ABC is owned by Disney, which owns many subsidiaries. The one thing they and their shareholders care about is cold, hard cash. If you don't agree with what they're doing, then consider speaking the loudest way you can, with your wallet.
I'm not a US citizen so take what I write below with a grain of salt.
I always thought the US to be a stronghold of democracy and free speech. I know, it's a naive view and we know how huge companies and corrupt politicians can subvert the system. But still, I thought it had a decent law system that, although imperfect like any other system, kept things from going back to the dark ages.
I don't believe that anymore after what I've seen this year. A few individuals can completely takeover the government, keep committing bigger and bigger crimes and nothing happens. All they get is outrage on social media, which they are happy to shrug off.
I know democracy and free speech are fragile things and we have to be constantly watching but I didn't imagine it would be this ephemeral in the US.
> I always thought the US to be a stronghold of democracy and free speech.
Every single story and moral guidance I've ever been told from childhood, whether from movies, books, church, or culture in general is that people like those in power right now are the bad guys.
I no longer have any idea what people on the other side actually think. I don't think they know anymore either. I think they just want to exert power and control and revenge over their personal grievances and boogeymen, and seem to be under a constant bombardment of ideology to convince people to untether themselves from any moral restraint or connection with the out-group.
I am one of the scary minorities they use as a boogeyman, and their rhetoric about the group of people I belong to is so unattached from my daily life, the values that I hold, and my own attitudes that it would be comical if it didn't come out in sideways glances, scowls, and stares of people on the street. Nobody ever even bothers to ask, to even have a moment of conversation to see that there is a real person. I try to walk through life friendly, open, and interested in people. We walk around with conceptions of other people built for us, not ones that we have made ourselves.
The only thing that seems to help is to try to be offline as much as possible, to be in community with people and in real space.
Thanks, I genuinely appreciate the perspective. Do you find that perspective is primarily gotten from real life conversations, or from discourse online/social media/political commentators?
I often fantasize about being able to just converse openly and be able to mutually share experiences. I was raised very conservative and speak the language and know the values. I don't hold those beliefs anymore because of experiences I've had that made them contradictory to hold. But I still appreciate why someone who hasn't had my experiences might hold them.
For my "side", among all the people that I talk to who, who would be considered pretty far to one side, everyone wants primarily to be left alone, not harassed, and wants to coexist, and be respected. Is it the same from yours?
I get this is a rhetorical question, but I'm still unsure where your hangups are coming from.
Most of my friends are some flavor of Christian. They use my pronouns around me. I don't take their Lords name in vain around them. Sometimes, coexistance and respect are really as simple as that.
how can you say you only want cooperation when the viewpoints you and your brethren share are dehumanising, against a peaceful world, against caring for the environment, against minorities, against queer folk, and against international cooperation?
we arent talking about “how many immigrants should we allow”, we’re talking about “trans people shouldnt exist”, “christianity is the true religion”, “deport all legal immigrants”, “gay people shouldnt have human rights”
The person you’re responding to may not believe those things, and may not want those things or think it’s possible or reasonable. Let them speak about it at least before assuming that group affiliation means those things.
FWIW I believe dehumanization is a horrendous thing, especially when aimed at relatively powerless minorities.
The people currently in power do believe and act on those things. Claiming they aren't the bad guys (and especially voting for them) demonstrates tacit acceptance of those beliefs and policies whether you like it or not. You don't get to support people who do bad things and claim you don't agree with the bad things.
I'm talking about cooperation in the context of the prisoner's dilemma example, not cooperation in general. I don't need or want to cooperate with people who have nothing to offer me, my family, or my community
What /would/ someone have to offer you, your family or your community? What do you value? What does your community value? How do you know folks have nothing to offer?
> A few individuals can completely takeover the government
That's not what's happening.
When most people serving in positions of government do so in good faith, most forms of government work, including the American one. When most people serve in bad faith, most forms of government do not work, including the American one.
The American system has checks in place to keep what is happening from happening, but those checks aren't working because those who would exercise them aren't doing so, as withholding those checks benefits them personally, at least in the short term. The underlying theory of the American system is that if you distribute power enough, one or a few bad actors can't seize total power.
But, there are just too many people in elected office right now who did not take their oath to uphold the Constitution in good faith. Namely, in Congress which has simultaneously demonstrated that it is unwilling to effectively wield the impeachment check, and is unable to do effective legislative work, leading to a latent desire for a stronger executive. In this circumstance, no form of government will hold up without a correction towards replacing all the bad-faith actors.
It's been worse before in America and we've returned to normal, so I have hope as an American. See McCarthyism in the 1950's, when people like Kimmel were blackballed from working:
What's really pathetic about the current situation is that McCarthyism was at least rooted in the fear that Soviets would bomb and kill people, which given Russia's conduct in Ukraine and other places was well-founded. The current authoritarian backsliding is because... woke? Truly the dumbest of timelines.
