BRETT: Let’s take a look at this, and I think this is a hugely important story. It’s what has happened now to who was supposed to be the incoming Teen Vogue editor. Her name is Alexi McCammond. She was deemed in 2019, by the way, to be the Emerging Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and was supported by Anna Wintour and of course the rest of the top Conde Nast management to the Teen Vogue job.
Well, she’s not gonna be starting next week as the editor-in-chief of the fashion and lifestyle magazine. That’s because you had a staff rebellion over at Teen Vogue over offensive remarks she posted back in 2011. She’s a freshman in college at that time. When they surfaced two years back, these were anti-Asian remarks and slurs that happened with this young woman who was in college making a bunch of nasty tweets.
When they surfaced she apologized, she deleted all the tweets twice, did what she could do. But the woke, the woke culture, the cancel culture, comes after everybody. America’s changing. Rush talked about it in 2015 before the term “cancel culture” became a thing. We’re talking 2015. Here’s Rush.
RUSH: There is a creep, creep, creep, creep, creep that is happening throughout Western nations, Western cultures, and Western civilization countries. It is a creep, creep, creep, creep, creep through various means. Illegal immigration, normal immigration, intimidation, political correctness, what have you. But Western civilizations are pretty much in the process of erasing themselves, in my view, anyway.
“A granite monument of the Ten Commandments that has sparked controversy since its installation on the Oklahoma Capitol grounds was being removed late yesterday it will be transported to a private conservative think tank for storage. A contractor the state hired began removing the monument shortly after 10:30 last night. The work comes after the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s June decision that the display violates a state constitutional prohibition on the use of public property to support ‘any sect, church, denomination or system of religion.'”
We are a Christian nation with a Judeo-Christian ethic. Were founded and established that way, and we are erasing ourselves. We are allowing it to happen under the guise of religious freedom, except it’s not religious freedom that’s making this happen because the religious freedom is also under assault and could be said to be suffering defeats. Try employing your religious freedom if you’re a county clerk in Kentucky. Try using your religious freedom if you’re a pizzeria or a bakery or what have you in Indiana, southern California, or Colorado.
You’ll find that your religious freedom doesn’t mean anything. But in the name of religious freedom, the Ten Commandments monument must come down so as not to offend anybody who doesn’t believe in them. It used to be our country. I mean, this is, what was the United States, this was how the United States was founded. The melting pot. I guess the people who believe this country was founded in an immoral way, is immoral, is unjust, and has been for over 200 years, must engage in all this to erase its history of racism, slavery, discrimination, or whatever.
In other words, the United States has been flawed from the get-go, and it’s time now to fix it. And every precept and principle on which the nation was founded was discriminatory, bigoted, or what have you, and so must not stand. The melting pot used to be people coming here wanting to become Americans. Now it seems like people are coming here trying to erase America — and many who live in America are actually doing the erasing.
October 5, 2015, Fox News, Todd Starnes: “Patriotic teenagers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming showed up to class Wednesday waving American flags in defiance of educators who canceled ‘America Day’ over fears it might upset students who don’t consider themselves to be Americans.”
I want you to listen to this lede again. “Patriotic teenagers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming showed up to class Wednesday waving American flags in defiance of educators who canceled ‘America Day’ over fears it might upset students who don’t consider themselves to be American.” I guess, ladies and gentlemen, it’s too late to ask what non-Americans are doing at a school in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or why American taxpayers are paying to educate non-Americans and then why we are deferring to non-Americans who are offended by the American flag in an American school?
They would have jumped at the chance to engage in an America Day. Why do we even need an America Day in the first place? Well, regardless, immigrants of old would have jumped at the chance to participate in a day celebrating America, but today immigrant students who are not Americans are offended.
They don’t want to see the flag, and what do the school administrators do? “Okay, okay, okay, okay! Don’t shoot! We’ll take it down. Don’t bomb! We’ll take it down.” It’s fear. We’re in a total defensive, fearful position. “Okay, okay, okay,” and we engage in this under the guise of being open-minded and politically correct, but it’s fear.
