Lost your job because you celebrated a murder? That's not 'cancel culture.'

The American media have vacillated since 2013 between “cancel culture isn’t real” and “cancel culture is a good thing.” This week, they have decided finally that it’s terrible.

The only problem is that what they now refer to as “cancel culture” isn’t really so.

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah last week by someone who appears to be a hard-core left-wing political fanatic. Immediately after Kirk was shot at long range in front of a massive crowd, hundreds if not thousands of everyday professionals, from teachers to veterinarians to nurses, took to social media, using their real faces and names, to celebrate his death. Some posted dances, others simple text. Some uploaded videos of themselves laughing maniacally about it.

In Greenville, South Carolina, for example, a teacher wrote on social media that "American [sic] became greater today. There I said it." In Virginia, a Newport News public school teacher said, "I hope he suffered through all of it.” 

In Clay County, Florida, an elementary teacher said in what was also perceived as a reference to President Trump, “This may not be the obituary [we] were all hoping to wake up to, but this is a close second for me.” At East Tennessee State University, two professors were flagged, one for writing “you reap what you sow” and another for writing “this isn’t a tragedy. It’s a victory.”

Other professions are represented, I promise. But there was a weird overabundance of celebratory notes from people in education.

In response to the victory laps, some on the right, using readily available employment information, contacted the celebrants’ workplaces to ask whether being pro-murder aligns with company policy and values. Several of those who celebrated Kirk’s death soon found themselves on administrative leave or unemployed.

For our esteemed fourth estate, however, the real story isn't the shocking number of people who seem genuinely excited about murder and openly say so, without even hiding behind the shield of anonymity. Instead, the real story is that these people should find themselves out of work after proclaiming their support for the murder of someone with whom they disagree.

“The MAGA right says Charlie Kirk is a martyr for freedom of expression, but still want people to lose their jobs for criticizing his rhetoric,” the headline read in Rolling Stone magazine.

Note that Rolling Stone published a lengthy exposé in 2023 titled, “Why cancel culture is good for democracy.”

“Following the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk,” NBC News warned, “educators across the country have found themselves facing swift termination or potential discipline after sharing opinions on social media about the killing.” "Sharing opinions" is a strange way to characterize the moral choice to glorify an assassination. This is especially true when it comes from a network that published nearly a dozen stories and TV segments in 2014 hounding an obscure Hill staffer who had lightly criticized the Obama daughters in a Facebook post.

The New York Times said elsewhere, “Right-wing influencers and at least one Trump official are encouraging people to scour the internet and expose those seen as celebrating Kirk’s assassination, leading to suspensions, firings and investigations.”

The Times, by the way, had been chief among those who attempted to destroy the lives of West Point cadets over spurious claims that they had flashed secret white supremacy hand gestures during a televised football game. (The cadets were clearly playing the circle game.)

The only thing more annoying than the self-motivated about-face is that these outlets, which have both defended and engaged in cancel culture, now want to redefine what it is. They don’t get to do that, though.

But those of us who have had some consistency on this issue can still tell the difference between getting fired because of your opinion and getting fired for just being a monster. When teachers step into the classroom, they are moral examples for children. Someone who posts a selfie with the caption “I <3 murder” is unfit for that role.

That person's firing is not cancel culture — it's an administrative decision that it's not worth keeping employees whose values are inconsistent with those of the company or the school district. Even in our era of culture wars, "It's not good to enjoy or celebrate murder" has always been considered fairly universal. It has been so since long before the modern idea of "cancel culture" had ever been established.

For a better understanding of “cancel culture,” we can turn to Barstool’s Dave Portnoy, who writes, “To me Cancel culture is when people go out of their way to dig up old tweets, videos etc looking for dirt on somebody they don’t like in an effort to get them fired.” 

Correct.

If, for example, ABC were to fire Jimmy Kimmel suddenly because online activists resurfaced his skits from the 1990s where he wore “blackface,” that would be an example of cancel culture. That Kimmel was taken off-air after flagrantly lying about a political assassination — upsetting his network affiliates and possibly violating FCC regulations, all while serving as the host to a dying television format — well, that’s not cancel culture. That’s just business.

Cancel culture is when James Gunn is fired from directing "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" in 2018 because activists took offense to off-color jokes he had made in 2008.

Cancel culture is when a 27-year-old is forced to resign as editor in chief of Teen Vogue because she tweeted when she was 17, “you’re so gay lmao” and “stupid Asian.”

Cancel culture is the entire genre of “resurfaced tweets” reporting, where journalists dig through decade-old remarks for examples of tongue-in-cheek comments and lightly offensive remarks, most of which were not perceived as such at the time, all for the purpose of imposing new standards of speech and conduct.

Cancel culture is also NBC shelving select episodes of "Community." It is Criterion releasing a version of "The French Connection" where lines of dialogue have been quietly edited out. Cancel culture is Disney affixing scolding “warnings” to certain movies from earlier eras.

Cancel culture involves a retroactive imposition of new rules, often arbitrary and frequently malicious, upon old behavior. It also frequently punishes people for doing nothing wrong at all, as when ESPN pulled Asian American sports broadcaster Robert Lee from covering a football game at the University of Virginia in 2017 because of the similarity between his name and that of the famous Confederate general. (Kirk himself had a few things to say about that one.)

It’s not a cancellation when you lose your job because you tell the world you support murder. That’s just common sense. No one wants to be associated with someone like that.

It is encouraging that the media now seem ready to accept that cancel culture is a real problem. But it works better if you actually understand what it is.

Becket Adams is a writer in Washington and program director for the National Journalism Center.