Censorship and cancellations

🎬 What I’m watching: The Oscars

📰 What I’m reading about: FCC censorship

🎤 What I’m practicing: Speeches

🎷 What I’m listening to: Green Lady Lounge

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m processing: Cancel culture in 2026

If you’re a paid LNI subscriber, you’re getting this email a day early on Sunday, before the Oscars airs. That means you’re seeing the following predictions ahead of time. If by some crazy chance, I get all of these right, it’s your duty as a paid subscriber to tell the free subscribers I didn’t cheat.

Here’s my guesses:

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Jessie Buckley for Hamnet

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Michael B. Jordan for Sinners

Directing: Ryan Coogler for Sinners

Writing (original screenplay): Ryan Coogler for Sinners

Best Picture: Sinners

Are you sensing a trend? I think Sinners is going to run away with it. Hamnet and One Battle After Another certainly deserve the awards they’ve collected up until this point, but I think momentum is going the way of Sinners. And honestly, I just love Ryan Coogler and everything he does and will do.

I’m also convinced that Timothée Chalamet really did lose some votes in the Best Actor category with his comments on the opera and ballet. Did he deserve to? I’ll discuss that in the last section of this newsletter.

For now, here’s Thursday’s video again on Oscars campaigning, featuring my apparently controversial opinion that it is extremely difficult to watch every single film nominated across all categories:

One thing about me is that I am a walking Streisand Effect. If you bring something to my attention that hadn’t even occurred to me, especially if its threatening my First Amendment rights, I’m going to do everything I can to push back.

Such is the case with Brendan Carr, the FCC, and his threat to take away broadcasting licenses for negative coverage of the Iran War. LNI is obviously not a major broadcaster (though we often reach more viewers than major media companies!). We’re safe, for now, from Carr and his fascist inclinations.

Still, I encourage you to read about Chairman Carr’s threats to revoke broadcasting licenses, based on a post by the president on the president’s own social media platform. It’s like we’re attempting state-owned media on steroids.

We will always cover the bad and good news coming out of of this administration’s actions - just look at our State of the Union fact check. But let’s be very clear that any threats from the FCC chair only make me want to cover the war in Iran more thoroughly. And unfortunately, the cold hard facts aren’t looking good for this administration:

I’m speaking not once - but twice! - this week in DC and New York. So that means I’ll be talking out loud to myself a bit at home and in hotel rooms throughout the week, as I prepare.

I’ll be discussing short-form video on today’s platforms, comparing and contrasting the differences between TikTok in 2019 and TikTok in 2026. I’ll also demonstrate how we create engaging and informative videos for our audience. Along with misinformation, these are some of my favorite topics to cover on stage. I was lucky enough to discuss the latter in a recently published Ted Talk:

But I want to hear from you, dear reader. If you found yourself in the crowd and saw me shuffle on stage, attempting to look professional, what would you like to hear about or learn? Shoot me at email at [email protected].

It’s time for your weekly Kansas City plug. This week, it’s the Green Lady Lounge in downtown KC. My wife and I stopped by before dinner Saturday night to hear the live jazz band. It was so good, we went back after dinner (the bouncer jokingly assured us he wouldn’t charge cover a second time, so long as we whispered a fake password, “hippopotamus” upon returning).

This place has two separate live jazz bands, one for each floor. The drinks were good. The atmosphere was moody. It’s everything you’d hope for in a city long known for its jazz scene. And best of all, it’s got live jazz seven days a week, 365 days a year.

It’s become a bit of a running joke that any celebrity, barring actual jail time, can truly be canceled. Louis C.K. whines about it often, while continuing to sell out live shows. Will Smith is still making films and docuseries, despite every taking real accountability for “The Slap,” and even leaning into the narrative that this was just him “standing up for his wife.” The internet is filled with uncanceled canceled people.

So, years after the initial rise of “cancel culture,” what do we even make of it? How do you hold people accountable in the internet age? Should you? Does it mean anything?

I often go back to one of my favorite books: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. It was written by Jon Ronson in 2015, before the term “cancel culture” took hold. The subjects in the book aren’t celebrities, but just ordinary people whose personal and/or professional lives were seriously damaged by a viral moment, photo, video or Tweet.

Unlike Louis C.K. and Will Smith, these people didn’t have a body of work and an army of fans to come to their defense. The people closest to them may have attempted to defend them, but that was a drop in the water as a tidal wave came crashing down.

That book (which, seriously, is worth a read) does a good job of humanizing the “shamed” people, providing further context around their missteps, and showing how, in almost every case, the knee-jerk internet reaction was far larger than the initial post. In other words, it instilled some empathy in me that I’ve cared in the decade since reading it.

To me, the issue is that celebrities making honest mistakes have been wrapped up into the same category of people repeating horrible actions.

There are some really abhorrent things that have been said and done by many, many celebrities (Louis C.K., Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer …). There’s also some more minor offensives that are perhaps blown out of proportion. As an example, that ballet and opera quote from Chalamet, in its full context, isn’t that bad. In the moment, he immediately apologizes for how it comes off. And it’s pretty clear to me that he’s just clumsily trying to make a larger point that he’s more interested in making art that the average Joe likes. He wants to make art that is popular everywhere with everyone. I think he illustrates it in a terrible way. Ballet and opera didn’t need to catch strays from this poorly constructed argument. But did this quote deserve hundreds of write-ups and finger-wagging? I’m not so sure.

Actual criminal behavior from sex offenders and a young actor making a dumb comparison both somehow full under “cancel culture.” The term has lost all meaning, if it even had meaning in the first place.

So what is cancel culture in 2026? Should we police ourselves before policing others? Do we find a way to categorize the offensive things people say online on a more nuanced scale of 1 to “straight to jail?” If a celebrity you love shows support for an abhorrent politician, do you call them out in the Instagram comment section? Or does that just give them more oxygen? And does your comment move the needle at all? Does anyone’s opinion online matter?

I don’t know the answer. And I don’t want to draw a conclusion just to end this newsletter with a mic drop. But I am wondering what you think. Send me your thoughts on cancel culture in 2026 at [email protected].

It’s no secret that Ashley Padilla is the biggest featured player SNL star since Bowen Yang, and she completely deserves all the accolades. She’s gained this reputation through multiple appearances and different characters. Her star is so bright, I didn’t even know Jeremy Culhane’s name until last night. He’s another featured player and he absolutely nailed this Tucker Carlson impression: