Cancel Culture Reveals Most About Those Talking About It

The most fascinating sports figure of my life is someone I never remembered seeing live.

In early 1988, Jimmy the Greek was fired by CBS for being racist. I was five at the time. I vaguely remember the scandal that engulfed him living near New York and my Dad’s love of the NYC tabloids.

Over the next few years, Jimmy the Greek was used mostly as a punchline, parodied later in shows I watched like The Simpsons.

When ESPN launched its 30 for 30 series, a documentary on Jimmy the Greek was one of my favorites because of how insane it seemed that someone could get so famous talking about gambling on television. For my entire life until a few years ago, talking about gambling and sports seemed forbidden.

Of course, the racism is what ended his career. I’m not sure I actually saw his comments in full until that documentary aired. It was pretty horrifying, even if his friends tried to defend him by saying he was more stupid than racist. Not a good defense in 1988, and still not a good one today.

Several years ago, I wrote a piece here about how I didn’t think Jimmy the Greek would be shunned from society in the Trump era. If anything, he would’ve found a second life somewhere – either in the right wing disinfo sphere and rehabilitated after time off in the sports world.

Jimmy the Greek has been on my mind a lot lately as the phrase “cancel culture” gets repeated ad nauseum by a bunch of people who never actually get canceled.

The latest entry into this tiresome narrative was Gina Carano, who was openly bigoted on social media for years until Disney finally pulled the plug on her Star Wars career. Within hours of being dropped by Disney, she had secured a new deal with right wing agitator and white supremacist Ben Shapiro, which certainly validated Disney’s decision. Yes, Carano’s career has hit rock bottom. But you can’t say she was canceled on the scale of Jimmy the Greek since, you know, she just signed a new deal.

Carano is far from the only high-profile person to rail against cancel culture while obviously not being canceled. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley helped lead an insurrection against the United States, yet their big complaint is they’ve lost book deals. What is going on here?

The real truth is that the people complaining about “cancel culture” are only telling on themselves.

There is no such thing as cancel culture, and there never has been. There have always been consequences for racists and bigots. The only difference from 1988 to 2021 is that those being held accountable have a place to go and complain – very loudly to millions – about being held accountable.

In 1988, Jimmy the Greek didn’t have Fox News to interview him on primetime to millions of Americans, which would be amplified by millions more on social media. He was completely shunned from society until his death. In retrospect, you could argue that his fate was too severe for his racism, without even a chance at redemption.

In one way, you’d have to think race relations have improved in the past 30-plus years, right? We’ve had our first Black President. Georgia just elected a Black U.S. Senator. We have more representation from non-whites at all levels of government and in popular culture.

Yet, we’ve gone backwards in so many ways. There has never been more outward racism spewed by people on television and in the news than ever before, thanks largely to our last President who took dog whistles and turned them in plain, spoken words.

The Bachelor, as per usual these days, is going through another racism controversy as the first Black lead in series history appears to be headed toward proposing to a girl who went to a racist antebellum party three years ago. Chris Harrison, its only host, had the nerve to actually defend her. A disaster in every sense of the word that has the future of ABC’s most popular franchise on the ropes. Will it get canceled? Doubtful.

The lack of movement in race relations recently hit me in the strangest way. On my day off for President’s Day, I watched a bit of House Party. The 1990 movie featuring Kid and Play had a scene where one of their Dads was looking for them, when he was stopped by the cops for being Black. The scene plays out almost comical, where the cops are “just” stopping him because he looked suspicious. They let him go after giving him a hard time.

Watching this in 2021, I’ve seen that footage play out on social media far too much in the past few years. I was waiting for the cops to shoot him on sight. It was a gross feeling. We’ve gone backwards in three decades.

Indeed, we have. We need to be better. But I know we won’t, especially with the loudest and most obnoxious racists and bigots of them all complaining about cancel culture.

This is my plea to remember that when someone complains about cancel culture, they’re really complaining about their inability to be publicly racist. Please, do not fall for their bullshit.

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