What Does Nick Cannon’s Firing Say About Cancel Culture and Free Speech

The thing about being an actual free speech advocate is that you spend most of your time telling people “yes, I meant the people who you don’t like deserve free speech, too.” There are always a lot of people going “aha, I’ll bet you don’t believe in free speech anymore. Want to cancel people now, don’t you?”

Take, for example, Nick Cannon. He’s following in a long tradition of celebrities saying stupid s**t because it turns out that most of the things that make you famous, like singing, dancing, acting, or athletics don’t require a lot of intelligence. Seriously, all actors are either idiots or Lisa Kudrow.

Take Nick Cannon. He has a podcast, which is the first way you can tell he’s not very bright. If you have a net worth of $60 million and you didn’t get it from podcasting, it’s in your best interest not to have a podcast because all you can possibly do is torpedo your own career.

So Nick Cannon torpedoed his own career by going in a rant about how white people are sub-human, which, let’s be honest, he probably would have gotten away with if he hadn’t pivoted to Jewish people.

For example, Dwyane Wade tweeted a supportive message to Cannon which he later deleted and took back when all the stuff Cannon said about the Rothchilds and how Black people are “the true Hebrews.”

I want to clarify my now deleted tweet. I was not supporting or condoning what Nick Cannon specifically said, but I had expressed my support of him owning the content and brand he helped create 🙏🏾

— DWade (@DwyaneWade) July 15, 2020

I was too quick to respond without being fully informed about his hurtful anti-Semitic remarks. As you all know I have ZERO tolerance for any hate speech!

— DWade (@DwyaneWade) July 15, 2020

ViacomCBS fired Cannon and here’s the thing: I don’t think they should have. We need to let people say stupid things and go “hey, that was stupid, but you shouldn’t lose your job for saying something stupid.”

Nick Cannon is going to be fine, he’s rich. That’s not the point. The point is we shouldn’t want to live in a society where people get fired for having bad views, even if those views are racist. Because eventually you and the people you agree with aren’t the people who will be deciding what is and isn’t okay to say.

Cannon made some apologetic Twitter posts but after being fired he got Facebook and absolutely unloaded on ViacomCBS, pointedly not apologizing and demanding ownership of his Wild ‘N Out MTV show.

That is not a happy man who will continue to toe the line after being fired.

The reason we defend Nick Cannon’s right to say stupid and yes, hateful things is that we’re not defending him, we’re defending the rights of everyone to say unpopular things. It wasn’t that long ago that The Dixie Chicks were getting canceled for opposing the Iraq War, a thing we all agree they were 100% right about now.

But until we actually respect freedom of speech again, celebrity podcasts are just a horrible idea.