The Culture War Makes Fools of Us All

In the Fall of 2018 comedian Nimesh Patel performed a stand-up routine at Columbia University that ended in disaster.

His set was scheduled to last for a little under an hour, but not even half of his routine would be enjoyed by the students at Columbia that day. The show seemed to get off to a good start with plenty of laughs, although a youtube onlooker would be right in sensing that something was amiss. A few of the jokes got nervous chuckles, and then one in particular — a favorite of Patel’s other audiences — was met with complete silence.

Then roughly 20 minutes into the show Patel was abruptly interrupted. Three of the student event organizers had joined him on stage and informed him that his set was now over.

The scene that unfolded was characterized more by awkwardness, than by outrage. He wasn’t booed or heckled. The three female students who had taken the stage almost tentatively, and hesitantly interrupted him, as if afraid to offend the comedian.

In fact, when they initially took the stage they politely thanked him for his time and claimed that there had been a sudden change of plans because the sound technician needed to leave.

Patel wasn't buying it. He pressed the girls for the real explanation, and after some back and forth they were finally forced to admit that they were offended by his jokes, especially the one he told that fell flat with the audience — a joke about a gay black man.

Here is how Patel describes the joke in an op-ed he wrote in the New York Times:

I try to learn things from everyone I encounter, and one day I realize oh, this is how you know being gay can’t be a choice — no one would choose to be gay if they’re already black. No one is doubling down on hardship. Then I say, no black dude wakes up and thinks that being a black man in America is too easy. No black dude says, “I’m going to put on a Madonna halter top and some Jordans and make an Indian dude real uncomfortable.” That’s not a choice.

Or catch Patel’s description of it here in the first two minutes of his performance at the Comedy Cellar:

Once the three organizers took the stage at Columbia, Patel tried to defend the joke. Much like he did in the above video. Then after being given a chance to make a closing statement, the comedian made an attempt to turn the situation around with a few other jokes. But much of his audience seemed to have lost their appetite for laughter. It was then that his mic went silent.

What was striking about this incident was that Patel was clearly making three points in his joke — points that anybody who is even remotely social-justice-oriented would agree with. Namely, that African Americans tend to face a lot of hardship due to their race, that homosexuals face a lot of the same discrimination, and that being gay is not a choice.

So why did these students take offense?

The only answer I can see is that the joke went over their heads. And the reason they didn’t get it was that they completely missed those three points that he was making.

But it shouldn’t take a lot of brainpower to get a joke like that. Surely students at Columbia, one of the top Universities in the United States, would be capable of at least understanding what he was trying to say, even if they didn’t find it funny.

Apparently not.

And therein lies the problem with the cultural trend we often refer to by several names: call-out or cancel culture, political correctness, etc. Granted, there is a conversation to be had about its implications for free speech, open dialogue, and diversity of opinion. But the truly frustrating aspect of it all is that in many cases these instances demonstrate a genuine lack of analytical sophistication.

Or to put in language that the Twitter mobs can understand:

Some people be dumb AF.

A few other brief examples illustrate this point.

When Sam Harris joined a panel discussion opposite Ben Affleck on Real Time with Bill Maher, he tried to make a nuanced point about a delicate topic. But it was difficult because Affleck was so enraged by his argument, that it was hard for him to get a word in edge-wise. He argued that Islam contains a lot of ideas that are antithetical to liberal societies, and that according to poll data the majority of Muslims — even those in the west — are still devoted to those views. His contention was that the west must “win a war of ideas” with Islam, and at no point did he disparage Muslims, or Arabs as a group of people. Nor at any point did he advocate for immigration restrictions, or any other types of sanctions.

Ben Affleck's response? Infamously he replied with disgust, “That’s gross! It’s racist!!” He compared the argument to anti-semitic slurs such as calling someone a “shifty Jew.”

Because apparently, that’s where some people are at in their ability to wade through an argument. They can’t even parse out the difference between a person being judged for their skin color, and the honest critique of a religious worldview.

