The Los Angeles Times runs a feature about Marie Cisco, who put together a blacklist of the theaters that aren’t speaking out in the proper way about Black Lives Matter.:

Cisco, a producer who has worked with the New York-based National Black Theatre, the Public Theater, Lee Daniels Entertainment and the Apollo Theater, was not surprised by the crickets coming from these institutions — self-professed bastions of liberalism and equality — but she felt hurt and angry all the same.

So Cisco created a public Google spreadsheet and titled it “Theaters Not Speaking Out.” It was open for anyone to edit, and it had a simple directive: “Add names to this document who have not made a statement against injustices toward black people.”

At 5:50 p.m. PDT on that Saturday, May 30, she shared the document on her personal Facebook page as well as with the Theater Folks of Color Facebook group to which she belongs. It has more than 7,000 members and serves as a supportive space for people to share thoughts and experiences about working in predominantly white institutions and provides a place to “unite around common concerns and plan collective direct action.”

More:

It did not appear to be a coincidence that the following day, and into June, theaters began posting messages of solidarity with Black Lives Matter en masse, black theater artists said. The response was problematic because often the statements were perceived to have come from a place of shame and felt slapped together and hollow, Cisco said.

More disturbing than the slowness to speak out, Cisco said, was the language of the statements themselves, many of which fell back on pledges of support without acknowledgement of the historical diversity problem in theater or commitments to take concrete steps to support black artists.

You got that? This one woman has taken advantage of this moment to create a blacklist of politically problematic theaters — and even denounces on it theaters that do not articulate her statement of obeisance in precisely the correct way.

I’m old enough to remember when arts people would have recognized McCarthyism when they saw it. Marie Cisco is a McCarthyite, but a McCarthyite for the left.

A reader sends a public open letter that went around to faculty and staff of a small college to which he is attached. I won’t quote the letter because I don’t want to risk inadvertently outing the reader. The author is a black student at the school, who reads the riot act to administration and faculty for not doing enough for black students in this time. She acknowledges that the school has taken steps, but they haven’t done exactly what she things black students deserve, in the way that they deserve them. The privilege being asserted by this kid, and the signatories to her letter: presuming to tell her college what they must say and how they must say it to avoid the taint of racism.

I figure the college will surrender. Nobody has the backbone to stand up for themselves these days. It’s all capitulation. Tucker Carlson is speaking his mind fearlessly, but advertisers are dropping him. You cannot air a program without advertisers. There are few people as cowardly as Big Business. In my forthcoming book, I talk about how Woke Capitalism is going to be the prime mechanism for enforcing soft totalitarianism. This is one reason why it has been so difficult for Americans to see something like this moment coming: we have always assumed that totalitarianism would be something emanating from the government. Conservatives, especially, have long bought into the myth that Business Is Good and Government Is Bad. In fact, Business can be just as bad as Government. But that’s another story.

The Birmingham public schools and public Housing Authority have severed all ties to Alabama’s largest church, over its pastor’s having “liked,” on Facebook, posts by Charlie Kirk, of the conservative Turning Point USA group. All the pastor did was like them on Facebook. Aside from the schools losing over $800,000 in rent from the church paying to worship on some of its properties, this is what will be affected:

The services provided by Christ Health Clinic included free COVID-19 testing for residents of Birmingham public housing. The Housing Authority of Birmingham Division voted on Monday to no longer allow church volunteers and clinic workers to do work at public housing communities.

The Church of the Highlands, Alabama’s largest church, provided free mentoring, community support groups and faith, health and social service activities at the Housing Authority of Birmingham Division’s nine public housing communities. The church did not receive any money for the services, but had an agreement to allow its volunteers at the facilities.

More:

The Church of the Highlands launched Christ Health Center in 2009 in Woodlawn to offer medical services to the Woodlawn area, including the Marks Village public housing complex in Gate City. The church and clinic attracted national attention for launching the first mass testing for COVID-19 in Alabama, March 17-22, administering about 2,200 tests at a drive-through set up on the church campus.

“Christ Health chose our Woodlawn clinic specifically for its proximity to Birmingham public housing communities and the people who call them home,” said Christ Health Center CEO Dr. Robert Record, who also attends and is on staff at the Church of the Highlands.

Think about who is being hurt here (hint: it ain’t the church administration). None of it matters. It’s all ideology. All the pastor did was like a political guy on Facebook, and now this.

And they’re just getting started.

It’s time for you people who laughed at the term “soft totalitarianism” to shut up. They won’t come for you — at first.