Obama To the Cancel Culture: 'Get Over Your PC Judgmentalism'

 Former President Barack Obama made a rare foray into the cultural conversation this week, objecting to the prevalence of “call-out culture” and “wokeness” during an interview about youth activism at the Obama Foundation summit on Tuesday, in Chicago. Fox News and other independent media carried the message quickly, but it took two or more days for other outlets to discover this speech.
 We wish to commend the ordinarily unreliable editors of the New York Times for finally publishing the transcribed speech that Barack Obama shared with younger adults, at his foundation's 'Summit' event. We're sharing part of how the NYT & Fox News described it.

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff,” Mr. Obama said. “You should get over that quickly.”

“The world is messy; there are ambiguities,” he continued. “People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids, and share certain things with you.”

  The NY Times added;

 Mr. Obama spoke repeatedly of the role of social media in activism specifically, including the idea of what’s become known as “cancel culture,” which is much remarked upon, but still nebulously defined. It tends to refer to behavior that mostly plays out on the internet when someone has said or done something to which others object. That person is then condemned in a flurry of social media posts. Such people are often referred to as “canceled,” a way of saying that many others (and perhaps the places at which they work) are fed up with them and will have no more to do with them.

The 44th president held an event devoted to youth activism, this past week.

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Fox News' Ronn Blitzer commented;

  The blunt remarks were essentially an expanded version of a saying Obama often employed while in office -- don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The comments Tuesday show the ex-president embracing the image of a practical elder statesman at a time when his party is drifting ever-leftward -- essentially urging young party activists to reconsider a culture of calling out those who run afoul of their worldview, whether in the language they use or the policies they espouse.

  Obama specifically noted that a trend he sees on college campuses could do more harm than good, suggesting young people are focusing more on casting judgment on others than advancing positive change.

Mr. Obama talked about conversations he’s had with his daughter Malia, who is a student at Harvard. 
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“I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes of: ‘The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people,’” he said, “and that’s enough.”

“Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb,” he said, “then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, ‘Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.’”

Then he pretended to sit back and press the remote to turn on a television.

“That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change,” he said. “If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”