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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.
Once again, I'm seeing the center left Ryan Grim types run with "Jimmy Kimmel was fired for a joke! What, is comedy illegal now?"
I have to ask, what was the joke? What was the setup? What was the punchline? If this were a rant Tim Dillon were delivering, and the context is we are laughing at what a sociopath Tim Dillon is, and that he's saying shit no human being could possibly believe with a straight face, ok. Has that become Jimmy Kimmel's act? Was the joke that he's so retarded and Trump Deranged that this is funny?
Falling back on "It's just a joke" is the bully behavior of people who abuse you. When you get upset at being punched, called a faggot, and having you D&D books stolen, they go "It's just a joke, lighten up". "It's just a joke" is always the last defense of the bully when the bill finally comes due.
The quote above is the pre-amble for the actual "joke" -- https://x.com/suayrez/status/1968464780940673083 For those who don't want to watch, Kimmel shows a clip of reporters asking Trump how he is holding up and Trump saying "I think very good" then pointing to construction of the White House ballroom and boasting about it, to which Kimmel makes the actual "joke": "This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish,"
To judge whether this is appropriate, imagine this in a more politically neutral circumstance. Imagine the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys had just been murdered by a deranged Eagles fan. A journalist catches Cowboys owner Jerry Jones at some random moment and asks him, "how are you holding up?" and he says "just fine" and points to a new improvement to the football stadium. Would it be in the realm of appropriateness for a late-night comedian to take a shot at Jerry Jones for this response? No. People have all sorts of responses to grief, he might have just wanted to change the subject because he did not want to talk about it with the journalist, he might have been trying to put on a brave face. Telling a national audience that "this is not how an adult grieves his friend" and saying this man who just suffered a traumatic loss "is acting like a four year old" would be considered a terrible thing to say, far beyond the pale. Any broadcast channel comedian would have faced a suspension for a joke that off-base.
It was absolutely a cheap potshot by Kimmel, and it shows that Kimmel is a lot more concerned with taking potshots at Trump than he cares about the fact that the political climate is heated enough to produce this kind of assassination.
If I was in Trump's position, being publicly insulted and told I'm grieving like a four-year-old when my friend and ally was just assassinated would fill be with a hot rage and I would want to use every tool in my disposable to destroy the person who insulted me. George Washington had his seconds kill people in duels for less than this.
It is said that a republic requires a virtuous citizenry. Well, "don't make cheap and nasty insults at the leader when they are assassination the murder of their ally" is part of the virtue needed to maintain a republic where free speech exists.
How is it connected? I watched the clip until he started talking about the Emmys, and didn't notice anything that built off of that supposed setup. Let's go line-by-line:
How is "desperately trying to characterize [him] as anything other than one of them" supposed to be the preamble for a joke? Did I simply stop watching too soon?
Yes, you did stop too soon, actually. That's the quote that's been cited everywhere, but the bit is significantly longer with several cross-cuts. That's only the intro! This is probably the best text description of the segment if you don't want to watch it. I'm a text>video supremacist, but video does capture some nuance if you care: namely, the pacing and tone of his voice in that entire quote is literally just a lead-up.
The main bit is that Trump doesn't actually care about Kirk, and merely finds his death occasionally politically convenient. The specific laugh-line is about Trump grieving like a 4-year old grieves for a goldfish. And then another few clips the thrust of which is Trump when asked tends to change the subject away from Kirk quickly. Which, you can think of it how you like, you may even consider it cruel, but the whole thing is not being viewed contextually.
To put it again very clearly: the takeaway from this segment of a longer monologue is that Trump sucks as a person. The reference to Kirk's killer's motive is done in passing. It's wrong, obviously, and most people would agree it's wrong, but it's a comedy lead-in to a joke not a newscast and it was a day before the gold-standard evidence came out that put it all to bed. Remember, the FBI was super stingy with their evidence release cadence and most newscasters were going mostly off of scraps, often without even primary source attribution (e.g. Governor Cox claimed that the FBI found out that someone close to the shooter said _) so it was hard to tell in many cases which piece of info came from where. (And while Kimmel holds responsibility I wouldn't be surprised if the actual paragraph quote's copy was written by some overworked staff writer instead)
Let me repeat myself: I watched the clip until he started talking about the Emmys. I recognize everything you're talking about, and disagree with your characterization of it.
