Has cancel culture gone too far in the United States?
High-profile defamation attorney Charles Harder thinks so, and he is right about that. However, he gets one thing wrong.
Harder has taken on many famous cases and defended President Donald Trump in a defamation lawsuit filed by porn star Stormy Daniels in 2018. He wrote a chapter about his opposition to cancel culture in his new book Gawker Slayer: The Professional and Personal Adventures of Famed Attorney Charles Harder.
Harder rightly argues that the punishment should fit the crime when it comes to past misdeeds and that people have a right to express unpopular opinions. He uses abortion as an example in which both sides of the topic, the anti-abortion and pro-abortion crowds, have a right to say what they think. However, he is incorrect when he uses former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick as an example of cancel culture.
Harder describes Kaepernick as “the poster boy for cancel culture,” saying that “he was erased from the NFL because he engaged in peaceful protest, took a knee, and in the process was attacked by many who strenuously disagreed with him.”
“If Kaepernick remained popular with NFL fans and viewers, notwithstanding his protest, he likely would have been signed and continued playing for years,” Harder writes. “But the demographics of NFL watchers, largely white, male, less interested in Kaepernick’s message and more interested in respecting the flag and soldiers, meant team owners likely feared a backlash if they signed him. Thus, Kaepernick was canceled. Erased from the NFL rosters.”
Yes, Kaepernick has not had an NFL job since 2016, and a major reason for that is that he was the first player to kneel during the national anthem in 2016. However, we can acknowledge that and admit he is not some cancel culture victim.
If Kaepernick were, would he have been the face of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign in 2018? His contract with Nike was reportedly worth “millions.” Also, would he still have a huge fan base with 2.4 million Twitter followers?
Kaepernick lost his job in the NFL because he was financially bad for the game. That’s how businesses work. If someone does something that jeopardizes their company’s bottom line, then they risk losing their job since the purpose of a business is to make money.
Jeopardizing the bottom line is exactly what Kaepernick did for the entire league.
The national anthem kneeling movement Kaepernick started for the NFL was bad for the league’s TV ratings. It experienced an 8% decline in 2016 and an additional 9.7% decline in 2017. That’s about a 17% decline in ratings over two years. A July 2017 J.D. Power poll showed that the national anthem protests were the top reason why fans weren’t watching anymore (26%), and a UBS Evidence Lab poll indicated that as much as 50% of the drop in ratings was due to national anthem kneelers.
This isn’t about someone who said a bad word 10 years ago or someone who harmlessly exercised free speech off the clock. If Kaepernick, as a private citizen, wants to kneel for the national anthem, he has every right. I don’t agree with it, but there are no laws against it, nor should there be any laws against it. However, Kaepernick did something unpopular and cost the NFL money; his mediocre stat line made him not worth the headache for a team to sign.
Harder deserves credit for his commitment to free speech, but let’s not claim Kaepernick is a victim of cancel culture.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
