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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.
Afaik the main quote was:
This seems remarkably inoffensive to me. Even if it's factually incorrect - and it's not clear to me we even know yet - how is this bannable? What am I missing here? I can't find further statements from him that are worse, not that I can imagine what would be sufficient for me to support his banning.
I watched a Charlie Kirk video. Gotta say, don't like the guy. I was hoping the vibe would be "patient Mottizen explains things" or "Scott Alexander", but it was much closer to "Steven Crowder." Is he chiller in other videos?
I was particularly galled by the amount of appeals to religion (the resurrection of Christ is the most well documented fact in history, so Christianity is true, so its morals are correct) and abortion is bad.
Even worse, the use of blatantly untrue "facts" that I have trouble believing he could have not fact checked, as much as they were relevant to his soap boxes. E.g. the claim that no abortions are ever medically necessary for the health of the mother. Worse, he slimily hedged by saying this was "according to some gynecologists, I don't know if it's true, but they're experts."
This leaves me, as often, in the weird position of standing on my meta level principles despite their being in conflict with the object level. I dislike Kirk and his methods, but like (many) of his principles. I dislike Kimmel, full stop (I assume - I won't claim to have watched him much. I'm extrapolating from Colbert/Stewart, who are insufferable as of late.). But, I want Kimmel on air, and no one fired over Kirk. I really don't want the US going to the way of Europe, or worse, on free speech.
Then you are badly miscalibrated. A right-wing figure with close ties to the Trump Administration (particularly the VP) is murdered, and this guy is (as the phrase goes, "without evidence") blaming... people who strongly support Trump ("MAGA")? That's extremely offensive to those people. Who, I might point out, make up a fairly large percentage of the populace.
If he was canceled due to pressure from the Trump administration, that's wrong. Either way Carr shouldn't have made his mafia-threat-type remarks about the license. But if he was canceled because he pissed off (or pissed on) a good portion of his audience... well, that's show business.
If I were to give you a dollar for every american that is both MAGA and watches Kimmel regularly will you be able to buy Boeing 737, Bentley or a Starbucks coffee?
Certainly not the 737 (unless Qatar gives it to me for free); that's significantly more than Kimmel's total audience. Probably somewhere near the Bentley; the last poll I find (2016) has 26% of his audience claiming to be conservative, and a good percentage of those would understand
FallonKimmel (sorry, wrong Jimmy) to be referring to them even if they don't actually consider themselves MAGA.I first heard of Kimmel when he did The Man Show way back when. I suppose his trajectory to the left is not surprising but he certainly seemed more right (in a bawdy, jokes-about-tits way) at that time.
Late night comedians always used to take potshots at whoever was in office, right up to Obama...and then suddenly the President could do no wrong. Then Obama's sainthood juxtaposed with Trump's Trumpiness happened, and "making fun of both sides" went out the window. Anyone on the right had horns drawn on their image. The rise of the Daily Show and John Stewart's (and Steven Colbert's) extremely politicized humor stirred the pot, and voilà.
Kimmel’s Karl Malone sketches were also a sword of Damocles for his career during the awokening, which made sure he stayed on the vanguard of the left.
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