Cancel culture is becoming more viscous and more morally repugnant every day. Case in point is this NY Times story.

After receiving a three-second video of a classmate uttering a racial slur, it seems that Jimmy Galligan decided to hold on to the video until such time as he could enact revenge. 

““I wanted to get her where she would understand the severity of that word,” Mr. Galligan, 18, whose mother is Black and father is white, said of the classmate who uttered the slur, Mimi Groves. He tucked the video away, deciding to post it publicly when the time was right.”

Instead of engaging with Mimi Groves directly and asking her about the history of the video; instead of having a polite CONVERSATION about the video and her use of a racial slur, Jimmy Galligan weaponized the video against Mimi. 

He literally waited until Mimi and her family had posted about her acceptance to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. It didn’t matter to Jimmy Galligan that Mimi had expressed support for Black Lives Matter protests across multiple social media platforms. Nope, he wanted her to pay for saying a racial slur when she was all of 15 years old. 

The University of Tennessee decided to cave to the mob. Instead of having conversations with Mimi, her parents, coaches and high school teachers, the university decided the THREE second video was indicative of Mimi’s entire character. How incredibly short sighted and repugnant of UT to do so. 

“The context of the Times story might make it seem that Galligan’s vengeful act might have been a necessary part of fighting cultural racism in that school. The lives of individuals don’t matter here; what matters is that Mimi Groves was a representative of a hated class: privileged white people. Galligan even tells a story about chastising his own white father about white privilege. What a life-giving ideology antiracism is: teaching people to despise their own parents in the name of social justice.”

It’s a life-taking ideology. Jimmy Galligan didn’t just chastise his father for using the word, he did so while his own BLACK relatives threw those same racial slurs around like candy. 

As one of our other writers noted, Pavlik Morozov was unavailable for comment. Who was Pavlik? A 13 year old Russian boy who the Soviet press praised effusively as a martyr. Why? Because Pavlik denounced his father to Soviet authorities. Pavlik’s family in return, killed the boy. That was social justice in the 1930’s in the Soviet Union. 

Today we have Jimmy Galligan chastising his father during a family gathering about the use of racial slurs. Dan Levin, who writes this NY Times story ignores the hypocrisy that is on full view. 

It's so depraved to suffuse the popular culture with a particular racial epithet, then turn around and crusade for the destruction of peoples' lives when they're found to have used the epithet as oblivious 14-year-oldshttps://t.co/V3lr5bnlJS

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 27, 2020

As Mimi herself admits and Jimmy ignores, she was listening to rap music that uses racial slurs all the damned time. More hypocrisy here as it’s quite alright for rap music and rap musicians to use those words because ART or something. But for a white person to say those words, the knives and pitchforks show up by the hundreds.  

One respondent to Michael Tracey’s tweet tries to infer that this is all about INTENT. Nope, don’t go down that road. By all accounts that video was of two young girls messing around in the car. It was a word that was used, but not directed at ANYONE. In fact, as The NY Times reports, the video didn’t cause much of a stir in 2016 when it was originally circulated among a few students. 

That is, until this spring when it landed in Jimmy Galligan’s hands. 

A three second clip of a child, from several years ago. And this is social justice? Does harvesting mistakes of adolescents really bring us together? Bravo to Jimmy and all of his SJW fans now online, even less harmony! Another kid’s head on a stick! Awesome

— LMNewJersey (@LmJersey) December 27, 2020

As I noted above, Jimmy did this out of sheer pettiness. 

Teaching someone a lesson is, in my view, something entirely different from being vindictive using the social media. The very idea that you would save the video to publish it later… it’s just a sheer & cruel vindictiveness.

— Peteris F Timofejevs (@PFTimofejevs) December 27, 2020

Frankie is oh so wrong here. Jimmy didn’t teach the world the lesson Frankie thinks it was. Jimmy’s pettiness and viciousness is on full display here. He has used morally repugnant cancel culture as justification for his pettiness, and the University of Tennessee caved to the mob because of it. 

Mimi Groves should never apologize for that three second video. But she did. Meanwhile Jimmy is super proud of his vindictiveness. 

“For his role, Mr. Galligan said he had no regrets. “If I never posted that video, nothing would have ever happened,” he said. And because the internet never forgets, the clip will always be available to watch.

“I’m going to remind myself, you started something,” he said with satisfaction. “You taught someone a lesson.”” [Emphasis Added]

Jimmy Galligan has no character. His glee over ruining the life of one of his classmates is sickening. He has demonstrated cancel culture at its most morally repugnant iteration. 

In the future, if I had the opportunity to interact socially with either Mimi Groves or Jimmy Galligan, or hire either one… I’d choose Mimi Groves in a heartbeat. 

Feature Photo Credit: Cancel Culture social media concept, Royalty-free stock illustration ID: 1754906384 via Shutterstock, cropped and modified