Irony/Sarcasm and Cancel Culture

Let’s all take a breath and not lose our humor. Or our humanity.

In January 2020, a professor and administrator at Babson College — an awesome institution for business and economics — was fired for a controversial Facebook post suggesting Iran put a Kardashian's home and the Mall of America on its list of US cultural targets.

The Facebook post was in response to President Trump’s threat to bomb Iranian cultural sites. “In retaliation, Ayatollah Khomenei should tweet a list of 52 sites of beloved cultural heritage that he would bomb. Um... Mall of America? ...Kardashian residence?" the Babson faculty member wrote, and then deleted on his personal page.

Given that my go-to humor tends to be sarcasm — and my friends can have all sorts of opinions about what that says about the state of my soul! — I have very mixed feelings about this decision by an institution of higher learning that I’ve recommended to scores of students over the years.

On one hand, I do not believe in violence unless justified by self-defense. Yet I also firmly believe in free speech. The professor's Facebook post reads ironically — the idea that unlike ancient Persian monuments centuries old, the U.S.'s "beloved cultural heritage" is reduced to symbols of our commercialism and our narcissism created by our vapid media-obsessed culture. The fact that college administrators could not hear the tone behind the professor’s post suggests, at least to me, hyper-vigilant risk management and/or a deafness to satire and wit (even if some might argue poorly executed).

Lately I have been committed to listening far more than I speak, mostly because I recognize a need to be open to change, and in the spirit of the seminar-centered pedagogy at the core of my teaching, I cannot do that if I do not listen because I'm focused on what to say next in response.

Yet I also have felt considerably more hesitant to express my uncertainties or honest questions because of how others will judge them, in a society that has become increasingly judgmental and risk adverse. (There's a reason why my third planned novel about a teacher at a boarding school won't be published until AFTER I retire...)

The irony isn’t lost on me. As a teacher, I tell students to take intellectual risks; that mistakes are okay, and that we can all learn from them. But when it comes to political discourse and issues of social justice, I have discovered that mistakes lead to the opposite behavior: admonishment and belittlement, and if not outright silencing, then a shaming that leads to a self-cancellation that removes me from the conversation. At this moment in time, I feel like Audrey Lorde was partially wrong when she wrote that "Your silence will not save you." Because right now, for me, as a teacher and as a citizen, silence might just save me. Even if it saves a reduced, less-than-whole me.

The challenge for any tolerant and democratic society, if we value true dialogue and listening as a way to learn from each other and to grow, is that others may also decide to remain silent. I worry that as rhetoric and passions heat up, more and more well-meaning liberals and moderate/progressives like me may be left in the middle and disengaged, closing our ears to the increasingly rancorous invective from the extremes on either side.

It is far easier to call people out than to call them in. We need to listen not just to the words we say, but the tone and the sentiment between our words. Impact of words on the listener is of primary importance, yes, but intentions cannot be discounted. We all need to take a deep breath and trust that the other human being expressing themselves has, from their perspective, the best of intentions — a hard task right now in our politically polarized world. A nearly impossible task if those voices are saying that Black lives don’t matter; if those voices parrot discriminatory government policies that support racism, homophobia, sexism, and extremist right-wing ideology that denies others’ humanity.

Listening and trusting in moments like this is a hard task, yes, but a critical one. I hope that we can all express what we thinking without, as the now-unemployed Babson professor sadly discovered, needing to put a snark emoji after our thoughts.