Fox News Asked Gen X For Help With the Culture Wars
It went about as well as you might expect
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If Fox News thought conservatives could find an ally in their culture wars from the generation born from 1965 to 1980, they were terribly mistaken. It all began with an opinion piece by Matthew Hennessey in the New York Post, with an appeal to the slacker generation for help dealing with cancel culture.
“Gen X has a reputation of defending their freedoms,” he pleaded.
Senator Ted Cruz got in on the fun by tweeting a link to the story. And then Fox News picked up on it, and that’s when the fun really began.
Fox News, Matthew Hennessey, and Sen. Cruz are under the impression that because Gen X lived through a real cancel culture, (remember when Tipper Gore famously crusaded against pop, metal, rock, and rap music) somehow we will feel outraged and come to the rescue.
That’s not how it went down.
We are the latchkey kids, left by our Boomer parents to fend for ourselves at tender ages. We’ve accepted being forgotten. We prefer it.
But when you come for us and invoke the memories of the real fear we had watching senators discuss our favorite music, reminding us of the genuine worry that we could have it taken from us. Well, we’ve got something to say about that.
Not to mention the difficulty of bringing home CDs in front of our parents with that new parental advisory label emblazoned across the front. There was no music streaming. You had to physically purchase a record or a tape unless you had a friend make a copy for you. Imagine bringing home NWA’s Straight Outta Compton cassette tape with that black and white label on the front and hoping your parents somehow didn’t notice it.
I remember the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) senate hearing. I’ll never forget Dee Snider of Twisted Sister sitting there make-up-free, but with his wild, long hair, looking very out of place and a bit awkward, as he answered the senator’s questions.
We all followed the trial. We were genuinely afraid they would ban our music. And they almost did. They came up with a list they called the “Filthy Fifteen.” It included big names like Madonna, Prince, and Motley Crue. And more obscure bands like Mercyful Fate and Vanity.
This leads me to recall a list of everything I can remember that conservatives have tried to ban over the years I have been alive. It’s not an inclusive list, we’d be here all day if it was.
- Music (heavy metal, rap, pop, and rock)
- Murphy Brown
- Video Games
- Bart Simpson
- MTV
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Howard Stern
- Starbucks Holiday Cups
- Peppa Pig
- Teletubbies (mainly the purple one that carried a purse)
- Harry Potter
- Colin Kaepernick
- Janet Jackson
- The Media (mainly CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post)
- Yoga
- Asylum Seekers
- Face Masks
- Healthcare
- Gay People
- Transgender People
- Mail-In Ballots
- Equal Rights
And now, they’re working on suppressing voting rights.
These same people expect us to be outraged when the company that owns “Mr. Potato Head” chooses to change their branding to “Potato Head.”
What Fox News is missing, or doesn’t care about, is the fundamental difference between the government banning a product so that nobody can consume it compared to a private company voluntarily choosing to do business with whomever they want.
Nobody in the government ordered the Dr. Seuss publishers to stop publishing six problematic books. The private, independent publisher chose to no longer publish books with racist illustrations. It does not mean Dr. Seuss is banned. You can still read The Cat and the Hat to your children. The six books that will no longer be in print are not the popular titles we’re all familiar with. (And trust me, the illustrations really are that bad. I stumbled on one years ago at the library when my daughter was small, and I was stunned.)
Here is my final point, conservatives. If you say something horribly racist, bigoted, or otherwise despised by the majority of the public, you may find your ratings drop and/or companies no longer want to do business with you.
It’s called the free market. Remember that? It’s what conservatives supposedly love. Freedom. Capitalism.
You have the freedom to say whatever bigoted thing you want to. But guess what? The public has the freedom to cancel you if we don’t want to hear it.
It’s not cancel culture that scares the Fox News viewers to their core, it’s finally being held accountable for their deplorable words and actions.
So spare us your false outrage Fox News, Gen X is not here for it.
Your days of maligning entire groups of people that don’t have the same moral code as you, without any repercussion, are coming to a close. And that is what is truly at the heart of your fear. It’s sure as hell, not Mr. Potato Head.
