Give 'em a Grinch, they'll take a mile: The uncancellable march of the 'cancel culture' grift
BBC News pushes Lipman's ludicrous claims as Radio 4 angles for "anti-woke" crowd
While Carl Sagan’s version is more commonly quoted — “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” — I prefer Pierre-Simon Laplace’s original…
The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.
… because the ankle-deep sewer water I wade through on a daily basis is the product of the British columnist class, a group of people whose “strangeness” knows no limit and crucially no earthly form of shame.
“Cancel culture, the existence of…” is one of the British press and media’s most common extraordinary claims; it’s ladled out and dressed up in multiple ways every day but the columns, features, and interviews which repeat it don’t come with extraordinary proof.
That howling absence of proof is at the centre of today’s interview by BBC News’ Culture Editor Katie Razzall with Maureen Lipman. Beneath a headline that screams Cancel Culture could wipe out comedy and balanced precariously on polling from YouGov, the piece opens with a series of scare quotes:
Dame Maureen Lipman has said comedy is in danger of being "wiped out" due to fears over being cancelled.
She told the BBC she believes comedians are now so worried about offending, "a revolution" is taking place.
"It's in the balance whether we will ever be funny again," she said.
Who is the “we” Lipman ‘fears’ will “[never] be funny again”? Because in the 70s — when she was starting out — and 80s — when she became a star — the “we” that got to write the jokes was a much, much smaller group1. She doesn’t offer examples of self-censorship — sometimes also known as “tact” or “good judgement” — but she doesn’t need to because Razzall justifies it with the magic word “believes”.
Maureen Lipman “believes” comedy — which has had a good run since some joker in a loincloth scratched a cock into a cave wall — is on the cusp of extinction. And it’s incredibly convenient that these worries have been teased out of her just in time for the release of the aforementioned YouGov study:
Her comments come as more than half of Britons say they have stopped themselves from expressing political and social views for fear of being judged.
While YouGov would bristle at the suggestion of push polling2, it does seem that its approach was to start from the assumption that “cancel culture” is definitely a real thing that exists rather than a rhetorical device particularly beloved of columnists, even as only 35% of those polled knew what the term means or had heard of it.
The BBC News piece quickly skips over that contradiction (“While only a third (35%) of those polled said they knew what cancel culture was, many more effectively said they felt cancelled from time to time…”) with the word “effectively” doing a lot of work.
What both the article and the original polling roll into “cancel culture” might more accurately be described as behaving like a human being who lives in a society. The article continues:
The less politically correct the views held, the more likely people were to say they feel shouted down. They are most likely to keep quiet about what they really think when they are with people they've just met (49%) or are at work (40%), according to the data. A third (31%) also self-censor with friends, a fifth (21%) with family.
27% of people — 32% of men — told YouGov that “they always say what they want”. This demographic is gearing up to spoil Christmas dinners across the land.
Lipman continues her prophecies of doom, saying:
Cancel culture, this cancelling, this punishment, it’s everywhere. Punishment. An eye for an eye. ‘You said that therefore you must never work again.’ Sooner or later the cancelers will win.
… something has to be forbidden to make you laugh, really belly laugh. It’s when you shouldn’t be laughing. All the things that have been cancelled out by being correct are, I’m afraid, all the things that make people laugh.
There are those extraordinary claims again, dancing alone without any extraordinary proof to keep them company.
There are all kinds of laughs; ones of nostalgia, recognition, delight and surprise as well as of contempt, guilt, shame, fear, and anger. Lipman’s idea that the only belly laugh is one that comes from… the forbidden doesn’t stand up any more than that other familiar claim that there are subjects you can’t joke about.
Razzall’s report juxtaposes Lipman’s opinions with those of an actual comic, Russell Kane, who says it’s “‘complete nonsense’ that comedians are sacrificing being funny because they don’t want to be cancelled.” He continues:
I don't think anyone is saying you can't be offended, nobody is saying that, what we're saying is you can't use hate speech that would prompt a gender-related crime, a sex-related crime or a race-related crime."
