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Notes -
Jimmy Kimmel pulled indefinitely by ABC for Charlie Kirk comments.
Late night talk show hosts have waned from their glorious Letterman days, but boomers still care about then enough that they're still a scalp worth scraping off the skull. It's hard to think of a prominent figure on the right that would be equal in stature - Gina Carano? Piers Morgan? Roseanne Barr? nothing like him - if only for the fact that the entertainment industry is so aligned to the left. Indeed, even during the height of the progressive cancel culture era, it was liberal icons like Louis CK and JK Rowling that felt the heat.
If such a big figure can fall, who will be next?
With Colbert going off the air, and with the upcoming FCC hearings on Twitch, Reddit, Discord, and Steam, one can only anticipate the prizes that are coming. Destiny and Hasan are obvious trophies that the right would love to claim, but I have no doubt that the powerjanitors of Reddit are quaking in their boots. How many leftist/liberal commentators have made snarky comments on social media, as of late? This is the reddest of the red meat, dripping with blood, raw. The long march through the institutions has only just begun, and for the populist right base, it'll be a enjoyable hike indeed.
Personally I tend to think that both the Colbert firing and the Kimmel firing were partly in result to Trump admin pressure...
...but that reason, while true, wasn't at all the main reason. We heard Colbert's show was losing money regularly, and I imagine Kimmel's was too (although it's possible some Colbert defectors propped it up for a bit so may not have been recently the case, dunno there), so I believe both networks saw it as a win-win situation.
(The Kimmel quote in question is incredibly weak sauce, though. At worst he's accusing Republicans of being murderers, but that seems like a logical stretch of language. He's wrong on the facts of course but it's not like I have a high bar for comedy-ish monologues of the political issues de jour)
Am I worried about this kind of press pressure? Yes. I'm not, like, apocalyptically worried, just normal worried. I'm currently sort of on the train of thought that even if Trump 2.0 is followed by another Republican, I'm not sure these absurdities will continue. My mental model of the Trump admin is roughly that a ton of loose, low-qualified cannons running around using Trump's formidable political cover are going buck wild on their own personal pet issues and Trump doesn't care too much as long as it can be spun positively on TV, or gives off "we are strong" vibes.
I don't know if that's a win-win situation. Firing Kimmel for not making enough money makes you look like a heartless capitalist. Firing Kimmel because Trump made angry noises on social media makes you look like a pussy. Now everyone will see that a bit of pressure is sufficient to bully a TV channel around.
Trump has made his opinions on pussy pretty clear.
By extension, Trump enthusiasts are more likely to think “bullying a TV channel around” is actually a good thing.
Turnabout is fair play, the TV channels have been bullying Trump enthusiast for years.
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