#Canceling ‘Cops’ and Columbus is no sane response to George Floyd’s killing

Enlarge Image

NYPD officers stand guard in Columbus Circle as monuments across the nation were being defaced amid the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests.
Seth Gottfried

Between indiscriminate protesters and eager-to-look-woke corporations, the country’s seeing a whole lot of foolishness in response to George Floyd’s death.

Not-so-peaceful protesters are mauling monuments across the country — and not just Confederate ones: Massachusetts saw a Christopher Columbus statue beheaded, as well as graffiti defacing a 9/11 memorial, an Abigail Adams statue and the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial — which is dedicated to the mostly black heroes portrayed in the film “Glory.”

Philadelphia “protesters” spray-painted “colonizer” on the statue of Matthias Baldwin. Huh? He was an abolitionist who not only fought for black voting rights 30 years before slavery ended but also founded a school for African American children and paid for it — and the teachers’ salaries — out of his own pocket.

The message this idiocy sends isn’t “Black Lives Matter” — it’s that too many protesters are merely acting out.

Even when it comes to Confederate memorials, removal must come through the democratic process or it’s just vandalism, no matter the provocation.

Sadly, people who actually work in the cultural field aren’t always much more discriminating. Yes, a good chunk of “Gone With The Wind” is wince-worthy, but HBO’s move to stop streaming the movie is silly: As National Review’s Kyle Smith noted, it “means canceling the first Oscar performance by a black woman.”

Ending “Cops” after nearly 33 years on the air? Or, over in Britain, suppressing a “Fawlty Towers” episode because it satirizes bigotry?

We slapped The New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this week for their disastrous retreats in the face of “cancel culture,” but it’s starting to feel like all the custodians of the West’s heritage have given up.