It helps to understand what "woke" is. I've asked around and the general consensus seems to be "It's called being a decent fucking human being." The problem with that is different people have different values and therefore different interpretations of what it means to be decent, but nonetheless, if you disagree then you're a fascist. And if you're a fascist, then it's okay to punch you. In fact, if you're a fascist then it's okay to murder you, half the very-online nuts on social media will celebrate when you get murdered and say you had it coming.
I don’t think it works that way for most people, maybe for some radicals but there are radicals on every side. Yesterday I overheard a conversation where a man was talking about a trip to our capital (in EU country) and how there were "strangepeople" (I wrote it together as it’s an insult as one word here and he meant it that way), wearing pink and rainbow and he was frightened and how’s he glad he returned to our small city in the middle of nowhere.
Did I thought he was a fascist and did I want to kill him? No, he seemed like a decent man who’s just afraid of things he’s not familiar with and who believe in stuff pushed by crazy radicals because he has no experience with people and situations unknown to him.
Did I want to punch him? No, I wanted to discuss with him, but I haven’t got time, as I needed to pick up my kid from the same art school he was bringing his kid in.
So tell me, why is he concerned about people who he saw on metro and who were not threatening him? Should he be afraid of me, because I probably could be described as woke as I think that you should let others be, if they don’t hurt you or others? I don’t care about online media, this is real life example.
It means meaning has collapsed, and it collapses because our meanings come in word-form, and those are arbitrary. We can make them mean whatever we want them to mean, and then keep saying them. That's what's going on.
That would be called concern trolling where I am from. This idea that "woke" has somehow threatened people is an amusing but rings more hollow every day.
Right wing authoritarianism is by far the biggest terrorist threat in the united states - right wingers literally threaten war on social media on the regular and love their guns, elected officials are literally conspiracy theorists who talk about jewish space lasers and weather control systems, women have lost the right to abortions, we are testing the waters on gay marriage and mixed race marriage, we started a global trade war, the courts, congress, and the executive branch are controlled by one party and no one is doing any balance of powers.
This all happens and I still hear people talk to me like "the liberals just shouldn't say X on twitter because its rude!!!" as if that's going to stop the white nationalists currently on the rampage in the government.
It's something that's been eroding for a long time, starting mostly with the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the political desire at the time to put an end to the New deal era style of big government from the 1930s and 40s.
There have been periods of pause, and even reverse, but two terms of the Trump administration trailing on the heels of the tea party movement in the 2010s have really done a lot of damage at all levels of US government.
By now, so many politicians, lawyers, and judges, are compromised it's going to take some pretty extreme changes to the way people are voting to make an impact.
I don't see that happening in the near future, even if I do see it happening in the long term.
This is twisting history and reality, big government is exactly what's happening right now. The FCC abusing its power to silence speech is big government. The government using its power over universities to control them is big government. This is the fruit of that tree.
Such is the paradox of the modern Republican party. For the last so many decades they have claimed to want a smaller government.
Then went handed the keys to the kingdom they immediately increase its size and get right to abusing its power.
In the Reagan years, money started to became more important than voters. Under Bush 2 and recent Supreme Court Decisions, bribes became legal. Per the Court they called them "tips".
So Congress people spend more time fund raising (taking bribes) than helping their district.
Nothing real has gotten done in many districts for multiple decades. Real wages, when compared to inflation, and has been falling for decades. When I was very young, laws where passed that actually helped people. As a very young kid, I remember waking up as a kid with coal flakes on my window sill due to its use in the mills. That ended in the 70s.
Now, to get more money the laws that cleaned up the environment are being cancelled, why, rich are "tipping" congress people.
The US is done, time for civilization advancement to be carried on by another Country. Hopefully the EU can get its act together.
What you have here has nothing to do with the law, and has to do with power. Disney willingly pulled Kimmel off their own networks, because a major distributor of their content(Sinclair) threatened to not air it, which accounts for about 20% of the viewership of the show.
> Disney willingly pulled Kimmel off their own networks, because a major distributor of their content(Sinclair) threatened to not air it, which accounts for about 20% of the viewership of the show.
"This is a nice merger deal, shame anything should happen to it…" does not look like a recipe for a free will / willing action to be made.
For the record, the merger is with Nexstar, not Sinclair, but the point is the same:
"In recent months, both broadcasters have announced their intent to buy or sell local TV assets — Nexstar is in the process of effectuating a $6 billion merger with peer broadcaster TEGNA, and Sinclair is executing on a mixture of station acquisitions and sales — all of which require the approval of the FCC."
Because Sinclair needs the FCC to approve a merger for them. They read between the lines and know that to get it approved they need to apply pressure on ABC to can Kimmel to appease someone.
I wish the law that restricted the number of public stations/licenses a single entity could own was still in place. It was created to prevent what's happening now, silencing of varied and different ideas, views, and opinions.
Maybe they were coerced by the government. Or maybe they canceled Kimmel for the same reason the Trump administration was pissing themselves over Kimmel, because Trump and Sinclair are politically aligned and therefore inclined to act in similar ways anyway...