"There's been a massive, much-needed shift in the conversation around gender, around men's attitudes to women, around consent. Society has moved on.
But Kane’s view is not reflected in the headline of the BBC News report; it’s Lipman’s line that gets top billing and, in turn, has been used as a catalyst for discussions on radio and TV broadcasts today. Kane’s more balanced take — he also says he’s set his tweets to auto-delete after six months — just isn’t incendiary enough.
While Razzall raises the question of whether “cancel culture” actually exists at about halfway through the article, the general framing makes the editorial angle apparent. Look at how the survey results are presented:
Much of the argument is around whether freedom of speech is under attack from a new "woke" agenda. YouGov's poll suggests younger generations particularly prioritise preventing hateful offensive speech over being able to say what you want.
That last sentence could easily be rephrased as, “Younger generations place a greater emphasis on empathy and kindness over ‘having your say’.”
Similarly, another survey finding — that only one in three (36%) of 18-24-year-olds think future generations will object to some of their current views versus 47% of older Britons — is simply par for the course. Young people are overconfident, older people are jaded. It’s a conclusion that the Ancient Greeks nailed.
The “cancel culture” grift works on multiple levels. It allows people to make tedious, crass and decidedly obvious provocations while positioning themselves as radical, however establishment they actually are. Bullies can reframe themselves as victims the moment their speech has consequences and saying you’ve been ‘cancelled’ is now a handy marketing tool to unlock a whole new world of opportunities.
While BBC News was stroking its chin over “cancel culture” for the umpteenth time this year, elsewhere in Broadcasting House, the comedy commissioners at Radio 4 were buying into the bullshit in their own special way.
The pilot of Unsafe Space, an “anti-woke” comedy show featuring GB News host, Titania McGrath creator/cosplayer and perpetually not angry about it man Andrew Doyle and “openly right-wing” (his description) and failed Reclaim UK candidate in the Holyrood elections Leon Kearse, is being recorded in January.
The show is billed as “provocative, unorthodox stand-up comedy for the open-minded, bringing diversity of opinion to BBC Radio 4”. That translates as tedious pricks thinking they’re dangerous and edgy for saying things they know other tedious pricks agree with. Flat-roof pub radio from contributors to GB News, flat-roof pub TV.
And it just so happens that Doyle, Kearse and two other comics on the bill — Nick Dixon and Mary Bourke — were on a list of “alternative comedians” the BBC should book, produced by The Campaign For Common Sense3, an astroturfing group with an equally on-the-nose name and long history of backing Doyle’s endeavours.
Just as The Mash Report wasn’t renewed — ‘cancelled’ for right-wing newspapers’ purposes — to signal to those same papers that Director General Tim Davie (a former Tory local council candidate) and BBC Chairman Richard Sharp (Rishi Sunak mentor and Tory Party donor) were ‘serious’, Unsafe Space is ‘positive’ discrimination to please the foaming-at-the-mouth columnist demographic.
The ‘stars' and production team of Unsafe Space would no doubt argue that you can’t judge a show before it’s been broadcast and, in doing so, I will show myself not to be one of those “open-minded” people they’re after. But I’ve read enough of Andrew Doyle’s “I identify as an attack helicopter” schtick to know that Unsafe Space will be so safer than bowling with the bumpers up, safer than pureed vegetables spooned into the gummy jaws of a mewling infant.
Unsafe Space will be the sound of comedians spouting banal cruelties that they can pretend make them renegades in a world of ‘woke’ conformity but which are just catchphrase fodder for an audience proud of being arseholes. It’s the easiest thing in the world to sign up to your own set of orthodoxies — comfortable in the knowledge that the right is firmly ensconced in government — then act like you’re saying the unsayable. Screaming untruths at the powerless is the safest trick going.
Not that it’s somehow perfectly diverse now.
A poll in which the true objective is to sway voters by using loaded questions.
“The name of my cardboard cutout think-tank is raising questions already answered by the name of my cardboard cutout think-tank.”