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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.
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.
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.
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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