> Sinclair's stations have been known for featuring news content and programming that promote conservative political positions. They have been involved in various controversies surrounding politically motivated programming decisions,[172][173] such as news coverage and specials during the lead-ups to elections that were in support of the Republican Party.[174][175][172]
since the 1970s democratic backsliding is the primary origin story for todays authoritarian regimes. look at turkey, russia, the philippines, venezuela, nicaragua, poland, hungary, india... theres a playbook. you can now add usa to that list. a good counter example is what happened last year in South Korea. the president declares martial law out of nowhere but before he could consolidate power the courts and the people resisted (not easily mind you, he had significant support) but the checks and balances held things together. but in the other examples you can see how when one of those checks fails it essily cascades into a chain reaction that can be hard to stop. that's what you're witnessing in the usa: taking congressional power to the executive, control of the courts, control of the media, using the national guard domestically to control dissent. well you get the idea. it already seems too late. there won't be some red line crossed where people get out their guns to defend their "freedom" if they haven't already noticed how eroded its become. theres still voting -- just like in all those countries above.
There's supposed to be checks & balances, of Congress, the courts, and the President keeping one another in check.
But the GOP holds all three. Even the court system has fallen apart, with the Supreme Court using shadow dockets with no explanation, not establishing any precedent, just overriding lower courts to rule by fiat as they please. The GOP congress is utterly maga whipped, with only very rare signs of protest; deathly afraid of provoking Trump's ire.
Even still there's constant legal losses for the administration. But the shock and awe, the endless acting bad, in bad faith, doing bad things, and disrespecting the constitution, the liberties, the democracy: it's very grinding and very hard to see such pure malice against our history and rights and decency performed so ruthlessly so regularly.
The current controversy is related to how to protect free speech.
A man was assassinated holding a mic practicing free speech. Celebrating the assassination can be interpreted as a form of celebrating attacks on free speech, because the murdered mic holder was saying average political views.
Therefore people argue that we have to shame (not imprison or kill) celebrations on attacks on free speech to protect free speech.
No, enough people were angered by him when he accused Trump supporters of killing Kirk that abc had to pull for financial reasons. Not sure why he would’ve said that on a comedy show.
Yes, but in the same breath Kimmel said the assassin was a MAGA supporter.
Kimmel's words:
"...the MAGA gang [was] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them..."
The assassin may have indeed once been a MAGA supporter - his family certainly appear to be so. But political beliefs can change quickly as his history demostrates:
The assassin found true love in a transsexual roommate/lover.So overcome was he by his love for his transsexual roomie and so offended by MAGA supporter Charlie Kirk's objections to LGBTQ+, that he engraved LGBTQ+ graffiti on 30-06 ammo and shot Charlie Kirk in the neck with one of the bullets. He left the remaining bullets with the rifle IIRC.
Was the assassin a MAGA supporter at the moment he pulled the trigger? Beats me!
the man’s speech was against human rights for black people, women, lgbtq+. people are allowed to have free speech against those beliefs too. they are not “average”.
This mischaracterization was a view that many on the left have already disproven in the past few days (major black, gay, and women influencers who have changed their views on Kirk) when they looked into it, which is why a mass outflow from the left is being witnessed.
It’s not a surprise with the bubble people are living in though.
>Therefore people argue that we have to shame (not imprison or kill) celebrations on attacks on free speech to protect free speech.
So what you're saying is "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences?"
Odd. I suspect the same people arguing that now would have been outraged at the very thought before Charlie Kirk's death. Because they celebrate the death of people also practicing free speech all the time while insisting that freedom of speech exists to defend the speech you disagree with, not the speech you agree with.
It's just weird how fast their principles turn on a dime when it's one of theirs.
We're still a stronghold of democracy and free speech. That doesn't mean threats don't occasionally present themselves. In fact, it should be welcomed, as it gives each new generation the opportunity to re-affirm their commitment to free speech.
Free speech has been under threat at the academic and cultural level for a while now, especially in the 2010's. All of that was a good thing in my opinion, because a generation of college students were able to see firsthand what happens when we try and silence dissent.
This situation is admittedly more dangerous, as the federal government is attempting to suppress speech via governmental subsidies (as far as I can tell, I don't have all the facts).
But this is also an opportunity. It's a moment for those on the political left to see clearly why protecting speech is, in fact, a very good thing. So hopefully the sane people on both sides of the aisle can reflect on where we're at, how we got here, and how we get out of this situation. To me it's clear - we reject both explicit and implicit attempts to suppress speech we don't like, full stop. We don't kill people, we don't get people fired, we don't threaten to withhold funding. We need to collectively agree to do this across the board, for everyone in this country.
I don't know how to interpret "shaking fists on podiums", but it reads as "we're not at the stage where we talk these things out". The only other option is violence, so if you're saying that then say it directly.
I think they’re saying this isn’t debate club. When companies are being threatened, when universities are being told their research grants will be illegally withheld unless they punish students or faculty for exercising constitutional rights, when civil servants are being vetted by political apparatchiks for their political views, it’s not a hypothetical question about the boundaries of civil discourse.
