"We believe in diverse voices and the freedom of artistic expression,"
But not for a black comedian who strays off our intellectual plantation.
Too much Wokeness
One notable thing about this story is that it's not specific who the advocacy was coming from, so the use of "intellectual plantation" or "too much wokeness" is maybe not all that accurate, too say the least.
It just seems odd that when people exercise their freedom of association the implied jump scare is that it's at behest of coercion from a mob of folks.
From the statement linked, the show moved from First Avenue to Varsity Theater. Tickets are apparently being transferred. Dave's not out the money, the ticket holders aren't out the show.
And the line is
"To staff, artists, and our community, we hear you and we are sorry,"
That sounds like the folks that actually work at First think Dave is a jerk and they don't want to work with him. That's entirely cromulent behavior for an organization exercising free association. One can argue they went out of their way to inconvenience the ticket holders and the performer as little as possible here.
I guess my longstanding confusion here is that I just don't understand how one can believe in free expression and free association... and yet simultaneously think that people who use their free expression and free association and get people mad somehow get a first mover advantage and are more in the right than people who use their free expression and free association to say, "don't associate with that guy because he's an ass".
Put another way: the longstanding libertarian argument against anti-discrimination laws was that the market would correct: if you made your customers or employees angry by doing something they didn't like they'd use their free association and stop frequenting your business or working for you. Now I never entirely bought that argument, but it does sure seem like a lot of the folks that were making it to me in good faith are now showing up to say that no actually if you do that it's bad, but I can't get anybody to give me a workable principle about when it's "bad" and when it's "okay". Except I guess clearly "wokeism" for some ineffable definition of "wokeism".
Whether or not it's good business or good politics is a different argument, but that's not really the question I would like answered.