In the latest episode of “Social Media Finds Another Reason to Be Outraged,” the main character is actor Jamie Foxx, who recently went public again after dealing with a serious illness. The actor made a post on social media that ignited yet another manufactured controversy among those who had nothing better to do than to virtue signal online about how much they despise bigotry.
The situation started when Foxx made an Instagram post in which he wrote: “THEY KILLED THIS DUDE NAME JESUS… WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY’LL DO TO YOU???!”
Now, to sane folks, this post would indicate that Foxx was referring to an individual, or group of people, who betrayed and harmed Foxx, just as Judas turned against Jesus Christ. Perhaps someone who pretended to be the actor’s friend turned out to be a turncoat.
Unfortunately, since sanity is a hard thing to come by these days, people on the interwebs immediately jumped on the opportunity to pretend Foxx was talking about Jews. The obligatory fake outrage followed, with many users excoriating the actor for his supposed hatred against the Jewish people.
Author Aviva Klompas tweeted:
Jew hatred has become acceptable in America and attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions are soaring.
Here’s @iamjamiefoxx broadcasting a dangerous age-old trope to his 16.7 million followers.
Another user said that Foxx’s post “is a sad reminder that Jews can’t just exist like most everyone else,” and that “There will always be people who hate us.”
Actress Jennifer Aniston, who had originally liked Foxx’s post, issued a frenzied mea culpa on Instagram to avoid the wrath of the Cancel Culture Community(TM):
This really makes me sick. I did not “like” this post on purpose or by accident. And more importantly, I want to be clear to my friends and anyone hurt by this showing up in their feeds – I do NOT support any form of antisemitism. And I truly don’t tolerate HATE of any kind. Period.
Sadly, instead of telling the virtue signalers and fake outragers to pound sand, Foxx apologized. In another post on Instagram, he said he knew his words “were clumsy” and clarified that he “felt betrayed by a fake friend,” which led to the original now-deleted post:
In situations like these, I have stopped taking most people seriously. I don’t believe for a second that most of these people actually believed Foxx was expressing anti-Semitic sentiments. In fact, the saying “they killed Jesus” is somewhat common among black folks. It has absolutely nothing to do with hating Jews.
Foxx has never given any indication that he has a problem with the Jewish people, unlike Kanye West, who some compared him to over this incident. To put it simply, there is absolutely no evidence that the actor has anything in common with those of the Nazi persuasion.
The issue is that American society has become so soft and easily offended that too many of us actively search for reasons to become outraged. If there is any hint that a famous person might have said something that could be construed as offensive, those waiting to pounce on such an utterance kick into high gear to stir up resentment and hostility.
America’s addiction to outrage is only getting worse. There are several factors contributing to this societal cancer. What is scary is that there does not seem to be any indication that we will grow out of this anytime soon.