When I was in college we had 3 days of a small group of Vietnam war protests. Right away the administration kicked everyone off campus who wasn't an employee or student. The next day they told the remaining 3 protestors to either leave or be expelled. One left, the other 2 went back to class. Everybody put their heads back in their books. I was sooooo grateful we had an enlightened administration.
That's the way to handle protesting students! The university is not a political podium, it is a place to learn.
- The FCC shouldn't be involved in content moderation, and the FCC Chair is obviously on an authoritarian power trip.
- What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory.
- Clearly the market was already deciding that Kimmel's show is irrelevant (Nielsen ratings quite clear on that).
- The FCC is only involved in content because of how TV broadcasting worked ~50 years ago (large swaths of RF spectrum allocated to certain license holders, only a few channels -could- exist due to technical reasons, thus fairness rules).
- ABC's distributors threatened to stop airing the network, which is what actually caused Disney/ABC to act, it's hard to say what impact the FCC Chairs comments actually had.
- The idea that the FCC needs to act to protect the TV Broadcasting systems is ridiculous, just let it all die, we're very far past the "public square" era of media.
- Had the FCC made no comment, and Disney pulled the show due to the distributors actions, it would have obviously just been "cancel culture but from the right", instead Brendan Carr wants to get in the headlines and so here we are.
It's all a perfect Scissor Statement. You can absolutely not care about Kimmel, you can think the FCC's TV licensing scheme is pointless and outdated, you can be 0% surprised Disney only cares about money and Carr is an idiot, and still you can get into a heated argument about this stuff. My own mother texted me "Free speech is dead" and hurah, now I get to do 3 hours of reading to say "it never really existed in broadcast television and also yes, this is bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" and boom now I'm the fascist.
"Sort by Controversial" is such a troubling timeline.
By design. If it was actually offensive Fox would be playing it non-stop. The offense has been excavated from inside an implication of a phrase in a nested clause in a sentence saying something unrelated.
Kimmel said (as part of an argument that republicans were playing politics by pointing fingers) that republicans were trying to prove that Robinson was not a republican , from which you have to infer that Kimmel meant to say Robinson was a republican.
> What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory.
What Kimmel said[0] was fairly innocuous and not all that big a deal. What he said was actually true, in general, about conservative discourse, regardless of what the shooter's politics are.
Carr directly threatened ABC's broadcast license over protected speech, even in the context of the FCC's mandate and the rules around broadcast licensing.
Kimmel's ratings are irrelevant. Murdering someone with terminal cancer is still murder.
[0] There still seems to be a bunch of confusion and misinformation about what Kimmel said, so: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it." If you truly believe that's the kind of thing the FCC should be threatening a network's broadcast license over, I'm not sure it's possible to have a productive discussion with you about this.
> There still seems to be a bunch of confusion and misinformation about what Kimmel said, so: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it."
The FCC should not be threatening ABC over this, but the statement is, on the available evidence, wrong, irresponsible and inflammatory. It's wrong because it insinuates that the killer was "one of them" (completely untrue per Utah state investigators), irresponsible because there was no good reason to believe it (the alternative narratives require some deep reading into cryptic fringe political groups) and because of the timing, and inflammatory because of the nature of the allegation (it's not a nice thing to say about anyone even when it's demonstrably true).
> What he said was actually true, in general, about conservative discourse, regardless of what the shooter's politics are.
The statement cannot be evaluated for "truth in general" because it referred to a specific incident. If he'd wanted to assert something about what "the MAGA gang" generally does, he could have done so. But the point was specifically to tie into current events.
(I also don't really understand the objection. What, are conservatives not supposed to disavow political violence? Is everyone on the right supposed to accept responsibility for the consequences of every other right-wing political philosophy? Please be careful about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity .)
Man you are delusional. How many pols and their elk where clamoring for civil war because a YouTuber got shot that they _assumed_ was a leftist? How many of those same people said anything when a democratic state senator and their spouse was murdered, and another pair seriously wounded?
This is the type of nonsense that really bothers me with this site. It’s an attempt to “both sides” everything in a pathetic attempt at seeming logical.
> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory.
I agree that we should be disavowing violence.
The problem is that for 10 years democratic lawmakers and media figures are disavowing violence on both sides, while republican lawmakers and media figures are doing the opposite: stoking the flames, promoting the idea of civil war, telling everyone that the country is stolen from them, that immigrants are out to get them, that democrats are out to get them, etc. According to this rhetoric, democrats are to blame for all of this. When something bad happens and it's not democrats who caused it, they come up with a conspiratorial explanation for how it's still democrats.
So when one side keeps constantly disavowing, and the other side keeps constantly attacking, at some point disavowing becomes literally the wrong thing to do. You can't lay down your weapon while the other person just keeps hitting, and expect the hitting to stop.
