Josh Dickey, a 23-year veteran of the entertainment media, says a white guy can no longer get hired in the medium so… He’s out.
“[I]n these past couple of years, I have applied to more than 100 media jobs,” he wrote in a Facebook post published this week. “[These were jobs] I was uniquely qualified for – and not a single interview or lead has come of it.”
“[L]et’s face it, HR won’t look past my LinkedIn profile picture. Not in this climate,” he adds. “I’m not the right make, model & year anymore – and that’s not something I’m whinging about, it’s just a stone fact.”
“Ten years ago, I was beating back recruiters with a rolled-up newspaper; my resume is a garden of journalistic delights and editorial accomplishments,” he says.
Among other places, Dickey has worked as a managing editor at TMZ, a film editor at Variety, and the entertainment editor at Mashable (this of his is a must-read). But now, simply because he’s a white male who hasn’t spent the last five years inoculating himself from his skin color and gender by proving his fealty to the Woke Stasi (see A.O. Scott), he’s unemployed and unemployable in his chosen field.
No one will even return his calls, and he knows why…
Here is the truth as I see it most clearly: Everything you hear about media bias is 10X worse when looking out from the inside; the homogeny of the industry’s worldview had become hostile to my center/libertarian/rugged individualist leanings, a dissonance that was manifesting everywhere I went. ‘They’ wanted me to write about social justice, I prefer to seek truth, something had to give[.]
He also says he’s quitting social media:
I’m ~not~ OK with the state of social media, its hysterical wokeness and sick accusations and demands for blood, its atheistic snarl, and now its new proclivities toward censorship, shouting down, and silencing. Nah. I quit Twitter & Instagram a year ago – a GREAT decision, I really recommend it to anyone – and had largely abandoned Facebook, figuring I’d leave this account here for emergencies. I can no longer abide having any part in it. What Big Tech is getting away with right now, in broad daylight, is ghastly, about as American as hammers & sickles, and is only going to get worse.
So what’s he going to do now? Well, he’s re-joining the real world.
Last August he entered the “HVAC/R business (heating, ventilation, air conditioning & refrigeration),” has just passed his first four certification exams, and hopes to graduate in 2022. Eventually, he wants to open his own contracting business.
None of what happened to him comes as any surprise. As I’ve been saying for years, if you think the political media are a left-wing, groupthink cult (and they are), spend some time rummaging around the entertainment media.
Dickey says he’s joining up with the working class because the “thirst for skilled technicians is so strong, even The New Villains like me are welcome.” He says he’s putting down his pen, letting go of two decades of celebrity hob-knobbing, and fleeing social media because, as he learned from his two of his favorite movies (War Games and Tron: Legacy), “The only way to win is not to play.”
That’s exactly right.
You should read his goodbye letter before he deletes it. There’s no anger, no rancor, no bitterness… Quite the opposite, in fact.
To me, he sounds intellectually liberated, like a man who’s seen the light, a man whose forced exile from a stupid and fascist cult ended up being a gift after the time away gifted him with perspective. Few thoughts are as emancipating as, Why did I ever give a shit about any of this?
So now Dickey’s going to do something that does matter, that is useful… He’s going to keep people’s homes heated and cooled. Nothing I’ve ever written, not in 17 years of doing this, is as important or as life-changing or matters as much as keeping someone’s heat on.
Let me put it this way — something I’ve said many times before…
If everyone on your TV and on the Internet disappeared tomorrow (including me); if the very mediums of TV and movies and Internet and media disappeared tomorrow; if every writer (including me) and artist and talking head and ballplayer disappeared tomorrow… We would miss them — of course we would miss them. But guess what….? Believe it or not, the world would keep right on turning. Maybe even turning better. Would it really surprise anyone if the world came out of that scenario spiritually healthier and happier?
Now try living in a world without the guys who fix your heating and air conditioning and plumbing and electricity… Try living without guys like The New Josh Dickey… Within a week, the world would stop turning, would go completely to shit.
I’ve never met Josh Dickey. Have never even (so far as I know) exchanged so much as a tweet with him. But I sure wish him the best and have no doubt he will find life much more fulfilling in his new career.
He may not matter anymore to media subculture that itself doesn’t matter. But out here in the real world, we can’t do without guys like The New Josh Dickey.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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