I’ve been working through a respiratory infection – it isn’t COVID though I imagine it’s just as unpleasant – though I’m trying to get back up to speed and this is as good a place as any to start.

You might have heard recently that storied actor Frank Langella was recently fired from Netlflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher, seemingly due to his treatment of one of his fellow young, female actors. In his response to the incident he blamed ‘cancel culture,’ which to be honest isn’t something I believe exists.

The way I tend to look at such things is that its not unusual that powerful people live lives with little in the way of accountability for what they say, never mind their actions (and whenever they’re called out, it’s all about ‘cancel culture’).

And while I wasn’t there on the set when whatever happened – and like most of us have no idea what actually went down – I get the feeling that touching someone’s leg during a scene isn’t enough to trigger a firing.

A last straw, maybe but in and of itself?

I don’t buy it. Langella has been acting since 1965, with over 101 credits to his name (according to IMDB) so he’s hardly some unknown actor that could easily be treated with contempt (if that were the case).

And besides, the likelihood of a one-sided story between two people is as likely as a breeding pair of Tasmanian tigers running about Australia or New Zealand (it’s certainly possible, though likely? I wouldn’t put money on it).

For instance, I no longer listen to anything from comedian Ari Shaffir. Now, you can blame that on cancel culture or maybe that Shaffir is a douchebag that dosed his ‘friend’ with a recreational drug (‘Molly’ otherwise known as MDMA or Ecstasy) without their knowledge as a joke.

And that might be funny if maybe the person that was dosed, Bert Kreischer, had knowledge he was being drugged, and approved of it.

He didn’t though what made it worse is that Shaffir apparently didn’t care enough to inquire if Kreischer had any underlying health conditions that might make being drugged dangerous for him (never mind Shaffir’s tactless comment about Kobe Bryant made way too soon after his tragic death though it’s worth mentioning that I don’t follow basketball and can care less about Bryant in and of himself, though when people who are beloved by many die suddenly, particularly in tragic ways, it’s not a bad thing to let the event fade in people’s minds before commenting negatively about that person).

But Ari Shaffir isn’t like most people because he apparently doesn’t understand social cues and comes off almost pathological in the way he parses reality.

As I said at the beginning, I don’t believe in cancel culture, though what I do believe in is accountability and it sounds like that might be what Frank Langella – and Ari Shaffir for that matter – has problems with.