What we are being shown repeatedly by republicans is that violent, divisive rhetoric actually leads to electoral victories, and grants free license to become "president for one side only" and do whatever that side wants. If democrats continue to disavow and apologize, they will end up simply extinct. This is why some democrats stopped doing that.
> for 10 years democratic lawmakers and media figures are disavowing violence on both sides, while republican lawmakers and media figures are doing the opposite
It was not a Republican media figure who made that video of herself holding "a mask styled to look like the severed, bloody head" of the POTUS.
Among the biggest-name political Twitch streamers, it's not the right-wingers who are being shown to have all sorts of clips calling for political violence, making threats that include brandishing firearms on stream, doxxing people etc. — all of which are blatant TOS violations, but which never seem to get them banned. From the evidence available to me, the CEO of Twitch seems to be quite friendly with the most egregious of those streamers.
> So when one side keeps constantly disavowing, and the other side keeps constantly attacking, at some point disavowing becomes literally the wrong thing to do. You can't lay down your weapon while the other person just keeps hitting, and expect the hitting to stop.
I can assure you the other side feels the same way. There are even supercuts out there of Trump repeatedly disavowing violence that he was still accused of not disavowing.
There are only 2 sides on twitch right now, both illiberal. One side has the political philosophy that amounts to "if Trump does it, we support it". The other side is a fringe far left (e.g. tankies).
Except the former "philosophy" is supported by 90% of republicans, and the latter is ostracized by democrats. Even AOC (the once symbol of far leftism) shifted towards more mainstream liberal democratic values. These twitch lefties don't vote. They are politically nowhere in this country.
And you are comparing president of the country to twitch streamers. President is not supposed to be an edgy instigator and influencer, he's supposed to be president for everyone.
And yet, every disavowal that Trump made, he ended up blaming democrats in the same breath. He constantly berates everyone on the left, sues, destroys politically, or otherwise silences anyone who criticizes him. I'm supposed to feel like he's my president even if I didn't vote for him, but I cannot, because he makes that distinction very clear.
> I disagree that this is an accurate characterization of the side that isn't the "fringe far left".
The evidence is there. Trump has been thrashing back and forth on tariffs, explaining 2 mutually-exclusive reasons to have them, and they justify it each time. Trump has been infringing on free speech and due process at levels beyond anything democrats have ever done (if you don't count republican conspiracy theories), and they justify it. I have listened to a lot of debates, and nobody can answer a question "what would Trump do that would make me vote for democrats instead".
> Hasan Piker is getting to do another round
Again, these people are not voters.
> I am comparing media figures to media figures.
I'm sorry, I should've been clearer. You said "It was not a Republican media figure who made that video […]" and "it's not the right-wingers who are being shown to have all sorts of clips". I understood that as you making a point that democrats are worse than republicans in general because of these examples. Which cannot be true because the entire Trump cabinet and most republican lawmakers are now doing the most heated and divisive rhetoric constantly and unapologetically, as though they are influencers and agitators, not government of a 2-party nation. Their actions speak even louder than words. So what you're pointing out in totality pales in comparison to what republicans are doing. And I'm saying: you cannot point to leftie twitch streamers that don't have any political power, and compare them to the literal White House and republican lawmakers, to judge the magnitude of the problem on each side.
However, even if we single out just the media figures, it's absolutely insane how much conspiracy, lies, and divisive rhetoric has been fed into right wing minds. And it's almost awe-inspiring how lockstep all republican pundits are with each other. Nothing like that exists on the left.
> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and irresponsible.
Exactly which words were wrong/irresponsible/irresponsible? Do you have a video clip and timestamp of the specific statements?
> - Clearly the market was already deciding that Kimmel's show is irrelevant (Nielsen ratings quite clear on that).
Quite the coïncidence that this is the second comedian that has been canceled, the first being Colbert. As Timothy Snyder, a historian on Central/Eastern Europe, the Holocaust, and totalitarians regimes, commented: General pattern in regime change: the comedy gets better and then it gets banned.
> - ABC's distributors threatened to stop airing the network, which is what actually caused Disney/ABC to act, it's hard to say what impact the FCC Chairs comments actually had.
The owner of many ABC stations is looking to fulfill a $6.2B merger/acquisition:
Instead of deciding the deal on its merits, the Trump administration has made it known if you rub its tummy you will get what you want (export policy isn't decided on (say) national security evaluations, but if you give money: Nvidia 15% export tariff, UAE buying $2B of Trump-family crypto).
Instead of procedural government decisions (i.e., rule of law), you get government decisions based on the temperament of the boss.
> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory.
Was it really though? Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican. He had a republican background, but it didn't motivate the killing which didn't seem to have any particular ideology beyond (maybe) trans identity politics and/or edgelord memery. So yeah, that was wrong.
But if that's "irresponsible and inflammatory", then isn't it equally so to blame "democrats" or "the left", also groups with which Robinson has no documented affiliation? And we can all agree that this is happening pervasively on the right, at all levels.
