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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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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.

it'll be a enjoyable hike indeed.

It will also be against the wishes of the Kirk, who notably thought South Park making fun of him was hilarious.

Not that the dead necessarily get a vote, but it's quite a strange thing to honor a man by doing the opposite of what he would have wanted.

Charlie’s dead, man. I’ll be outside. Good luck.

While yes I generally agree with this, and yes this is all against my principles…

…the opponents of western liberal democracy have resorted to simply executing people. Those not actively involved in the execution have demonstrated that they will happily burn our cities when they don’t get their way.

My sense is that the conservatives don’t WANT any of this.

A few thousand people have resorted to executing people or burning cities, out of a US population of 350 million.

And the police let them do it, because their local, state and federal government wanted them to do it, because Blue Tribe collectively wanted them to do it. You are failing to appreciate the nature of the problem; it is not that we have riots and murders, it is that we have half the country that sees riots and murders against people they don't like as a good thing, and they don't like the other half of the country.

I think that is quite an exaggeration. The riots ended up killing a few dozen people and destroying a few city blocks total across the entire country. That's really bad, but that's not what happens when "the police let them do it, because their local, state and federal government wanted them to do it, because Blue Tribe collectively wanted them to do it."

Outside of a few isolated incidents, the police did not let them do it.

To the extent that police did let them do it, not all of that can even be blamed on politics. Police often tend to be quite risk-averse when dealing with large crowds, both to protect themselves and to protect the crowds. They often follow careful procedures rather than just rushing in and meleeing with rioters as soon as they notice that violence or property damage is happening.

The fixation I’ve observed on this forum with the 2020 riots is certainly interesting.

Riots are not exactly an uncommon part of political life, yet judging from what I’ve read from many posters here these seem to have been the formative event for many right wing posters.

Interestingly I would have had no idea if not for occasionally browsing forums like this, and that it still seems to be the center of gravity toward which many conversations tend even now 5 years later confirms it.

the formative event for many right wing posters.

Long 2020 was a fascinating lesson in narrative development, enforcement, and the whole gamut of what well-meaning liberals will find ways to justify or otherwise turn a blind eye on.

And, once they've gotten it out of their system and no longer think it's good, the post-Long 2020 period has been a fascinating lesson in how quickly they forget.