If you want to use a "comedy" defense, then you have to actually do comedy. That was just an isolated insult slotted into position. You will never have the respect of your peers, and your appearance frightens children. He didn't need to cite the gold-standard evidence. Heck, he didn't even need to be correct. All he needed to do was make a joke with it.
Without that connection, it's just an incredibly crass insult that's (unsuccessfully for me; successfully for you) taking cover from the format.
That concludes my counterargument where everything I said is tied together into the coherent thesis that you have misinterpreted Kimmel's monologue. I'm sure that you won't find any insults masquerading as arguments because every sentence is in its proper place.
(from @Dean below)
A two-part would be best, but I'm not that strict. It can be ironic, hyperbolic, or any other way to use it.
It’s a mean joke, I didn’t find it funny, but it absolutely is a joke. I’m not gonna go down that route and analyze it in depth unless I have to, but it follows enough of the rules of comedy that it counts, with the cadence I described. Much of comedy tiptoes a line of meanness, that’s not really new. To me a joke can be insulting, the two are not mutually exclusive at all.
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We're at the point in the culture wars where we're parsing exactly which part of a comedian's routine counts as comedy and which doesn't. Line-by-line style.
We've been there since the early 2000s, with "Clown nose on; clown nose off."
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A: "It was just a joke! these guys can't take a joke!"
B: "Actually, it doesn't appear to have been a joke. That's not how jokes work."
A: "Look at these losers, arguing about jokes!"
Blues are actively attempting to deny responsibility for a political assassination, for which the perpetrator and his motives are exceedingly clear. Kimmel joined in to repeat a blatant lie about the shooter's identity and allegiances on national television. From further reporting, he refused to apologize, claiming he had said nothing wrong. I am fine with him losing his job over that. Many people have lost their jobs for much less. I am happy for Blues to complain about this; it will further highlight their hypocrisy and Streisand-Effect the facts of the case that they appear desperate to deny or bury.
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No chum, we've been there for a while. Remember Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle and Roseanne Barr and Norm Macdonald and Daniel Tosh and... You get my point. We're at the point in the culture wars where there is now symmetry in the parsing.
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As I understand it, the substance of the joke is "although Republicans claim to be very concerned about Kirk's death, this is just political posturing and in private, even Trump himself doesn't give a damn". The crack about Trumpists being desperate to prove that Robinson was a leftist is straightforwardly part of the setup half of that sentence, the scene-setting with which Trump's supposedly comical lack of concern will provide a laugh-inducing clash. This didn't require that particular misleading statement about the Right's response to the murder - it could have been anything - but setting the truth of the claim aside I do think it has an obvious place within the telling of the overall joke. It's not load-bearing, but it isn't a non sequitur.
If he'd phrased it like this he'd probably still have a job. If something turns up stolen in a workplace environment, for example, there's a big difference between saying "Bob is desperate to prove it was Steve" versus "Bob is desperate to prove it was anyone other than himself."
In the former case maybe Bob just hates Steve and wants to blame everything on him, or maybe he thinks Steve really did it, who knows? But saying the latter is to straightforwardly accuse Bob, and going "well technically.." on that count is just disingenuous shittery.
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Notably absent in this response is how the disinformation claim is structurally part of the joke. You point to the goldfish as the laugh line, but the goldfish line is not set up by the MAGA accusation. Kimmel's insult is before the goldfish line, but this is sequential context, not structural composition. Appealing to the pacing and tone of the voice is an appeal to the means of delivery, not the structure of the joke.
The distinction @ulyssessword is asking is clearer if you have a more obvious 2-part joke structure, and then place something else inside that structure.
'Why did the chicken cross the road?' 'To get to the other side.'
