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Notably absent in this response is how the disinformation claim is structurally part of the joke. You point to the goldfish as the laugh line, but the goldfish line is not set up by the MAGA accusation. Kimmel's insult is before the goldfish line, but this is sequential context, not structural composition. Appealing to the pacing and tone of the voice is an appeal to the means of delivery, not the structure of the joke.
The distinction @ulyssessword is asking is clearer if you have a more obvious 2-part joke structure, and then place something else inside that structure.
'Why did the chicken cross the road?' 'To get to the other side.'
This is a two-part joke structure.
'Why did the chicken cross the road?' 'My outgroup is terrible for trying to deflect their culpability for murder.' 'To get to the other side.' 'Also, Trump bad.'
This is still a two-part joke structure.
It has additional parts in and after, but it's still a two-part joke, regardless of how smooth the delivery or transition between the joke/not-joke parts are. Placing the two-part joke in the context of the broader Trump bad monologue does not change the structure of the joke. The joke being part of the monologue does not make other parts of the monologue- such as the disinformation accusation- part of the joke.
It's not structurally part of the joke, though? The joke, such as it is, makes perfect sense without the intro - thus it's clearly a throwaway lead-in. It's there as a transition. If you cut off everything before (2:15) "In between the finger pointing there was grieving... uh, on Friday the White House... (quote continues)" it still makes sense. Heck, you can even cut off everything before "on Friday" and a random viewer would perfectly understand. (Kirk is even introduced as the topic within the video clip; again, the intro is completely disposable).
Why is that relevant? No one is paying attention to his insinuation that Kirk's killer was MAGA, or at least most viewers aren't. It's not the same thing as a newscast where the main news headline is false, which is what the FCC might get mad at. Obviously the prominence of a claim should directly bear on the seriousness of a deception, and that's doubly true when the purpose is not to convey news. The purpose is, more or less, to have fun doing "boo outgroup", and that's allowed to happen on TV by a comedian.
Who was deceived, and how badly? Anyone who read the news certainly isn't going to throw out whatever facts they read because Kimmel insinuated something in passing. Anyone who doesn't read the news might get the wrong impression, but again, even a trivial attempt at fact-finding would quickly reveal the truth. And in fact, the very next day we DID get the truth, and in far more detail.
Is it really the betrayal of the "public interest" of an entire channel that a comedian subconsciously gave people the wrong impression about something? Because to be clear that's basically the full extent of it.
If it's not about the whole public interest thing, then it's not a conversation about factual accuracy, it's a conversation about what constitutes poor enough taste to take a comedian off the air. The FCC's Carr engaged in a deliberate bait and switch by conflating the two. And many of you here fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
"Hit a new low, desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them" is straightforwardly an accusation. Anyone who claims otherwise is not a serious person and is probably operating in bad faith.
Knowingly and falsely accusing the President's supporters of assassination on national television has never been within the Overton Window, at least as far as keeping a cushy entertainment job is concerned. I don't know what you think you gain by describing it as "in passing" like that means it doesn't count.
If some left-wing activist got their brains blown out in public by a right-winger and a television host went on the air within the week to tell us "Obama and his goons are desperate to characterize this as anything other than themselves" they'd be fired in five seconds, nobody in the media would even think to question it, and we all god damn well know it.
There is not enough wordcel gaslighting in the universe to pull off what some of you people are trying to pull off, and the attempts are comical.
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