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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.
The best comment I've seen on this was Roseanne Barr's tweet replying to David Frum (who was trying the "imagine how you all on the right would be complaining if the situations were reversed" attempt, with an implicit labelling of anyone supporting Kimmel's firing as "fascist"):
What is it with Trumpists forgetting who was president from 2016-2020? Is Barr saying Trump got her fired?
Trump was holding the steering wheel from 2016 to 2020 ... but the establishment had cut the cables connecting the wheel to the rudder and he hadn't figured out how to reconnect them. Trump 47 has leveled up their game.
This is just another way of saying the GOP hadn't yet coalesced around the "Donald Trump gets to do whatever he wants" platform. Trump very much wielded the power of the presidency during his first, but he had a less cooperative Congress and judiciary.
And way less cooperative PMC in the executive branch. Which was the main problem.
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