The death of democracy won’t be televised. The FCC, this administration and spineless media conglomerates like Nexstar and Disney will make sure of that.
If “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is over — and I fear there’s no coming back from what Disney did to him on Wednesday — then it’s going to be over the most inconsequential, meaningless tidbit of a monologue item. Here, watch it for yourself. From 2:02 to 2:16:
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize the kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said.
That’s it. Kimmel was essentially taking right-wing pundits to task for politicizing Kirk’s death and using it as a means to silence their opponents.
And ironically, that’s exactly what they did here by twisting Kimmel’s statements and lying about what he said and meant. They did exactly the thing he said they were doing: Using this as an opportunity to muzzle critics of this administration’s actions. Kimmel wasn’t talking about Kirk, he didn’t call for violence (that’s the other side). He was simply pointing out the horrific world we now live in, where rather than attempting to bring us together and heal this nation, Trump-fueled politicians and pundits are using this moment to further try and divide us and demonize anyone who disagrees with their take on the world. (And on Wednesday’s now-scrapped show, he had put together an explainer on what he actually said vs. what the right-wing media claimed he said. Now, that won’t air.)
Indeed, Kimmel’s statement was tame compared to the polarizing, dangerous statements coming out of plenty of Trump supporters over the past week. It was a brief line in a lengthy monologue that then noted the hypocrisy of how Trump, when asked about how he’s mourning Kirk’s death, instead answered by noting how excited he was about the construction of a new ballroom on the White House grounds.
But FCC chairman Brandon Carr has been busy weaponizing the once-proud government agency against critics of Donald Trump — or really anyone who’s not lock step in bowing to the administration. And he’s doing it in the most transparent way: If you weren’t sure whether he was simply out for blood and a pound of flesh, look at how he responded when Disney announced the suspension of Kimmel: He sent CNN reporter Brian Stelter a GIF of “The Office” characters raising the roof in celebration. This is not a serious politician. This is someone using the power that comes from running the FCC by going after opponents and stifling their speech through any means necessary.
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And of course, companies like Disney and Nexstar know this. They’re businesses that rely on the FCC for certain deal approvals. And in particular, Nexstar has a big one currently in the works: A proposed $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna, which would add 64 more TV stations to Nexstar’s already huge portfolio of more than 200 stations across the country.
That megadeal requires regulatory approval, including by the FCC, so it’s quite the coincidence that Nexstar was the first company out of the gate to announce that it would pre-empt “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” And hey, wouldn’t you know, that quickly earned Nexstar a pat on the cap from Carr. Sorry, Jimmy Kimmel, you’ve been sacrificed for the greater good of shareholder approval.
And as some have already noted on social media, it’s not the Kirk comments that spooked Nexstar and Disney. It’s Carr’s unprecedented threats against ABC that the FCC has “remedies we can look at. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
That’s not the tone of an FCC chairman. That’s a Mafioso threat. It’s scary, I know. This administration would love nothing more than to silence all of its critics — and has been pretty effective so far, accepting millions of dollars worth of bribes (I’m sorry, I mean settlement payments) from ABC and CBS. Now, it’s suing the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for ridiculous amounts, just because it can — and because it knows these gutless, self-serving media companies are quick to pay.
Someone pointed this out to me on Wednesday: We thought the ABC settlement, the 60 Minutes/CBS settlement and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” cancellation were the beginning of the end of free speech in this country. Nope, that was just the appetizer. If “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is canceled, then that’s the true beginning of the end. When democracy dies, there’s won’t be anyone left to talk about it.
From Variety US