Ben Bankas’s sold-out Minneapolis shows have been canceled, but there’s more where they came from.

A lot more.

The rebel comedian saw six stand-up appearances disappear after word spread about his coarse cracks tied to Renee Good. The single mother confronted ICE agents in Minneapolis last month, refused to obey their instructions and was fatally shot after apparently steering her car into an agent.

Bankas’s comments?

“Her last name was Good. That’s what I said after they shot her in the face.”

Rough stuff, no doubt. He’s also a comedian known for saying outrageous things, yet he got the Minnesota pink slip all the same. So where are his fellow comedians? Do they have his back?

So far, very few appear to have it. That goes doubly for the self-described free speech heroes on late-night TV. Neither Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert has mentioned the cancellation. Chances are, they never will.

Why?

They don’t care about free speech unless their complaints can be tied to an anti-Trump narrative. The recent Hollywood war on all things ICE proves it.

The same Hollywood types who rallied behind Kimmel after his one-week suspension last year haven’t said “boo” about the Bankas situation.

It gets worse.

The reason for the Bankas cancellations? Security concerns. The club owner worried there might be violence from the far-Left if a Good critic took the stage. The owner didn’t label the potential source of violence, but common sense fills in the gaps.

Plus, Bankas recently told a stand-up audience he was willing to pay for extra security out of his pocket to make sure the shows went on.

Not good enough, apparently.

It’s not the only case of an artist finding his or her voice silenced. Apple Music removed a satirical song by Australian singer Holly Valance tied to an anti-woke comedy. Valance updated her 2002 song “Kiss Kiss” with new lyrics and an expanded title – “Kiss Kiss (XX) My Arse.”

The song is featured in “A Super Progressive Movie,” an animated satire skewering the modern woke movement. Apple Music later reinstated the song following a public backlash.

The film itself nearly endured a cancellation attack. but the venues in question reversed course and screened the movie as planned.

Again, we’ve heard few, if any, comments from the artistic community regarding the removal. No late-night TV segments decrying the censorship.

There is an upside, though.

Bankas, love him or hate him, has a crush of upcoming, sold-out shows on his agenda. The Minneapolis kerfuffle will likely boost his career, too.

The comic said as much on social media, where his comedy clips routinely go viral.

“I’ll never stop being me.. Was in DC last weekend and we’ve got over 20 million views since… Laughter is the best medicine and you can tell who’s been off their meds…. The haters want to knock me down because they don’t like success especially when it’s self made. The smart normal ones will prevail. We’ve added a lot of shows.”

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Review bombing: When an uber-woke movie or TV show draws intense backlash from the public.

The phrase became commonly used in recent years when progressive titles hit the marketplace. When select audiences cried foul, media outlets rushed in to defend the title. They suggested or outright alleged the bad reviews were due to bigotry or hate, not quality concerns.

There’s likely a soupcon of truth to the situation. Some fans will see forced diversity or overtly progressive themes and rush to denounce a title, sometimes sight unseen. Many others, though, simply rejected woke storytelling that failed to entertain.

It’s a very unscientific categorization, but it’s one the media is all too eager to exploit.

Why? Reporters must defend DEI-style programming at all costs. Sound cynical? Maybe.

Well, if review bombing is a terrible practice, why aren’t any Legacy Media outlets denouncing it following the “Melania” rollout?

The FLOTUS documentary scored big at the box office over the weekend, snagging north of $7 million, a coup for a nonfiction film. Reviews have been brutal, with some critics stooping so low as to blast the film as Nazi-esque propaganda.

General audiences at Rotten Tomatoes, which does what it can to certify users have seen the movies in question, raved about “Melania.”

Others didn’t, though.

Forbes magazine noted the jarring chasm between legitimate “Melania” patrons and those who wanted to savage the film, sight unseen.

Yet the words “review bomb” never appear in the Forbes article. Weird. Others did.

• Queerty.com cheerfully uses that phrase, but the framing is all positive. Now, suddenly, it’s a good thing to “review bomb” a film. As long as it’s the correct film to bomb, apparently.
• The far-Left Mother Jones lamented that fake reviews have been scrubbed from the Letterboxd film review site.
• The far-Left Daily Beast also cheered on the review bombing and criticized sites for attempting to put a stop to it.

So which is it? Is review bombing the scourge of our digital age or a necessary part of The Resistance?

The Left’s double standards are on full display. Again.

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