This is a two-part joke structure.
'Why did the chicken cross the road?' 'My outgroup is terrible for trying to deflect their culpability for murder.' 'To get to the other side.' 'Also, Trump bad.'
This is still a two-part joke structure.
It has additional parts in and after, but it's still a two-part joke, regardless of how smooth the delivery or transition between the joke/not-joke parts are. Placing the two-part joke in the context of the broader Trump bad monologue does not change the structure of the joke. The joke being part of the monologue does not make other parts of the monologue- such as the disinformation accusation- part of the joke.
It's not structurally part of the joke, though? The joke, such as it is, makes perfect sense without the intro - thus it's clearly a throwaway lead-in. It's there as a transition. If you cut off everything before (2:15) "In between the finger pointing there was grieving... uh, on Friday the White House... (quote continues)" it still makes sense. Heck, you can even cut off everything before "on Friday" and a random viewer would perfectly understand. (Kirk is even introduced as the topic within the video clip; again, the intro is completely disposable).
Why is that relevant? No one is paying attention to his insinuation that Kirk's killer was MAGA, or at least most viewers aren't. It's not the same thing as a newscast where the main news headline is false, which is what the FCC might get mad at. Obviously the prominence of a claim should directly bear on the seriousness of a deception, and that's doubly true when the purpose is not to convey news. The purpose is, more or less, to have fun doing "boo outgroup", and that's allowed to happen on TV by a comedian.
Who was deceived, and how badly? Anyone who read the news certainly isn't going to throw out whatever facts they read because Kimmel insinuated something in passing. Anyone who doesn't read the news might get the wrong impression, but again, even a trivial attempt at fact-finding would quickly reveal the truth. And in fact, the very next day we DID get the truth, and in far more detail.
Is it really the betrayal of the "public interest" of an entire channel that a comedian subconsciously gave people the wrong impression about something? Because to be clear that's basically the full extent of it.
If it's not about the whole public interest thing, then it's not a conversation about factual accuracy, it's a conversation about what constitutes poor enough taste to take a comedian off the air. The FCC's Carr engaged in a deliberate bait and switch by conflating the two. And many of you here fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
"Hit a new low, desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them" is straightforwardly an accusation. Anyone who claims otherwise is not a serious person and is probably operating in bad faith.
Knowingly and falsely accusing the President's supporters of assassination on national television has never been within the Overton Window, at least as far as keeping a cushy entertainment job is concerned. I don't know what you think you gain by describing it as "in passing" like that means it doesn't count.
If some left-wing activist got their brains blown out in public by a right-winger and a television host went on the air within the week to tell us "Obama and his goons are desperate to characterize this as anything other than themselves" they'd be fired in five seconds, nobody in the media would even think to question it, and we all god damn well know it.
There is not enough wordcel gaslighting in the universe to pull off what some of you people are trying to pull off, and the attempts are comical.
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Absolutely it would be appropriate. People said that a LOT about everyone involved in baseball in the aftermath of the Roy Halladay and Jose Fernandez deaths.
I'm not familiar with those cases, do you have an example of a high-status comedian cracking an insulting joke toward one of their friends or loved ones?
There also is a difference between a death due to a person's own recklessness/stupidity, which is often the fodder for jokes, and an outright assassination.
Jose Fernandez died drunk boating. Halladay was... flying a plane? Not sure what the jokes were for Roy, but for Fernandez it was the Miami/cocaine/party lifestyle catching someone famous.
For Halladay: The NTSB determined the probable cause of the crash to be the "pilot's improper decision to perform aggressive, low-altitude maneuvers due to his impairment from the use of multiple psychoactive substances, which resulted in a loss of control."
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What's the point of an analogy if it doesn't work unless it's exactly the same? Typically everything is fodder for a joke among comedians, and the punishment is that if people don't like it the joke bombs. "Don't make jokes about deaths" wasn't really a standard until last week, and while people often got sensitive about such jokes, this wasn't a broad standard.
