Thanks to late-night television, we have a new definition of “indefinitely:” about one week.
On Monday, Sept. 15, ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made some critical remarks about supporters of Charlie Kirk, the conservative star who had been killed five days before.
Kimmel said “the MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” He then tweaked President Trump for discussing the building of a White House ballroom instead of Kirk, and said the president was in the fourth stage of grief — construction.
Kimmel never admitted it, but he probably got it wrong about the Kirk suspect. While the suspect was raised in a conservative Utah family, he apparently had become more liberal and was living with a man who was changing gender.
As for what Kimmel said that night on TV, those who dislike him also may not want to admit it, but the First Amendment gives him the right to say what he did, even if it’s incorrect. Many of his critics have made this point for years, yet now they join the baying hounds when someone they dislike said something that offended them.
Two days after Kimmel’s monologue, Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr accused Kimmel of being part of “a very concerted effort to try to lie to the American people” about the beliefs of the man accused of killing Kirk.
Carr, evidently excited about his moment in the spotlight, also accused ABC and its owner, The Walt Disney Co., of potentially violating government broadcasting rules, and said the FCC may need to review the network’s government-issued broadcast license.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on a podcast. That same day, Wednesday, Sept. 17, ABC said “Jimmy Kimmel Live” would go off the air “indefinitely.”
After a few days of Bill of Rights reminders, the network relented, and Kimmel returned to late night on Tuesday, Sept. 23, six days after the fuss started.
Kimmel actually redeemed himself upon his return. He thanked many people who spoke up for him, naming several Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas who said flatly that the government has no business threatening anyone’s free speech rights. He also praised Kirk’s widow for her Christian example of publicly forgiving her husband’s killer.
The largest issue here is the First Amendment. Does the government have the right to coerce people not to say things it dislikes?
No, it absolutely does not. The most sensible writing about this episode was a column by University of Chicago law professor Aziz Huq on the Politico website. He noted that during the Biden administration, Republican-led states sued to prevent federal agencies from telling social media companies what speech to allow about covid-19.
The conservative-led court dismissed the case on a technicality, Huq wrote, “but it left little doubt that government ‘jawboning’ of private media companies to silence speech — even false and potentially misleading speech — was prohibited by the First Amendment.”
Huq further wrote, “The constitution doesn’t guarantee Kimmel a talk show, but it does guarantee that the government won’t quash his speech because of what he chooses to say.”
As Carr said last week, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. And the easy way is to recall some insightful free-speech commentary from a member of the FCC in 2022 and 2023.
One of the commissioner’s online posts said, “Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people in to the discussion. That’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.”
And another: “Free speech is the counterweight — it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.”
The writer of both: the very same Brendan Carr, who now seems willing to sic the government on any speaker he dislikes. It’s impossible to take such a hypocrite seriously.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
