.
and
Larry Krauss returns as a free speech champion. Krauss’s message should, at least, appeal to people who imagine that, because they are part of an establishment, they are safe from Cancel Culture. Some of them may be motivated to do something more constructive than fling a colleague to the mob, hoping to save themselves for a while.