The double standard here seems troublesome to me, and likely deliberate. Which, I'll add, what actually the point Kimmel was trying to make.
> now I get to do 3 hours of reading to say "it never really existed in broadcast television and also yes, this is bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" and boom now I'm the fascist
You're not a fascist, but you do seem to be sort of an apologist. Doesn't the linked article directly refute the "not nearly as bad as you think" bit? It's happening again!
> Was it really though? Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican. He had a republican background, but it didn't motivate the killing which didn't seem to have any particular ideology beyond (maybe) trans identity politics. So yeah, that was wrong.
Look I don't even pretend to know the truth. But the sitting governor of Utah, the highest authority on the investigation (which is being done by Utah state investigators), said the shooter had a "leftest ideology". NYT source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/kirk-shooting-suspect-...
Now its fine to not believe the governor, but I am not one of the investigators so thats as good as I can get unless I believe in a conspiracy by the state of Utah itself, which I think warrants evidence.
Personally I don't believe in "group X verbed Y", as I do not believe that groups can act. Liberals didn't shoot anyone, conservatives didn't shoot anyone; a single individual person shot someone. Group identity is not interesting to me, nor do I find it helpful. I do find it very inflammatory tho, and think is a deplorable thing to say to uninformed viewers at home.
By "not nearly as bad as you think", what I mean is, the FCC has always policed content on broadcast television. Shows have been cut mid-air due to foul language. We have never had "freedom of speech" on broadcast television. And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action, that it was actually ABC's distributors who caused the ruckus, then this is bog-standard "cancel culture", which, while bad, is hardly the death of free speech. I'd be perfectly unbothered if broadcast television died completely, thus reducing the FCCs ability to control the media period.
Yes, I'd love to live in a world with less censorship, less stupidity, less government control, but that's not the world we live in, and its not the world we used to live in, either.
> By "not nearly as bad as you think", what I mean is, the FCC has always policed content on broadcast television
For boring stuff like sex and profanity! When was the last time a show was pulled under threat of FCC action because of political speech? Has it ever happened before? And it's happening again, just days after it worked the first time.
Your cynicism, whether it's deliberate or not, is serving you very badly here.
> And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action
Good grief. Brendan Carr literally made the threat on camera, in public. That's the way extortion works. You don't have to take the action because the target submits.
Extortion doesn't count for much if the FCC had no leg to stand on. I would have loved to have seen the fine and the resulting court-case, but unfortunately for everyone ABC pulled the program because of complaints from its broadcasters. We do not (as far as I know), have the ability to know to what extent the FCC Chair's comments mattered at all.
I absolutely agree the FCC is overstepping and that the FCC Chair is doing a bad thing by making such comments, but until the FCC as an organization actually issues a fine or pulls a license, nothing has actually happened. If what I'm saying puts me into some particular camp that you're opposed to, well, the scissor statement worked. And that makes me much more upset than any of this drama.
> We do not (as far as I know), have the ability to know to what extent the FCC Chair's comments mattered at all.
Two things - firstly, it wasn't a comment, it was a threat to kill ABC's ability to broadcast by the person with power to revoke their license. There's a difference.
Secondly, if you don't want to have the appearance of responsibility for your thumb on the scale, don't put your thumb on the scale. Don't just say that your thumb was one of many and it could've been anyone's pressure that caused the cancellation. There should be no confusion.
> Extortion doesn't count for much if the FCC had no leg to stand on.
What on earth are you saying here? It worked. Obviously it "counts", it actually happened! The show was pulled from the air! You're saying that censorship isn't "technically censorship" if in some alternative universe Disney fought back and won? They didn't!
As for your opinion about the reach of the FCC's powers or the risk to broadcasters of regulatory action, clearly Bob Iger's lawyers disagree with you, and I'm going to bet they're rather better at their jobs than median HN commenters.
Edit: I'm going to call it here. The final reply below seems like 100% apoloigsm to me. The argument seems to be that somehow this is all a mistake, that Disney just got the wrong idea and torpedoed their own show by no fault of the government. And we all know that's not what happened. I don't know how to reply, so I won't.
Do you have any statement from ABC or Disney that they pulled the show due to FCC comments?
Per PBS.org:
> ABC, which has aired “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” since 2003, did not immediately explain why it suspended the show on Wednesday. But its announcement came after both Nexstar and Sinclair said they would stop airing Kimmel’s show on their ABC-affiliated stations.
Until we get any indication that the FCC chair's comments were the source of the cancelation, I maintain that while what Carr said was stupid and bad, and what the FCC mostly does is stupid and bad, and while what Disney mostly does is stupid and bad, that this is not some new form of fascism.
It's clear you think I'm an idiot, so I'm quite sure my words will mean nothing to you, but please, hear this: A megacorporation took an action that has caused you to have strong animosity towards a fellow citizen based on perceived but not actual happenings. Resist the urge to be pissed off. I will happily march with you when and if the federal government actually attacks freedom of speech.
I don’t know why I can’t reply to the OPs original comment but it’s obvious that the person you’re replying with is either arguing in bad faith or just being obtuse.
