Steve Martin: Another Damn Thing We (DON’T!) Have to Be Concerned About

On the 44th anniversary of its debut, I come to praise King Tut, not to entomb it.

Two quick thoughts before I tell you about the laughably lame and failed attempt at canceling Steve Martin.

The first is the sublime genius beneath the superficial goofiness of King Tut.

Martin — an art collector — skewered the art world’s commercialization of the Tutankhamen tour with a parody song.

King Tut is typical of Martin: A seamless blend of highbrow and lowbrow.

Even though the song is mostly silly when it isn’t downright nonsensical, there are gems like “He gave his life for tourism” and “Now, if I’d known they’d line up just to see him, I’d have taken all my money and bought me a museum.”

Then there’s the meta-layer: Martin made fun of commercialism with a bit that — by design — instantly became his most commercial. He performed the song to sold-out crowds in stadiums.

So what does a bit that came out when Jimmy Carter was president have to do with 21st Century cancel culture?

Here’s where we get to that second thought, courtesy of Mark Dice. Dice explained how the Twitter Outrage Machine functions:

“They do it,” Dice explained, “to create a self-fulfilling prophesy. Twitter manually inserts a topic on the list. People see the topic and think everyone is tweeting about which “caused” it to trend, so people *start* tweeting about it, and *then* the issue goes viral.”

“Steve Martin” briefly trended on Monday after Silver Age Television tweeted the anniversary of King Tut’s debut on SNL. It trended because some zero-humor wokester forced it to trend.

But only briefly.

Mediaite did its best to generate heat with this headline yesterday:

Steven Martin’s ‘King Tut’ Sketch from 1978 Sparks Twitter Debate on Cultural Appropriation.

Steven Martin?

Anyway, as the story made clear, there wasn’t even so little as a “Twitter debate.”

The worst Mediaite could find was two barely-critical tweets by a couple of low-follower Blue Checks.

The Twitter Outrage Machine was cranked to life, then almost immediately ran out of gas.

Maybe it’s because Twitter spent Monday outraged about the Elon Musk buyout and didn’t have time to worry about Martin.

Maybe it’s because the gentle genius of King Tut makes it bulletproof.

Maybe it’s because Cancel Culture has, like every other leftist revolutionary movement eventually does, finally choked to death on the blood it spilled.

Or maybe there’s more to come…

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Insanity Wrap: Did Steve Martin Just Kill Cancel Culture? – PJ Media