Systematically silenced
Huh. I stupidly assumed that Jimmy Kimmel had said something flippant or callous about Kirk himself, but oh gee whaddya know he didn’t do any such thing. What he said was that the trumpies are using Kirk’s murder for their own trumpy ends. Should that be protected free speech? You’re god damn right it should.
Politicians, media figures and free speech organisations expressed anger and alarm at the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show, warning that critics of Donald Trump were being systematically silenced.
ABC announced it was suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely after comments Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s killing led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say it would not air the show.
That wording illustrates why I thought Kimmel joked about the killing.
In his monologue on Monday, Kimmel said that “we hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” On Tuesday he said Trump was “fanning the flames” by attacking people on the left.
It’s meta commentary on the shooting; it’s commentary on the political exploitation of the killing; it’s not in any way dismissive or callous about the killing itself. It’s extremely sinister and alarming that ABC took the dictator’s orders and punished the commentary.
ABC, which has aired Kimmel’s late-night show since 2003, moved swiftly after Nexstar Communications Group said it would pull the show, saying Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death “were offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse”.
No they weren’t. That’s a revolting lie. It’s not insensitive to say that Trump and the trumpies are exploiting the murder. It’s no doubt offensive to the trumpies, but so what?
Two words. Horst Wessel.
One l. Yeah, I’m a spelling Nazi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Wessel
Oops.
I did for a split second think of checking but was too lazy.
QUOTE ABC, which has aired Kimmel’s late-night show since 2003, moved swiftly after Nexstar Communications Group said it would pull the show, saying Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death “were offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse.”ENDQUOTE
OB: “No they weren’t. That’s a revolting lie. It’s not insensitive to say that Trump and the trumpies are exploiting the murder. It’s no doubt offensive to the trumpies, but so what?”
It appears to me to be an Orwellian assault on free speech dressed up as a present need for ‘good taste.’
In honor of Free Speech champion Charlie Kirk, we are suspending free speech about Charlie Kirk.
So Trump has already gone after ABC and CBS (the “60 Minutes” lawsuit). Looks like the other main US network, NBC, is next.
Meanwhile, the Trump Toadies are enjoying the spectacle of seeing their real and imagined enemies get punished. From Donald Turd Jr. :
“They’re not losing their jobs to cancel culture, they’re losing them to Consequence Culture. Consequences and accountability are something Democrats haven’t had to face in a long time.”
https://x.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1968447979091792138#m
Wasn’t it the liberal Roxane Gay who used to use the phrase “Consequence Culture”?
Kirk himself may be a match for Horst Wessel, the martyr of opportunity. But the speed and scale of the fascist assault really is more Reichstag Fire.
The real Wessel was unknown until after his death, just another Nazi street thug, Kirk was a bigger institution that I’d realized, even as Joe My God reported on him at least once a week.
Had this been a prominent “left” commentator assassinated during Obama’s presidency, right wing commentators would have rushed to claim it was a false flag operation designed to allow Obama and company to crack down on the likes of Ted Nugent. They can’t see things going in the other direction, and they’re fine with their fucking moron attacking critics on the left, and gleefully joining in on the fun themselves.
It’s tough because this stuff (which is terrible, don’t get me wrong) doesn’t actually go against the first amendment unless you can prove the gov forced them to fire/cancel, which is hard. Also you don’t want to illegalize firing someone/canceling a show for offensive speech (when firing/canceling NOT done by government) because then it would be illegal to fire someone or cancel their show for going on a racist rant etc.
But this is speech that wasn’t offensive. Trumplandia is pretending it was but it wasn’t. Saying Trumplandia is exploiting it offends Trumplandia but Trumplandia offends normal people 1000 times a day.
“But this is speech that wasn’t offensive. Trumplandia is pretending it was but it wasn’t. Saying Trumplandia is exploiting it offends Trumplandia but Trumplandia offends normal people 1000 times a day”
I agree, I’m just saying “you can fire people for their speech if it’s offensive” is a hard standard to have because some people will rightfully for example condemn racism and support criticizing Trump, while others will have the opposite idea of what’s offensive. They’re wrong but the correct definition of offensive is not something you can prove like math.
Exactly. And this is why I have always been a free speech absolutist. The problem is who gets to define offensive, and it’s usually who is in power. Many of us rightfully condemn the MAGA as offensive, maybe even a ‘basket of deplorables’, and would support our right to say it. Since the government doesn’t like it, they define it as offensive, and shut it down.
The left has been doing it for a while, too, most notably in the trans issue.
Some people want to shut down ‘dangerous’ speech, but what is dangerous? Again, it depends on who defines it. Many people, even many of my liberal Christian friends, think atheist speech is dangerous. Eugene Debs was jailed for speaking against the draft during WWI. Feminist speech during suffrage was considered dangerous, and shutting it down was the goal of a lot of people with entitlement and power; now, feminist speech is considered dangerous by trans, and shutting it down has been a goal of a lot of people with entitlement and power. For many in big oil and big ag, environmental speech is considered dangerous.
For those who have only been willing to support speech they agree with, this should be a huge eye-opening lesson. If speech is popular and offends no one, it doesn’t need a constitutional amendment to protect it. If it is not popular, a constitutional amendment is not enough; it requires people to defend that amendment, to shout loudly that “I disagree with what you say, sir, but I will support to the death your right to speak it.” (often attributed, perhaps mistakenly, to Voltaire).
Those advocating for even the mildest forms of gun control or screening of people buying guns after a mass shooting incident in the US are always told by gun lobbyist shills that it’s “too soon” to talk about such measures, and are accused of needlessly politicizing the most recent gun “tragedy.” So Kimmel gets canned for pointing out MAGA’s politicizing of Kirk’s death. Not mocking or belittling it, but the weaponizing of it, and questioning the official story that this is an act of “leftist” violence. But (like Rowling) Kimmel is being cancelled for something he didn’t do. Rowling was never “transphobic” or “bigoted” or “hateful,” but it’s now taken as fact that that she was, thus rendering her Officially Controversial. Everyone who looks no farther than the “offence” accusation against Kimmel, taking them at face value, will just assume that he was making crude, rude, or insensitive comments about Kirk’s murder ( which would still be protected speech), rather than pointing out the desperate and sinister meta-narrative that MAGA is building around it. Highlighting the ongoing machinations of authoritarianism makes it harder for those machinations to run smoothly. That was Kimmel’s “crime.”
In 2002 Putin shut down a popular (though not among fervent Putin supporters and officialdom) satirical puppet-show on Russian TV because it mocked him — there was even a Putin puppet, which no doubt made matters worse in the minds of humourless ideologues.
It does not, alas, astound me that one hears barely a squeak from all those doughty defenders of free speech who advertise themselves as libertarian or who are on the far-right. They are eager to shriek about nasty leftists who say nasty things, but when it comes to the government they support shutting free speech down ……. Cowards & hypocrites all.