The Shocking Carelessness of Nick Cannon
Up until about a week ago I can confidently say that I never thought about Nick Cannon. Why would I? He struck me as a Ryan Seacrest type who managed to amass a professional empire so vast by being slick and polished and blandly appealing that all he needed to do to retire at sixty with literally hundreds of millions of dollars to his name was not do anything egregiously stupid.
Success and fame aren’t just key components of Nick Cannon’s brand: they essentially are his brand. Cannon was famous for being a child star. Then he became famous as an adult actor. Cannon was famous (sort of) for rapping, although his primary claim to hip hop fame comes from his fierce, feverishly unmerited delusion that he’s a lyricist and battle rapper on par with Eminem who could, and would, destroy the legendary Dr. Dre protege through words when they beefed publicly.
Cannon is famous for marrying, and then divorcing the even more famous, even more successful Mariah Carey but Cannon is probably most famous for being the host of a series of hit shows: Wild ‘n Out, America’s Got Talent and most recently the wildly popular freak show/harbinger of the apocalypse The Masked Singer.
Host is the perfect profession for someone whose primary gift involves being comfortable and confident on television. So it’s not surprising that Cannon gravitated towards hosting in myriad forms or that he recently signed a deal to host his own talk show.
Considering the arc of Cannon’s career, a talk show was damn near inevitable. When Cannon named his first comedy special Mr. Showbiz there was nothing ironic about the title; up until about a week ago Cannon really was Mr. Showbiz.
Then Cannon became famous, or rather infamous, for something that threatened all of the success he accrued over decades in the business: using his podcast to amplify the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Professor Griff, a notorious hate-monger infamous for getting kicked out of Public Enemy for saying, among other things, that Jews are responsible for a majority of the wickedness in the world.
I can’t imagine Ryan Seacrest going on Alex Jones to confidently discuss David Ickes, the Illuminati and the lizard people who secretly control the world, but for some reason Cannon thought it would be a swell idea to have Professor Griff on his podcast to trade anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Nothing good could have come from Cannon having Griff on his podcast. I’m surprised that people who care about Cannon didn’t take him aside and explain that interviewing Griff might not be the single worst idea in the world, but it was certainly up there.
Over the course a single podcast, Cannon went from Mr. Showbiz to Mr. Anti-Semitism. Cannon aggressively co-signed Griff’s anti-Semitic sentiments, seeing them less as conspiracy theories rooted in longstanding tropes depicting Jews as malevolent puppet-masters pulling the strings of the world’s economy than as powerful, revelatory truths he discovered during a lifetime of study, learning and education of both the formal and self-taught variety.
These were not careless words tossed off in anger or slurred in the midst of an epic bender but rather deeply held beliefs Cannon expounded upon at length and WANTED to share with the world.
The response, as you might imagine, was not good. Viacom dropped him, issuing a statement reading, "We have spoken with Nick Cannon about an episode of his podcast 'Cannon's Class' on YouTube, which promoted hateful speech and spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
While we support ongoing education and dialogue in the fight against bigotry, we are deeply troubled that Nick has failed to acknowledge or apologize for perpetuating anti-Semitism, and we are terminating our relationship with him."
After apologizing, Cannon took the unusual step of angrily demanding that the corporation that dropped him for using his enormous power and platform to spread systematic hatred of Jews give him full control of the show he was fired from as penance for doing him wrong.
Cannon penned a lengthy missive that feels like it was written in the midst of a Kanye-like manic episode titled “Truth and Reconciliation” that contains passages like the following,
"I have dedicated my daily efforts to continuing conversations to bring the Jewish Community and the African American community closer together, embracing our differences and sharing our commonalities. Through the guidance of my multicultural team which embodies several people from the Jewish Community, specifically Michael Goldman my business partner for 3 decades who discovered me at the Hollywood Improv when I was doing Stand Up as a kid. Through thick and thin he has been by my side. Yelling at me when I talk too much and laughing with me as we’ve always overcome adversity together. I love you my brother, thank you for helping me become the man that I am today.
And as we embark on this next “Ncredible” journey together we will bring our two persecuted communities together like we always planned. He and so many gracious people from the Jewish Community are showering me with love and helping to guide me to the Promise (sic) land, literally l am excited to announce that I have been invited to Israel which is a lifelong dream where I will receive teachings, lessons and truth about the Jewish history. As someone who is in pursuit for my PHD in Theology and Divinity and just received a degree in Criminal Justice from the Great Howard University, this will be an enriching, enlightening and overall exciting trip!”
As his final megalomaniacal flourish, Cannon ends his aggressive anti-apology by demanding, in quick succession, complete control of Wild N Out and a public apology. Cannon doesn’t seem to understand that If you fuck up really badly in school, and say and do things things that cause people to see you as a hateful bigot, your “punishment” is not full ownership of the school and the Principal publicly apologizing for holding you accountable for your bullshit.
What Cannon is doing with the Truth and Reconciliation post is conflating a righteous struggle for black artists and creators to own and control their creations with a pragmatic desire to avoid personal and professional consequences for very public and very egregious anti-Semitism.
Cannon’s Truth and Reconciliation post reminded me a lot of similarly narcissistic quasi-apologies from people like Harvey Weinstein, John Kricfalusi, Louis CK and Mario Batali. Like this rogue’s gallery, Cannon doesn’t seem to understand that when you fuck up so egregiously that your career, reputation and quality of life are all at stake you need to apologize sincerely and show real humility and remorse, not boast about your incredible career, or how the people you’ve hurt and insulted actually love you and think you’re amazing, or brag about all the cool, important things you’re going to do as long as you’re not held accountable for your actions.
Cannon apologized, then un-apologized with a set of demands, then apologized all over again at length in a manner that, to me at least, is indicative of a man fighting desperately for a career that matters more to him than anything else than a man who feels genuine shame over his words and actions.
And it seems to be working! Viacom dropped Cannon but he remains the host of The Masked Singer and the launch of his talk show was delayed but not abandoned.
But that wasn’t good enough for Cannon, who, in a fit of self-pity whined via Twitter, “I hurt an entire community and it pained me to my core, I thought it couldn’t get any worse. Then I watched my own community turn on me and call me a sell-out for apologizing. Goodnight. Enjoy Earth.”
I found Cannon’s anti-Semitic rhetoric disturbing but I’m equally, if not more disturbed by the distressingly sizable portion of the online world that insisted that Cannon was telling the truth about the white man and had nothing to apologize for, as evidenced by his tweet about being called a “sell out” by his community.
Cannon should feel terrible about hurting an entire community. Anti-Semitism should not be normalized or accepted or treated as a matter of holding white people accountable for institutional racism. Cannon is in a tough place right now, personally, politically and professionally but he could have avoided it all just by not being publicly anti-Semitic. Then again, I am Jewish, and I work in the media, and also I control worldwide banking so perhaps my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt.
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