Today's Tiny Little Totalitarians
Ever have a moment of bad judgment?

Personally, I have many of them daily. Like when I broke one of my little toes recently. It was morning. I tripped over a weight on the floor, cracking the hell out of my toe. I realized it was dumb to leave the weight there. I left it there anyway. I again cracked my toe on it, to the point it turned deep purple with a hint of blue, and then black and greenish. (Hi, genius!)

Variety's Rebecca Rubin reports in March of 2021:

Jeffrey Wells, who operates the movie blog Hollywood Elsewhere, has been expelled from the Critics Choice Association, the group of journalists that host the annual Critics Choice Awards.

Wells was indefinitely suspended due to a "pattern of offensive, insensitive and unprofessional behavior," according to the Hollywood Reporter.

He confirmed his ejection in a blog post on Thursday evening. He wrote, "The Critics Choice Awards group, a distinguished and influential journalist org that plays a big annual role during award season, gave me the boot today because of that post that was up yesterday for maybe an hour or so, a post that contained a discussion about the ramifications of the recent Atlanta killings and how this might tangentially stir the pot as far as Oscar considerations were concerned."

On Wednesday, Wells shared and deleted a blog post insinuating that Tuesday's shooting at an Atlanta-area Asian spa helped solidify Oscar prospects for Chinese director Chloe Zhao's acclaimed film "Nomadland," as well as "Minari," a story about a Korean American family.

In a later entry titled "Shrieks, Whispers and Wokester Wrath," Wells acknowledge it was the "wrong thing to post yesterday" and attempted to defend himself by saying "mistakes happen."

"Obviously I realize it was a mistake to mention something as trivial as the Oscar race in the middle of a terrible crisis, hours after the killings were first reported. I obviously understand that. I obviously made a big mistake," he wrote. "I realized my error very quickly and took it down as quickly as possible. Mistakes happen."

Wells continued, "All I did was briefly and rather stupidly post a digressive conversation, an odd tangent stemming from a terrible tragedy...a digressive discussion that anybody might have voiced or been privy to at any social gathering, if we were having social gatherings. People in my world consider all the currents and echoes and side issues... everything swirls together. Knowledgable people consider all the angles."

Okay, this was tasteless and dickish, but excuse me: Is Hollywood now a monastery where anyone who breaches the holy must be excommunicated and exiled forever?

Who among those who voted him out has not behaved in a tasteless, dickish way?

Jeffrey Wells nails what took him down:

Wokesterism is a social-political plague -- the new iteration of Maximilian Robespierre, the New McCarthyism, the New Victorians and surely a form of Bolshevik Totalitarian Orwellian insanity. Wokesters are suppressors and punishers -- they're against any concept of freedom that you or I or any semi-liberal person might recognize. I can't wait for the zeitgeist to gradually swing in the other direction and for these reprehensible jackals to be on the run and/hiding in tall grass. And again, my core beliefs are liberal moderate and I come from a place of adventure and satori and clarity of the soul.

Wokesterism is fundamentally guided by love and compassion and humanitarian goals and a respect for all modes of ethnicity and sexuality and what-have-you, agreed. But in the name of righteous cleansing these people have become the totalitarian brain police that William S. Burroughs was so properly terrified of...they're against freedom of speech...they're about punitive measures and suppression and ruining good people's lives...in a phrase they're the new Khmer Rouge...FUCKING FANATICS.

It is outrageous and terrible to ruin people -- to make them unemployable, unable to pay their rent or mortgage, and feed their children -- because they stray from the bounds of taste.

This needs to end, and I stand up against it when I can -- when energy and time permit -- even when I disagree with the opinions being expressed. I don't want to live in a society where saying, "I'm sorry. I fucked up. Bad judgment on my part" carries no weight anymore.

Oh, and PS, from the Variety story, big fucking deal.

He has faced blowback over his behavior and views in the past (he once asked director James Mangold to send him nude photos of "3:10 to Yuma" actress Vinessa Shaw and made comments about actresses' weight). He blamed the latest backlash on "cancel culture," and criticized Twitter users who are "salivating and thirsty for blood" and "copy posts and pass them around like deranged hyenas."

"Every so often I'm reminded just how extreme our culture has become in persecuting people for what they think and what they say," he said. "My mistake was obvious, but I especially erred by posting a digressive discussion at the wrong time."

Again, Hollywood Babylon or Hollywood Monastery?

By the way, there is no person who can't be canceled for something.