Government censorship is bad enough but these days you don’t even need to go that far, say the wrong thing and the online mob. Just ask Shania Twain or Kanye West what they’ve been going through since saying the wrong things in this Twitter era.
Kanye West simply complimented a black conservative pundit while Shania Twain made the outrageous error of saying that she would have voted for Donald Trump. Both were on the receiving end of a swift backlash telling these celebrities that they shouldn’t stray from the left-wing entertainment industry orthodoxy.
“I would have voted for him because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest,” Twain told the Guardian. “Do you want straight or polite? Not that you shouldn’t be able to have both. If I were voting, I just don’t want bullshit. I would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent. And politics has a reputation of not being that, right?”
For straying from the world of acceptable thought with those comments, Twain was hounded into an apology.
I would like to apologise to anybody I have offended in a recent interview with the Guardian relating to the American President. The question caught me off guard. As a Canadian, I regret answering this unexpected question without giving my response more context (1/4)
— Shania Twain (@ShaniaTwain) April 22, 2018
In a four tweet thread, Twain talked about how she is opposed to discrimination and doesn’t have any “common moral beliefs” with the president. Were Twain’s comments so offensive that the mob needed to force her to apologize?
How many celebrities endorsed Hillary Clinton without any backlash? How many singers like Katy Perry, Bruce Springsteen or power couple Beyonce and Jay Z performed for Clinton without any pressure from media or elsewhere for their political stance.
In fact as I remember it, during the election those endorsing Clinton were treated to fawning headlines, mini-profiles on Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and briefs in morning and evening newscasts.
The same couldn’t be said for Kanye who went to Trump Tower to meet with the Donald during the 2016 campaign and was promptly blasted.
This time Kanye’s sin was to tweet out that he likes some of what black conservative pundit Candace Owens has to say.
I love the way Candace Owens thinks
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 21, 2018
That’s all West had to say to about the situation and he too was inundated with calls for him to back down, apologize, retract.
He didn’t.
In fact in tweet after tweet since this happened, Kanye West has been doubling down. He has tweeted, “only free thinkers” and “get past the past.”
we have freedom of speech but not freedom of thought
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 22, 2018
The thought police want to suppress freedom of thought
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 22, 2018
??? pic.twitter.com/m5JGp9zKyM
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 23, 2018
West is not backing down, which is the way these situations should be handled. The mob cannot decide who gets to be acceptable and who does not. If that is the case then free speech is dead, free thought is dead without interventionist governments every having to lift a finger.
Disappointed in Shania for apologizing. I thought she was more intelligent than that. I thought she was not a follower of the crowd but a free thinker!
As a fellow Canadian, VERY disappointed in Shania backing down regardless of the “context”. If you can’t speak your mind freely without the ‘sheeple’ running you over, you might as well move to North Korea.
Rather have a MAN like Trump running a country than an idiot son pussy like Trudeau 2.0. If you vote for him because “he’s cute”, you’re too stupid to be ALLOWED to vote !