There is a different standard for the jokes of a network television host, than there is for the jokes of a shock jock or a horrible person on South Park. With the network variety show, the implicit agreement with the audience is that "these are the kinds of jokes you can re-tell in polite company; these are the kind of jokes that good people can tell." So when he tells a joke that only Cartman or Howard Stern would tell, he is not doing his job correctly.
There is also a different standard for jokes about self-inflicted stupid deaths versus tragic deaths versus murders versus political assassinations. This is the most significant political assassination in the United Sates since RFK. I highly doubt any network comedian was making RFK jokes a week after his death. I remember Princess Diana jokes, but I highly doubt they were made a week or a month within her death on network TV.
Looks like a local sports radio host specifically mocked Halladay's death, and the stupidity of his actions, but he was widely criticized for this and forced to issue a public apology: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/nov/09/boston-radio-host-mocks-moron-roy-halladay-after-death-in-plane-crash-at-40
Part of the disconnect is that for some people, Kirk's killing is just another in the mental bucket of "mass shooters", and not an actual assassination. Remember that Kirk, for all his influence, was an influencer/activist/organizer, not an official (and never was, and claimed not to want to be).
Kimmel's larger bit is actually about Trump not being sad enough about Kirk. Yes, that's a low blow, but the implication of that is... well, actually that Kirk's death was a big deal and Trump should care more. I mean, his crowd isn't that sympathetic to Kirk of course but it's not like Kimmel said anything bad about Kirk in that quote. He's guilty of using Kirk's death as a weapon, like what he accuses MAGA of doing, is that cancellable?
The line between letting a tragedy be a tragedy, and using a tragedy in a bigger political debate has already been thinning quite a bit. Especially about gun violence related things.
On the whole though I do appreciate your point. I don't consider Kimmel a network TV host, though, despite the facts of his position, because the whole point of late-night was originally that the typical audience wouldn't be watching! It's the adults doing adult-interest things.
I think this it, the motivation for taking Kimmel down wasn't misinformation but the seeming concern trolling. He made Trump look insensitive and petty, and that stings.
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Right. Kirk unleashed the inner That's Not Funny that had been lurking within the allegedly thick-skinned
You can frame it that way if you wish. The problem is that it doesn't seem like many people in the wider culture are buying it. The ultimate test for any of the claims or perspectives we offer here are subsequent events: I am confident that framing this as "Kirk unleashed the inner That's Not Funny" is not going to turn the tide.
Time will tell.
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So for the record, you were never on board with "no sacred cows, this country was built on thick-skinned free-ranging freedom of speech; comedy, satire and irony is the fruit of western civilization" right of 2018?
There’s a difference between comedy satire and making fun of someone’s death. And a lot of statements made by news media and regular media today would have been so horrific to someone living in 1960 that they would have whisked these people off the air as soon as they said some of the things they said. There’s no chance that Kimmel would have been able to mock the death of a political figure in 1964 probably not even 1974. Not necessarily that people had thin skin, but you weren’t going to stay on the air even to finish the monologue if you were doing things like that. More than likely you would end up seeing Kimmel escorted off the set and the producers apologize to the audience for that bit.
...uh...TW: Contains linked and quoted mockery of celebrity and celeb-adjacent deaths.
I'm reminded of Bob Rivers' "I Can't Ski Babe." Also "Oh God, I'm an Ocean Buoy."
Personally I'm a fan of both original songs (I liked oldies as a kid), and John Denver in general...which only makes these funnier IMO.
(Investigation found the latter was spreading misinformation, too! Like yes he did have multiple DUIs and was legally not allowed to fly at the time of the crash, but the autopsy found no sign of alcohol or other drugs. The problem was the difficulty of switching fuel tanks. That said, as an initial reaction, given the context it was a reasonable suspicion.)
:D
See also
...this was mostly just a nostalgia trip for me, but yeah this was all on radio rather than TV.