> unless I believe in a conspiracy by the state of Utah itself
What about political incentives? The conservative media sphere was falling over themselves to rush to label the shooter before any evidence or even a statement of "ideology" was given by the Utah gov, such that the WSJ posted and retracted an article about how the shooter was trans. An observation of that was what got Kimmel turned off the air. It wasn't what the Utah gov eventually said, it was all that had taken place before then.
> And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action, that it was actually ABC's distributors who caused the ruckus
What if the chair caused the ruckus with the distributors by making public comment and explicitly threatening to pull ABC's status, on a timeline before the distributor made the call? Why is this explicit threat of removal, not just taken against the show, but against the entire network, not considered an action?
> Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican.
He literally didn't though? Why does this mistake keep being made. Kimmel made 0 assertions about the shooter. He did make assertions about the President and his conduct, however.
He... sorta did: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them [...]"
The sentence is convoluted but clearly implies that "this kid" was "one of the MAGA gang".
Is that what Kimmel meant? No, his point was that they (the MAGA gang) were exploiting the tragedy to "score political points". But it's not what he said, really. So arguments over meaning can at least happen in good faith. If someone says they're offended, I think it's not unreasonable to clarify and offer an apology.
...but not obviously to be sacrificed at an altar to the FCC commisioner.
Regardless of whether he was one of the MAGA gang, they are trying to characterize him as anything but one of them. No one really knows at this point, but that hasn't stopped the characterization.
> The sentence is convoluted but clearly implies that "this kid" was "one of the MAGA gang".
What? This is crazy “find the authors purpose” gymnastics. The quote does nothing to imply that the kids is Maga or not. It does however directly commentates on “Maga gang”’s actions to try to paint him as anyone other than someone who could be MAGA. Thats the entire point of what was said
> The quote does nothing to imply that the kids is Maga or not. It does however directly commentates on “Maga gang”’s actions to try to paint him as anyone other than someone who could be MAGA
In every universe where the shooter is not "MAGA" (which, on the available evidence, includes ours), "trying to paint him as anyone else" is truthful, and not wrong. The entire point of a critique of this sort is to allege that someone did something wrong. The sentence does carry the implication that Kimmel is calling the shooter "MAGA" (i.e., either believes it, or wants to insinuate it) because otherwise there would be no reason, in Kimmel's position, to say any of it.
It feels a better strategy for all parties involved to have transitioned these shows to ABC's streaming properties (i.e. Hulu) and made them "exclusive" content for these platforms.
This would have put them out of the reach of the FCC (based on the FCC's initial spectrum is for public benefit for all claim) for now.
There is probably significant IP in both of these shows that could still have been monetized given brand familiarity. It would have been less than before but still something is better than nothing.
I don't have any data to back this up but I can't imagine a lot of people still use Over The Air TV. And the intersection of people who rely solely on OTA TV and are clamoring to watch Kimmel/View is probably even lower.
This also would probably have benefitted the administration in that it wouldn't have trigger as many alarm bells from a free speech perspective.
I don't have any idea where this will go, but the idea that our collective future is determined by the restraint of the people currently in power does not bode well.
While I don't much care for either Kimmel nor The View - this is ridiculously corrupt, authoritarian, thuggish, illegal and arrogant behavior and cannot be allowed to stand.
And shame on Disney for caving. Cowards who kneel down to kiss the ring in the face of blatantly illegal threats are not worthy of a position of public trust. And over a merger no less.
I can't think of a better moral justification to prevent a corporation from owning a bigger slice of the ecosystem than to know that said corporation will dispense of any and all integrity they may yet possess to do it.
An issue was that the right was being canceled for views not even 5 years ago and the same people complaining about Kimmel are having their exact quotes replayed justifying those types of cancellations.
From a game theoretic standpoint, tit for tat is exactly what’s supposed to happen to stabilize the situation. This has actually been proven by mathematicians that apply decision making theories to social structures.
You're conflating cancel culture, done voluntarily by private companies, with censorship, with the federal government through the FCC is dictating the outcomes of mergers and acquisitions based on compliance with speech restrictions.
The Biden administration had (and used) the ability to demote conservative news outlets on Facebook and Twitter. This cancel culture— both from the right and left— sucks and should be fought.
> The Biden administration had (and used) the ability to demote conservative news outlets on Facebook and Twitter.
This is categorically false. Are you referring to this story, where the Biden administration asked Facebook to take down Covid misinformation and "expressed a lot of frustration" when Zuckerberg told them no?
If not, then where did you learn that the Biden administration "had (and used) the ability to demote conservative news outlets on Facebook and Twitter"?
See if you can spot the difference. And i am not defending past cancellations, but there is a not so subtle difference in kind here that makes these kind of both sides arguments fall flat.
Yes, much of the anger is coming from the petard-hoisting nature of this, and people who spent 2017-2024 trying to silence (or worse) everyone who disagreed with them and cheering on governments that tried to suppress "disinformation" and other speech they didn't like, having to come up with elaborate justifications why It's Different This Time.
