Andrew Lawton, the pride of London Ontario, eviscerates the media gatekeepers in the wake of the recent Twitter hack:
While the checkmark may seem – and ultimately is – laughably insignificant, it's the symptom of a bigger problem and the cause of another.
Twitter's stated purpose for blue checkmarks is to demonstrate an "account of public interest is authentic." Those in the media (who comprise the bulk of blue-check holders) tend to view a checkmark not as a symbol of authenticity but rather of ascension to some higher moral or intellectual stratum.
Perhaps the great Blue Check Lockdown of 2020 was a cosmic penance for the collective self-righteousness of the group – we may never know.
Coming in the middle of this year's unending mass cancelation, it was, I'd say, a welcome episode to see the elites who find perspectives other than their own repugnant forced to sit on their hands, even if only for a short time.
It's why the graduates who populate most newsrooms are so woefully unequipped to write about national trends when a majority are from liberal, coastal states and have never seen a farm, fired a gun or stepped foot on a factory floor.
The state broadcaster in my very own deranged dominion of Canada was busted (by me) a few weeks back for broadcasting a children's "news" segment calling J.K. Rowling "transphobic" for daring to suggest only women are capable of menstruation.
The network later said the segment didn't meet its journalistic standards (that CBC has standards is, in and of itself, newsworthy.) I don't doubt that there were producers and writers from downtown Toronto who were genuinely shocked that anyone could possibly believe what Rowling did.
The answer to the divide is dialogue and debate. The answer is to engage with the culture rather than run away from it. The answer is to keep fighting. But in spite of that, I won't deny that it was nice, for a couple of hours this week, to see the silencers silenced.
