The fake and the real in American cancel culture

Was Alexi McCammond really ‘cancelled’?

Alexi McCammond is supposedly the latest victim of cancel culture. At least, that is what many Americans in elite spaces believe. McCammond recently resigned from her position as editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue just days before she was to begin running the magazine. Her use of racist anti-Asian and homophobic language on Twitter when she was 17 years old resurfaced. “She was only 17,” any number of big-named folks in elite circles like Cenk Uygur and Glenn Greenwald have said. To her credit, in 2019 McCammond provided a standard if-I-offended-you-style public apology for her 2011 and 2012 tweets, and again in the past couple of weeks, but only after others disclosed her words. The big dogs in the media and in right-leaning politics do not seem to understand. Seventeen years is more than old enough to understand that tweeting “now googling how to not wake up with swollen, asian eyes” is something that could come back to bite you in the butt. Seventeen years is old enough to know that saying something or someone is “so gay” or “homo” is homophobic.