True, this is merely an anecdote, but notice that as Harris argues at the beginning of the segment, criticism of the illiberal ideas in Islam is often conflated with Islamaphobia, and as he says it the crowd erupts in applause. There have also been articles published in several well-known publications that accuse Harris much in the same way that Affleck did. So Affleck's simplistic conflation is clearly representative of a wider sentiment.

I cannot help but wonder how we can hope to have productive conversations about delicate topics if we cannot manage a simple game of “one of these things is not like the other,” — in the case Islamaphobia, and the frank analysis of a religious system.

Then there is widely beloved — or should I say — once widely beloved, author JK Rowling.

When the author tweeted the statement that “sex is real” in support of a researcher who argued for the immutability of biological sex, she was met with so much outrage that the response became the subject of international conversation.

But Rowling wasn’t making a statement regarding her feelings about trans people. In fact, she went out of her way to first express her support for anyone’s lifestyle choices.

“Dress however you please,” Rowling wrote. “Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill”

She was expressing her understanding of evolutionary biology and stating her disagreement with the notions of queer theory which claim that gender or even sex itself is a social construct that exists on a spectrum rather than as a binary. And even if we disagree with her, we would simply be making a category error if we conflated her understanding or misunderstanding of science with intolerance for people who feel that they were born in the wrong body. They are simply two different issues.

Granted, scientific claims can and have been used to mask intolerance. But to assume that that is the case without entertaining/debating the claim first in good faith makes it nearly impossible to have an intelligent conversation about delicate issues.

Intelligent conversation matters.

Finally, there was the great de-statuing of 2020. Setting aside the debate as to whether it’s ok to allow the destruction of public property in these instances, the anger directed toward some historical figures made sense. Confederate icons like Robert E. Lee have obvious associations with slavery. And there’s a legitimate discussion to be had about whether or not statues of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington belong in a similar category since they were themselves, slave owners.

But when I heard that they were going after Gandhi (technically his statue was only vandalized), Winston Churchill, and Union General Ulysses S. Grant, I couldn’t help but feel that I was witnessing the same lack of nuanced analysis playing itself out.

Grant, for instance, was a powerful white man, and he married a slave owner (although he was personally opposed to slavery and never owned one on his own before his marriage). But the general freed thousands upon thousands of slaves in his military campaign through the South at the end of the American Civil War. Grant’s leadership was a decisive factor in the North’s victory since prior to his command the Union Army was struggling to defeat the Confederacy. If not for him slavery may have persisted several decades longer.

And Churchill, despite his fetish for colonialism, was instrumental in the defeat of fascism, and German white supremacy, both of which were possibly the greatest existential threats to liberal democracy in modern history.

Gandhi, of course, led India to independence from the British Empire through non-violent resistance.

Are we to believe that Churchill, Grant, Gandhi, and Confederate Generals of the American Civil War should all be lumped into the same category? The notion is absurd. But then again, absurdity is a common theme in our current intellectual climate.

There are plenty more examples, of course, but I think it’s helpful to turn back to Nimesh Patel. Nimesh has talked about the incident a lot, and as mentioned, has written about it in the New York Times. He appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience in December of 2019 and explained the entire incident in detail, and what a difficult experience it was for him.

He mentioned to Rogan that there were plenty of kids in the crowd who liked his set. In fact, they came up to him afterward, some even emailed and DMed him on Instagram to let him know that “we’re not like that,” and that they did not approve of him being called out, and accused of the transgressions that he was cut-off for.

That helps to keep things in perspective. Not everyone — probably not even a majority of socially concerned people — want to stifle debate, or win the culture war by making straw men of their opponent’s arguments. But there is a discussion going on as to whether the zeitgeist, characterized as cancel culture, political correctness, wokeness, etc. is something to be concerned about. My answer is that yes, it is. But that it is more of a symptom of a larger problem than a cause of problems itself.

Aside from the usual considerations about free speech, our obsession with sniffing out all things offensive has often displayed a lack of even the attempt to think deeply about complex issues.

Our concern should not only be that there is a vocal minority in our culture that is hostile to nuanced debate.

Our concern should be that if the trend continues there may come a day when we no longer have the intellectual capacity to perform it at all.

Because as it currently stands, reason, nuance, and critical thought are being canceled.