BRETT: And he’s so spot on. Rush is so right on this, because you see this anytime you see in a flare-up over the issue of praying. You’ll see a football team or a baseball team back when we were allowed to still have team sports, they gather together to have a prayer or to say a prayer or the coach says a prayer. People bow their heads respectfully, whatever it is.
They want to put up some sort of a display that speaks to the Judeo-Christian ethic or ethos or values or any of that sort of stuff. And then suddenly you have these organizations come in and threaten to sue municipalities, school districts, businesses, whatever it is, and it’s just that threat of the lawsuit that then chills the speech. It’s just that idea that, “Okay. We will take this to court.”
Nobody ever stands up and says, “Good. Let’s go. Let’s go to court. I cannot wait. We’re gonna take this to court. Let’s say who prevails in this fight.” People cave. The perception of people’s reactions is more frightening to those who are the linguini-spined among us who don’t really have the sort of convictions that they should have about the importance of freedom and liberty and free speech and expression and free expression in America.
The risk of offense is scarier to them than the debate about what offense may have been created, and that’s like a precrime from Minority Report. That’s like a pre-violation before the violation and so you just go ahead and surrender. Not a good way to go. It’s not a good way to go. It was wrong for Alexi McCammond to be driven from that job at Teen Vogue. I don’t read Teen Vogue, but she apologized, and there’s absolutely no evidence that she’s been a racist toward people of Asian descent or anybody else, but the threat is enough to do you in.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
BRETT: Tara is in South Bend, Indiana. Tara, welcome to the program. What’s on your mind today? Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
CALLER: Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. I am very disturbed by the cancel culture that just keeps resurfacing.
BRETT: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: What I was speaking with the person who screens the calls about is the idea that cancel culture is canceling the redemptive power of the human experience.
BRETT: Oh, I know.
CALLER: What it’s telling us is that you can never make a mistake and become a better person and change and evolve. It’s only certain people that are not given that grace. It’s just frightened to me. As a middle-aged woman with a very young child I worry about the future.
BRETT: Sure.
CALLER: I worry about the idea that people are not allowed to be different. I hope I’m a better and different person today even than I was yesterday. I hope my experiences with others of all cultures, beliefs, has changed any blind spots I’ve had, and I would think that especially (chuckles) that the people that are canceling others —
BRETT: Mmm-hmm.
BRETT: (laughing) That’s right. You nailed it.
CALLER: We’re going to condemn her. We’re gonna condemn her to be that person forever. What…? What is that?
BRETT: Well, that is the most committed, purest form of doctrine that you must follow, right? And what you say is on right. The idea-of-idea of the redemptive nature of humanity, the idea that you can redeemed. So in woke culture, cancel culture, there could never be Paul go from Saul of Tarsus to Paul. You could never become a convert. You could never become redeemed. You could never do that stuff. It’s out the window. What you are is what you’ll be your entire life, right?
CALLER: Isn’t it insane?
BRETT: It is.
CALLER: This idea of woke, of woke is exactly that.
BRETT: That’s right. That’s right.
CALLER: You’ve awakened your doubts. It’s almost, by definition, a culture who’s been redeemed — and they’re the ones doing the canceling.
BRETT: That’s correct. They are judge and juror and executioner, politically speaking. That’s what it is. They say, “We have found you to be an offensive person, we are passing guilt on you right now, and we are going to drive you from public.” So I just want to know where… Say Alexi McCammond. What is she supposed to do now?
She’s decided to not pursue the Teen Vogue there. So is there…? I wonder about this, Tara. Is there a prescribed period of sidelining you must experience before you can go get another job? I mean, this is what’s so crazy. I don’t know what the rules are. I wish somebody would write a rule book for this. You know, it’s uncanny.
CALLER: I don’t think it’s in the rule book.
BRETT: There isn’t. They’re making it up as they go. Tara, that is a dynamite call. I appreciate you being out there, and you’re exactly a hundred percent right. You said you have a young child. Your young child is gonna grow up incredibly wise because of your perspective there, the idea that if you go down this road, this radical ideology, you will not be able to turn back around because they’re telling you out of the box: There is no conversion, there is no turning around, there is none of that.
There is only the fact that you are an offender or somebody who is not popular or somebody who should be reviled for what you think.
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