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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.
Agreed. The right is ideologizing themselves into thinking THIS thing right here is so massively offensive. They were making the case of tolerating so much more back in the late 2010s.
Find me an example where a TV host was canceled because they went on air and gratuitously insulted someone grieving their friend being assassinated, and the right saying the cancellation was unjustified.
I'm actually curious now to wonder what the societal winds were like when JFK was assassinated. Does anyone know what the political reaction was like on the other side and the media's response to it?
I had a history teacher who voted for the other guy and remembered the day JFK was assassinated. His response was this “Yeah, I voted for Nixon (i.e. the other guy), but when I heard a president of the United State was murdered, it was shocking. It was in no way, shape, or form OK to kill someone over politics.”
The way the left has been straight up dancing on Charlie Kirk’s grave would had been unthinkable back in 1963.
The Manson murders were in 1969, and were rather infamously celebrated by portions of the far left at the time.
I think this monstrous impulse has always been there, but Twitter/social media generally tears away the walls that protect people from their neighbors’ sociopathic moments.
They weren’t celebrating on mainstream outlets though. Pretty sure Johnny Carson did not make a “lol Mansons shot a deserving pig” joke or even make a bacon reference. Weirdos on the fringe are going to weirdo. But in our moment, especially considering how relatively stable our country actually is, the fact that a mainstream TV show and mainstream news and movie/tv stars and musicians are doing this is simply not what I’d call a fringe movement.
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...I have never heard of this, assuming that by "portions of the far left at the time" you mean any appreciable number of people and not the Lizardman constant.
The entirety of the far left in the US is smaller than the lizardman constant when compared to the entire populace, so it’s hard to say. Honestly, it may have been limited to just some of the extreme radicals and nutters, but it wasn’t nonexistent.
Bernadine Dohrn of the Weatherman Underground (now a law professor with some influence on Barack Obama when he was starting his career) praised the murders. There were groups of supporters at the trial who shaved their heads and drew X on their foreheads as signs of support.
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