I mentioned elsewhere how I was raised that freedom of speech was more important than anything...that was partly due to the times, and that and exposure to the above type of thing on radio have shaped my worldview. In my culture, mockery of celebrity and celeb-adjacent deaths isn't shocking and I probably wouldn't notice it much. (Celeb-adjacent does feel "worse" to me, like the celeb chose to pursue attention but their family mostly didn't...)
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I always thought "cancel culture" was a bad term and a misdiagnosis. The problem was people getting canceled for saying true things or for semi-private jokes, while lots of people were saying horrible anti-white things or pro-riot things with giant megaphones and not facing any consequences. Lot's of people should have been canceled who weren't. Lots of people on the left were awful saying things in 2020 that would have got themselves rightly canceled in 1995 or 1955. For example, I always felt that the NY Times should have canceled Sarah Jeong for her gratuitous anti-white statements, but kept on Razib Khan for his smart and truthful analysis. Nikole Hannah Jones should have been fired from the NY Times for endorsing the 2020 riots. Etc.
There is always an Overton window. And the Overton window of what can be said on network TV without getting reprimanded or punished by your boss is and ought to be smaller than the Overton window of what you can publish in your own pamphlet without getting punished by the state.
Yes, cancellation is excellent praxis within an illiberal milieu, but I can't blame anyone for mourning the death of the liberal détente that prohibited it.
Of course, from the NYT's perspective Razib's "smart and truthful analysis" amounts to justification of horrible anti-black sentiment. On one hand, they're correct; on the other hand, he's correct.
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When @FiveHourMarathon finally snaps and takes things too far, your comment will be used to link this site to stochastic terrorism.
I will not beat the allegations.
And let's be honest, if this wretched hive of scum and villainy ever makes it to court, none of us are. I would not want to be in court trying to explain that it's important not to ban the pedofascist on civility grounds.
Hold on there's no need to resort to violence. The way to make sure the cowboys lose is to increase the star players' pay. C'mon, listen to the cowboys fans tell jokes about it.
It's not that I wanted to kill him, it's just unpredictable what a D Cell battery hurled at 60mph from section 127 will do to a human skull on impact.
I thought Eagles fans reserved that treatment for Santa Claus.
Santa Claus is kind of like the cowboys' super bowl chances, in that neither really exists.
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Nonsense, everyone will go "Psychotic Philly fan? Yeah, that tracks." and then stop asking questions. It's the perfect cover.
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
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Tangential question: How often do NFL owners directly interact with the players? It seems like it could be pretty hands-on or aloof and only talking to the coaches.
Dan Snyder was infamous for having stars over to his home for meals. That was one of the many issues with the team, under his watch the players could go around their superiors to the owner.
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Varies widely. I'm sure some relationships are completely hands-off, but then you have cases like owner Bob Kraft and Tom Brady where they lived near each other for 20 years and saw each other outside of football and Kraft has said he loved Brady like a son.
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Side note, I identify with that grief reaction entirely. When my father died people would try to talk to me about it, and I couldn't possibly change the subject fast enough. Maybe I seemed like a psycho, I don't know. At one point a coworker cornered me before a 3 hour long meeting, and tried to make me talk about how I was doing. It set off a chain reaction, and I spent the next three hours stuck in a meeting incapable of focusing on anything except the grief I'd been running from the last few weeks. I couldn't excuse myself, and I was just fighting to keep it together.
Once again, I must have seemed like a complete psycho.
Nosy or intrusive coworkers are a special rung of hell.
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Count me amoung those that have a similar response. I can't really fathom why people think it's good or permissible to go up to someone and effectively nag them about a family member that just passed away.
I get that they think in their minds that asking about them or how they died a few scant days after said person just passed is being sympathetic, but to me it just comes across as ghoulish. Like, I really don't want to talk about this right now. Let me deal with my shit privately, thank you very much.
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Not a psycho response. A friend lost both parents in a short amount of time (the second very unexpectedly), and he vented to me that everyone (aside from me) was trying to get him to talk about "his feelings" and that was the last thing on earth he wanted. So I was his designated driver for a number of evenings so he could get wasted and we could talk about everything but that.
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