Will Cancel Culture Take Rudolph Off Shreveport TV?

Get our free mobile app

First of all, Shreveport's KSLA is already set to air Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer twice for the 2021 holiday season. First on November 22nd, then again on December 11th.

But why would the question even be asked? It's because the calls to "cancel" Rudolph have been growing for years. To the point that the show really has momentum building against it.

The calls to take Rudolph down really started back in 2010. At the time, it seemed like a joke to most. I mean, it came from the site Cracked, and was written in a cheeky tone. But it was taken extremely seriously by some.

It continued into 2011, but was met with a lot of pushback. But the defense of Rudolph got caught up into the "War on Christmas" dialog, which meant it got written off by a lot of people. However those who really want to end Rudolph kept their plan moving forward.

By 2017, the concept of "canceling" Rudolph moved from joke blogs on Cracked to long-form essays on sites like Slate. In that piece from Christina Cauterucci, the attacks center mostly around politics in Alabama (no joke), but the actual issues with the show revolve around males being involved in the main story.

But beyond that piece, the Cancel Culture warriors online can find more issues than that.

In 2018, the cringe-filled bastion of online Cancel Culture, HuffPost, decided it was their time to shine like a red nose on a reindeer...

By this point, the Cancel Culture mob had evolved into using trigger words like "bigot", "racism", "homophobia", and other casual dog whistles for the SJWs.

Now while you could find one or two big writeups a year from about 2015-2019 on canceling Rudolph, 2020 seemed to be the year the movement really gained steam. Not just on the standard Cancel Culture calls, but murder was added to the mix by this point. But The Atlantic took the biggest aim.

In a piece called "Don’t Subject Your Kids to Rudolph" by Caitlin Flanagan, she escalated all the way from Cracked's cheeky Rudolph bit to full blown Cancel Culture flamethrower. Flanagan takes aim at elves, Santa, the Abominable, the reindeer, and pretty much everyone.

But what's weird about her piece is that all of her problems with the show are intentional. She has issues with the bad guys, the issues that have to be overcome by the heroes, and how they do it. All of the "triggers" and "problematic" parts of according to the Cancel Culture SJWs are the parts you should have to watch. They are the parts that make the point.

This is noted by other entertainment and culture critics though. The ones who actually understand the point of the show. You're supposed to understand that there are people in life who are inherently worried about things that are different. But Rudolph is supposed to help people get comfortable with the fact that everyone has something to contribute. People should learn not to push others away because of their differences, because everyone has something to offer. Even the big "evil" monster can help if given a chance.

But if we've learned anything about Cancel Culture and SJWs over the last decade, it's that they can't grasp those concepts...which Rudolph is helping us see once again.