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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.
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 feel like "knowingly falsely accused followers of the president of murder before the victim's body was even in the ground" is a perfectly good reason to be kicked off your network TV show.
Imagine a universe where someone had blown Rachel Maddow's head off on live TV and the shooter's family immediately came out and told people how he was a right-wing lunatic. Some TV host goes off the reservation and blames it on "Obama and his thugs" or something like that. Not on social media, not on a podcast, right there on his broadcast network fluff show. You really think he keeps his job?
Nah man, this was never inside the Overton window.
Kimmel said, in essence, if we parse the quote finely (I don't really want to do this but you objected to my characterization and upgraded it to the level of knowing falsehood):
MAGA really wanted to wanted the shooter to be non-MAGA
MAGA are trying to score political points
said political points scored from "it"; grammatically this is unclear and grammar teachers advise against it for this exact ambiguity, but the next sentence suggests that he meant the finger pointing and not the murder as "it".
also not even implied, but requiring assumptions from the listener on their own: who is the finger pointing directed AT? Presumably, the left, but this is not claimed.
He then goes on to his main point, which is that Trump is not truly grieving. I agree with a poster below that this is a potentially cruel point because people grieve differently, but isn't there a grain of truth here? The response to tragedy is often commodified. Isn't calling that out fair game?
The claim that all MAGA are inherently murderers is an even more extended third-degree implication rising from the first bullet and its sub-bullet (logic goes like: not only is the shooter a MAGA but the 'denial' stems from MAGA insecurity at being themselves prone to such acts of violence). That's too far removed to count, in my eyes.
In short, "denial" is the implied emotion; denial usually implies guilt; and guilt applies to all Republicans. That's three degrees, depends partly on emotional reasoning, and I find it weak.
You’re overthinking this quote. Here is all that really matters:
Combine this with Jimmy Kimmel’s known history of outrageous bias and the (correct) interpretation is obvious.You could probably show 1000 people that Kimmel quote and ask them if Kimmel thinks the shooter is MAGA and you will get essentially 100% (minus lizardman constant) saying yes.
Skeletor used this phrase: "knowingly and falsely accused followers of the president of murder". Kimmel did not make any accusation at all. That is supplied by your brain as it tries to fill in the blanks. He made two claims which are my main bullet points, and that's it. Neither is an accusation.
Why was Kimmel fired, precisely, do you think?
OK well technically he was just suspended. The ABC decision was essentially forced and not Disney by itself. It was because two broadcasting groups, Nexstar and Sinclair, suspended the show themselves from their channels. Nexstar statement (note: federal approval of merger deal pending) just said that the remarks were "offensive and insensitive". Sinclair statement (note: conservative bias for this one) said it was "inappropriate and deeply insensitive" and name-checked FCC chair Carr's remarks. Note here that offensive/inappropriate/insensitive is NOT a good standard in and of itself for whether a comedian should be fired, especially when politics is involved, so let's dispense with that. So if that's the actual reasoning and only that, Kimmel's firing is very bad. There must be something else, right?
Carr's original remarks? On a podcast, took me a minute to dig it up, of Benny Johnson, YouTube title: "Jimmy Kimmel LIES About Charlie Kirk Killer, Blames Charlie For His Murder!? Disney Must Fire Kimmel". Johnson plays the clip prefacing with the claim: "ABC News must tell the truth. They must operate in the public interest. This is in their broadcast charter given to them by the federal government. I'm going to play you a clip of Jimmy Kimmel victim blaming Charlie Kirk for his own assassination. This is precisely what happened. It cannot be categorized any other way." Which, of course, as I've demonstrated, is not accurate. Victim blaming? I don't see where. Again, maybe by third-degree implication only, so "cannot be categorized any other way" is false. Anyways, that's Johnson speaking, not Carr.
He does then make the claim above that it's a knowing deception. Relevant quote: "This is a clear-cut violation of the FCC's policy against news distortion and is punishable by the revocation of the offending broadcast license under 47 US Code 312 or at least a hearing of punitive action under 309 section as organizations granted broadcasting licenses will serve in the public interest's convenience and necessity as deliberate news distortion is seen here contrary to the public interest".
FCC website: "The FCC's authority to take action on complaints about the accuracy or bias of news networks, stations, reporters or commentators in how they cover – or sometimes opt to not cover – events is narrow... News distortion "must involve a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report." In weighing the constitutionality of the policy, courts have recognized that the policy "makes a crucial distinction between deliberate distortion and mere inaccuracy or difference of opinion." As a result, broadcasters are only subject to enforcement if it can be proven that they have deliberately distorted a factual news report. Expressions of opinion or errors stemming from mistakes are not actionable."
It was clear to thinking brains that the shooter was leftist at the time of the clip airing. It was not established however until the next day. It is however true that MAGA was trying to blame other groups (even if the motive is misrepresented). So I think Kimmel is fine here as a matter of law.
Anyways that's all Johnson but it's a good, spelled-out proxy for the positions of the people wanting Kimmel fired, I think, more than press-release vague language. Carr is introduced with this: "thankfully, he's able to join our program today to elucidate for us what the FCC can do now when it comes to ABC News." Carr, a little later: "I at the very least would like to have an on-air apology from Jimmy Kimmel uh to the Kirk family to all of those who he slandered because he did say that Charlie Kirk he is effectively saying that our movement did this. our movement killed Charlie, that Charlie was deserving of this effectively." He tiptoes around a few things but basically says that they are going to start using the public interest statute to go after consistently biased stations and programs. He says that the FCC can do some stuff, but gee whiz, wink wink, wouldn't it be nice if some member stations themselves took care if it themselves by objecting to it? Subtext: so the FCC wouldn't formally be involved, you know, because that would be more legally constrained by law.
I don't like any part of this. It's really a pincer attack, or even a motte and bailey of their own! There's the legal, public-interest claim that deception is against the law and can result in formal action (though a process must be followed, and consequences are not necessarily being taken off air), and that Kimmel did that level of deception, which is weak (also, even Carr himself acknowledges that historically the statue has usually been used for outright broadcast hoaxes, and even then rarely). And then there's the end-run around the law, which is forcing the issue, and the rationale there is a lot more murky. Carr really tries to have it both ways.
So again, I ask you: why was Kimmel suspended?
It's about MAGA feeling offended, not Kimmel spreading disinformation on purpose. It would be one thing if Kimmel spent more time and energy on the point about the shooter's motives, but he doesn't. He only implies them indirectly, even if on the receiving end the message is clear. It isn't Kimmel's point at all. His main point is that Trump is heartless and that offends MAGA, and they try to motte and bailey and finesse him into being suspended without ever having to actually make good on potential government threats. It's of course bad Kimmel misleads his audience, it's bad that this is the outlet the outrage takes, it's bad that the FCC commissioner is trying to finagle the situation with innuendo and implied threats, it's bad that Kimmel is only actually suspended on vague accusations with almost zero detail, it's bad that we don't know the precise, actual reason why Kimmel is suspended. He just is.
And the Italian gentlemen with the crooked nose who walked into your business and said "Nice place you've got here; it would be a shame if something were to happen to it" did not make any threat at all, he just complemented your business and mused on a hypothetical situation.
Come off it. I mean, I get that maybe some really autistic sorts have difficulty with this kind of Gricean implicature, but most human beings understand pretty well how language works, and this sort of "um, well technically he didn't explicitly say…" nonsense is just that. It's a sad, transparent attempt at deflection, and I doubt that anyone but Futurama's Head Bureaucrat would actually buy it.
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