CANCEL CULTURE
Although some have claimed that the “cancel culture” doesn’t really exist, a nationwide Zogby Analytics poll of likely voters recently found that a narrow plurality (37 percent) supported cancel culture, with 32 percent opposed and 30 percent “not sure.” Some of the poll details are interesting: support was stronger among men than among women, and stronger in the East than in the Midwest; the strongest support was among younger voters, 18-29 and 30-49, whereas the strongest opposition was among voters over 65; and also—surprisingly, at least to me—opposition was strong among the youngest group, 18-24. Self-styled conservative voters were equally split between support and opposition to the cancel culture, whereas 62 percent of progressives voiced support, compared to only 15 percent opposed. It appears that cancel culture (an oxymoron if ever there was one) is fated to be a part of American life for some time to come.
WOKE SPEED BUMP
Museum directors, college deans, and newspaper editors take note.
A few weeks ago a petition spearheaded by a San Francisco Bay Area high school senior was submitted to the Trader Joe’s supermarket company that included the following claim. “The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes [sic] other cultures — it presents ‘Joe’, as the default ‘normal’ and the other characters falling outside of it … The common thread between all of these transgressions is the perpetuation of exoticism, the goal of which is not to appreciate other cultures, but to further other and distance them from the perceived ‘normal.’” These days such statements are followed by steely-eyed demands, and these days most companies and institutions comply.
Trader Joe’s response? “A few weeks ago, an online petition was launched calling on us to ‘remove racist packaging from [our] products.’ Following were inaccurate reports that the petition prompted us to take action. We want to be clear: we disagree that any of these labels are racist. We do not make decisions based on petitions.”
As a dedicated TJ shopper I say, “Good for them.”
THE WAY WE LIVE TODAY
I am a latecomer to the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. I haven’t read any of his books but I have listened to numerous lectures and interviews. A 2018 interview with NYU professor Jonathan Hardt, founder of the Heterodox Academy, about the causes for the unravelling of the contemporary university touched me close to home. Peterson appeared on the social media battlefield after involving himself in a free speech controversy with the University of Toronto, his employer. Peterson’s views have made him a lightning rod for radical left-wing critics who have trotted out the usual accusations: hate-speech mongerer, fascist, racist, white supremacist. Peterson collects native Canadian art from coastal British Columbia, and has formed a friendship with Charles Joseph, an accomplished Kwakwaka’wakw carver from the Ma’amtaglia-Tlowitsis tribe. In a blanketing ceremony Peterson was given a Kwak’wala name and made an honorary member of Joseph’s family. Unexpected for a racist white supremacist.
Photo: Carving, Charles Joseph
COSY GLASS BOX
The current exhibition at the Farnsworth House gets rid of all the Mies furniture, which was never a part of the original decor, and recreates the interior as it was when when Dr. Farnsworth actually lived in the house. There are Moroccan rugs on the travertine floor, and wooden chairs and chaises longues—mostly Scandinavian (Risom, Matthson, Wegner), although the curators didn’t hang stuff on the pristine primavera as the good doctor did. I notice that she turned the freestanding closet ninety degrees to create a more intimate bedroom (there is such a thing as too much glass). The result is a revelation—the house is, if not cosy, at least humane. A home, not a shrine to the architect. I hope they keep it that way.
WHAT’S NEXT
Last week, the University of Pennsylvania announced plans to remove its statue of George Whitefield, a famous eighteenth-century British preacher, due to his condoning slavery. What was the statue, made by R. Tait McKenzie in 1919, doing at Penn? Whitefield was a lifelong friend of Benjamin Franklin, the founder of the university. Moreover, as the Penn website notes: “Franklin chose the Whitefield meeting house, with its Charity School, to be purchased as the site of the newly formed Academy of Philadelphia which opened in 1751, followed in 1755 with the College of Philadelphia, both the predecessors of the University of Pennsylvania.” Apparently Franklin, who published several of the preacher’s texts, was more tolerant than his successors. But the mob has its own reasons, or in this case putative reasons, for Penn’s action appears to have been preventative. Whitefield had to go. But what’s next? Architecture often assumes a commemorative function, must it, too, be cancelled in this misbegotten attempt to rewrite history? If Jefferson and Washington are suspect, what about their homes, Monticello and Mount Vernon. To make matters worse, the houses were built with slave labor. The architecture of both was influenced by the prevailing eighteenth-century fashion for Classicism,
ANYTHING GOES
It was the great Cole Porter’s birthday on June 9. In 1934 he wrote the musical Anything Goes.
The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today
And black’s white today
And day’s night today . . .
And though I’m not a great romancer
I know that you’re bound to answer
When I propose
Anything goes
Seems about right.
