Here’s a joke:
You say Trump was doing fine until Covid came along? That’s like saying “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”
OK, that’s a very lame and unfunny joke. But then I’m a deeply unfunny person. I wanted to make a joke about the assassination of the President of the United States, and it was the best I could come up with.
Here’s Will Wilkinson:
Wilkinson got fired for that joke, even though it is clearly funnier than my joke. Also more original. So why does Wilkinson get fired while I (presumably) keep my job?
I’d say 155 years and 20 IQ points.
The Lincoln assassination happened a long time ago, and it’s no longer a sensitive topic. It’s been barely two weeks since some Trumpistas tried to assassinate Pence. And Wilkinson’s joke is more subtle, so some readers might have thought he was serious.
[Which is a sad comment on our public, as even I got the joke. I’m the guy at the party who when everyone else is roaring with laughter says, “Wait, I don’t get it, can someone explain the joke to me.”]
In any case, I sort of know why Wilkinson was fired, but in another sense I don’t understand. Perhaps the Niskanen Center was under great pressure to fire him, but that raises the question of why do we have a society where institutions are pressured to fire people for tasteless jokes? Why not just have Wilkinson put out another tweet explaining the joke and apologizing to anyone who was offended? Why make a mountain out of a mole hill?
To answer this question, we need to dig deeper. Not only did I do a joke about assassinating President Lincoln, I repeated Wilkinson’s joke about assassinating Pence. Isn’t that bad? Now you might argue that I’m just repeating the joke as a “reporter”, not endorsing it. OK, but what if I endorse it? What if I say I think the joke is funny? Then do I get fired? Probably not, because almost no one reading this post would assume I favor assassinating people. Incredible as it may seem, some people seemed to think Wilkinson was serious. So it’s not so much the words you say, it’s the public’s perception as to whether you actually believe something. Wilkinson was fired because people (wrongly) believed he favored assassinating Pence.
Here’s another angle. Suppose Wilkinson does the exact same joke but uses Pelosi instead of Pence. Does he still get fired? I doubt it. The people who missed the humor in the Pence joke would obviously understand that a Biden supporter like Wilkinson would not actually favor lynching Pelosi.
And the situation gets even more absurd. Here’s Reason, one of the few reasonable voices on cancel culture:
This affair has produced several hypocrisies. First, if the Niskanen Center “draws the line at statements that are, or can in any way be interpreted as, condoning or promoting violence,” then it would have to fire its president. Taylor has arguably used Twitter in a manner that suggests he condones violence. He rooted for antifa to punch out Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who waved their guns at protesters encountered on their private street. “If I were in that march, and these racist lunatics were waiving [sic] guns at me, I’d like to think I’d rush them and beat their brains in,” said Taylor. “And I wouldn’t apologize for it for one goddam [sic] second.”
Unlike Wilkinson’s tweet, there’s little reason to assume this was meant in jest. And unlike Wilkinson, Taylor is the president of the organization and sets the tone for what is permissible. If the boss can tweet an unapologetic call to “beat their brains in,” his employees might very well think that edgy humor is okay. Perhaps that’s why Taylor deleted his statement regarding Wilkinson’s firing—he realized that it impugned him as well.
In America, we have a lower moral standard for our leaders. Trump could say and do things that would get lower level people fired, and so can think tank presidents. We’ve had this double standard all throughout human history—especially in banana republics. (A bit less so in the Denmarks of the world.)
In the early years of blogging, I expected to eventually get enmeshed in some sort of scandal for a politically incorrect statement, but oddly it has not happened so far. And yet, I feel its only a matter of time, as each day I get a bit more out of touch with contemporary society. Fortunately, I’m in the enviable position of being able to say whatever I want, as I don’t need my job. I’m an affluent 65-year old, yearning for the quiet life.
People like Wilkinson and Matt Yglesias can always make a living with Substack, but cancel culture is a legitimate problem for lots of lower level people. Back when I was a professor, I knew several people who were seriously (and unfairly) damaged by the PC police. So don’t lecture me on it being a phony issue. On the other hand, it is a pretty trivial issue relative to the 400,000 people in prison for drug crimes.
In my view, there are no offensive jokes, only offended people. And don’t say, “Surely you are not saying joke X is not offensive.” I just said there are offended people, and that might include me on occasion.
You’ll never see me advocate that someone get fired for a joke that was well intended, but ended up in bad taste. An apology is sufficient. That’s why I’m not a conservative or a progressive—I oppose the cancel culture championed by both of those two misguided ideologies.