Why aren’t we cancelling Alec Baldwin?

An 18 year old college student’s life is in tatters after using the n-word once three years ago, but the New York Times leaps to the defense of an actor and his wife who’ve lied for years about her heritage and profited from cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation is one of the cardinal sins of our increasingly woke society.  Though the phrase didn’t enter the lexicon of Oxford Dictionaries until 2017, it’s been defined as “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.”

While what passes for scholarship in the field generally distinguishes appropriation from interchange or exchange, with appropriation requiring a “particular power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group” according to EverdayFeminism.com, the concept has been applied to everything from Miley Cyrus twerking to white girls wearing cornrows to Selena Gomez donning a bindy.

For example, Dodai Steward writing for the website Jezebel.com bemoaned the “lesson” in a Miley Cyrus video from 2013.  “If you want to look ‘cool’ and ‘edgy’ and ‘tough,’ just steal the styles and dance moves of black people.”  Ms. Steward continued, “Miley and her ilk need to be reminded that the stuff they think is cool, the accoutrements they’re borrowing, have been birthed in an environment where people are underprivileged, undereducated, oppressed, underrepresented, disenfranchised, systemically discriminated against and struggling in a system set up to insure that they fail.”

What then when a celebrity married to an even bigger celebrity lies about being born in Spain for at least a decade?

Well, that’s exactly what happened this past week when it was revealed that Hilaria Baldwin, wife of Trump bashing, Trump impersonating actor Alec Baldwin wasn’t born in Spain like she claimed.  Her name isn’t even Hilaria, but instead Hillary, not from Mallorca, just plain old Boston.

Hillary was outed as a fraud recently when a woman tweeted, “You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.”

Since then, it has been revealed that Hillary Thomas-Hayward only officially became known as Hilaria Baldwin after she married Alec in 2012.  According to the Daily Mail, there was a “star-studded wedding, complete with tributes to her claimed Spanish roots, with the bride wearing a mantilla-inspired veil, cooling herself with a flamenco hand fan and nuptial readings in both English and Spanish.”

At the time, Hillary told People Magazine that “I liked that I brought in a bit of my culture.”

Since then, the Daily Mail reports “The 36-year-old has given countless interviews where she boasts of her childhood and family living in Mallorca, claiming she moved to the US when she was 19 to attend New York University.  The mother-of-five sometimes speaks with a Spanish lilt and once forgot the English word for ‘cucumber’ on live TV for a cooking segment.”

Hillary frequently described her parents as Spanish as well.  The only problem with these claims is that her mother, Dr. Kathryn Hayward, is actually a fourth-generation Massachusetts resident, and her father’s family has been here since the American Revolution.

Translation:  She’s not Spanish, has never been Spanish, and is nothing more than a fraud, a con artist for attention, grifting for dollars.  It’s a case study in harmful — dare I say toxic? — cultural appropriation, and yet the mainstream media has largely been silent.

The New York Times, a leading bastion of wokeness that had no problem outing a fifteen year old girl for saying the n-word once (more on that below), dutifully leapt to her defense with a puff piece of December 30.  “It’s very surreal,” Ms. Baldwin told the Times, claiming she’s been called Hilaria by family members for most of her life. “There is not something I’m doing wrong, and I think there is a difference between hiding and creating a boundary.”

They do not press her even slightly on what that gibberish means. Instead, they continue her completely unsubstantiated, nonsensical defense.

“Ms. Baldwin is bilingual, and she speaks English with varying degrees of a Spanish accent depending on how happy or upset she is feeling, she said. She didn’t know that ¡Hola! magazine, for which she has twice posed for the cover and which has written some 20 items about her on its English-language website so far this year, repeatedly reported inaccurately that she was a Spaniard because she said she didn’t read articles about herself. She got confused about the word for cucumber because it was one of her first times appearing on live television and she was nervous (“brain fart,” she said).”

The New York Times even stoops so low to allow her to blame everyone else.

“She is trying to find value in the drama swirling around her. ‘There is a reason this conversation is happening right now,’ she said. ‘These are important conversations to have. But as people are able to come out as different parts of themselves and how they identify and have people listen, I think that’s extremely important.’  She doesn’t understand why anyone would think she has portrayed herself as anything other than who she is: someone steeped in two cultures. Evidently, she said, ‘people don’t have the attention span for that kind of thing.’”

The Times, however, had no such sympathy for young Mimi Groves, an 18 year old college student who used the n-word once on a video when she was 15 years old.  Instead, they published an article on December 26 titled, “A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning.”

In the article, they completely whitewash (pun intended) the cruel vindictiveness of a classmate, Mr. Galligan, who waited until Ms. Groves was accepted to college before releasing the video.  An act he says was planned:  “I wanted to get her where she would understand the severity of that word,” Mr. Galligan.  According to the New York Times,  “He tucked the video away, deciding to post it publicly when the time was right.”

Ms. Groves has now been forced to withdraw from her chosen school. Her future is in tatters, and yet the New York Times seems to think this is perfectly acceptable.

They dutifully report the pap from the University of Tennessee, “‘They’re angry, and they want to see some action,’ an admissions official told Ms. Groves and her family, according to a recording of the emotional call reviewed by The New York Times.  Ms. Groves was among many incoming freshmen across the country whose admissions offers were revoked by at least a dozen universities after videos emerged on social media of them using racist language.”

The article ultimately draws this conclusion:  “In one sense, the public shaming of Ms. Groves underscores the power of social media to hold people of all ages accountable, with consequences at times including harassment and both online and real-world ‘cancellation.’”

Why then aren’t they insisting on the cancellation of Alec and Hillary Baldwin?

Alec was in on the scam as well.  According to the Times, Hillary told him she was from Boston when they met in 2011:  “I said, ‘I’m from Boston.’ That was the first thing I said, that has always been my narrative.”  This didn’t stop Alec from claiming she was from Spain at least once on David Letterman.

The contrast in the tone and purpose of the articles couldn’t be more striking.

On one hand, ruining a young woman’s life for using a racial slur once three years ago is justification for her cancellation.  On the other, they’re actively defending two frauds and liars that have perpetrated an over 10 year scam that helped make Hillary famous along with a lot of money.

Do they realize these two articles are in the same paper?  Do they care?

The answer of, course, is power.  Alec Baldwin, as a famous liberal actor, has it.  Mimi Groves does not.  They are more than willing to cancel her to support their chosen causes, but cancelling one of their own is a different matter.

This behavior and the shifting standards around it should be absolutely terrifying to every American, liberal or conservative.  If they come for you, your wife, husband, brother, sister, or children, you will have no defense while the powerful will continue to suffer no consequences.

The Democrat Governor of Virginia is photographed in blackface?  That’s alright.

The Prime Minister of Canada also admits to blackface?  That’s alright as well.

Sexual assault accusations against the Democrat Governor of New York?  Nothing to see there.

Sexual assault accusations against the incoming President?  We should all move on.

But if your fifteen year old kid says something, all hell breaks loose.  Is this really the world we want to live in?