poodaddy
Member
Joe's comment was racist, definitely. It's not like this incident wasn't known about--it was a very long time ago. I saw a clip of it years ago, thought it was fucked up but that Joe was on drugs and trying to be funny, he crossed the line, and it wasn't a pattern of behavior for him. That's one of the problems with cancellations. The worst things you've ever said from anywhere in the past will be dredged up, stripped of context, built into a narrative about how awful a human you are, and thrown out onto social media for an angry mob to go haywire about. Those PotA comments were fucked up and indefensible, but they don't define who he is as a person overall. There are thousands of hours of candid conversational footage of Joe. He's a moron, not a racist.
I've been saying for a while now that my big issue with cancel culture is the manner in which we're condemning an entire person's persona and public being based on what they said or did when they were at their worst, rather than their best or even their average. The world can't work like that, we can't operate a society in which people are afraid to make mistakes lest they ruin their entire future, it's damning the future for the growing pains of the past. We have all made mistakes, we have all fucked up, lord knows I've said some truly stupid shit in my day, but I don't think that stupid shit I said defines me, or at least I'd prefer that it didn't in any case. I'd prefer to be judged as a devoted father and husband, someone who truly puts their family first, but at the end of the day I said some really vile shit around twenty years ago or so, around the same time we all did. Look, society changes, sensitivities change, but we can't keep condemning people for committing sins before the acts were even known as sins! This is craziness man, all of it, we have lost the script as a people and we have to learn to accept and forgive again. I'm tired of every day finding more pitchforks in people's hands rather than olive branches. What a world.
Cancel cancel culture.