I don’t watch any of these shows, but I have seen videos of the View hosts having to read “Legal Notes” on air, often after commercial breaks to “clarify” or correct things that were just said on the show. Even one video where after the “note” the host attempted to clarify off the cuff even further…only to get an another note again right away to clarify the clarification.
My feeling is if I was a media company, and I had to employ lawyers to legal check conversations in real time on a talk show because my hosts were either so dumb to know when to avoid shooting their mouths off, or couldn’t control themselves…that show better be making a metric shit ton of profit otherwise I’d yank it and put up reruns of House on the Prairie.
I love my liberal principles but this is totally expected.
Ideally we live in a world where Kimmel isn't canceled but neither is someone like Roseanne Barr. But that world hasn't existed for a while.
In a prisoners dilemma both sides win by cooperation. Once a side "defects" - the other side is a sucker not to. The ship on lamenting this stuff has sailed.
The FCC, like other federal agencies, is independent. There's nothing in the article to suggest that Carr's decision to do this has anything to do with Trump, who doesn't actually have authority here. Per the article, Carr apparently doesn't think he did anything coercive either. He's just making public statements. The supposed "threat" doesn't seem to me like much of one.
And Carr is also irrelevant to the Kimmel firing. ABC faced pressure from affiliates and his ratings had been declining for a long time.
Is there a judiciary that determines whether the mob was within their rights to light your restaurant on fire, and can stop the mob from lighting the restaurant on fire?
Even if you think the FCC is just an extension of trump(fair) at this moment, their rulings aren't the final word. They still need to follow the law. If the FCC improperly attempts to withhold a license from the affiliate, the affiliate can sue and let federal judges, who are not an extension of trump, decide on the matter.
> If the FCC improperly attempts to withhold a license from the affiliate, the affiliate can sue and let federal judges, who are not an extension of trump, decide on the matter.
Which will take years to settle and you're paying fees upon fees. Or you can kiss ass and get it rubber stamped.
That's why corruption can be so corrosive: it's the "easy" way through the problem.
Because the political playbook is to argue in bad faith and conservatives are much better convincing their base of that than democrats. Why are many of them convinced that left wing violence is a scourge when right wing violence outweighs it by an overwhelming majority [0] unless you do mental gymnastics after tons of mass shootings (as Kash Patel, who one would think would be aware of related trends to domestic terrorism, so eloquently put it: “I’m sorry. Dylann Roof?”[1])
That's a nuance without consequence. Barr is a random example that came to mind.
The larger point is that it's been very difficult for a while to be a conservative in media, or academia or in the workplace, due to the ease with which you were canceled. The reason people stick with principles because it helps them and the other side - it's a high ground maneuver.
But once you feel like you are consistently deprived of all the benefits of that principle, you are no longer inclined to uphold it.
So in general I would expect conservatives to now attack via pathways they were previously above. The fact that people are surprised they are getting fired for celebrating Kirk's murder is one sign of how benign the conservatives had been about that stuff. I think that's over now.
There's also a false equivalence, because when the government is on the same team as all the big tech and media companies, it doesn't have to threaten anyone into silencing speech the team doesn't like. It just happens, and then everyone pretends it's organic.
I'd be glad to have a free speech conversation about this with anyone who actually cares about free speech, but that doesn't include anyone who spent the last decade cheering every time someone they disagreed with got his livelihood taken away. One TV network dumping one "comedian" who was well past his sell-by date is a tiny, tiny counter-trend to what's been going on for years.
Absolutely not, I will not concede this point at all.
People deciding you are intolerable is not the same as the government putting pressure on your employer.
You don't have to conceded anything. You think conservatives can't point to examples of the government squeezing them, under the guise of COVID stuff, DEI requirements and the like? Or they don't think there was pressure from the government to shape the news?
I want to agree with you, I am just saying it doesn't matter what you and I agree on. Conservatives have clearly seen and felt the principles not applying to their benefits and they are over it. Whether you or I can agonize about a particular misapplication of a particular principle doesn't matter.
Jimmy Kimmel being "cancelled" has nothing to do with Jimmy. He is the canary in the coal mine. The real issue is that the federal government is using their power and might to withhold FCC licensing from groups that they do not agree with. The FCC->ABC situation is what is alarming, has nothing to do with Jimmy.
The government didn't step in to threaten ABC over Barr spouting off derogatory racist trash. They weren't jawboned into doing it. They just didn't want to be associated with a trash person.
Overton Window shift basically. One side used cancel culture relentlessly for even the smallest slights. Now the other side is using the very same tactic. Many people who have kept out of the extremes have now shifted towards the right and those who ignore the shift are finding out the hard way.
I advise HN users who aren't aware of what's happening, read up on what Overton Window is and why its dangerous to continue posting the way you have without infosec.
You think you are posting only on HN but your posts are actually being distributed on other platforms by people who are very angry.
Users on Bluesky thought they were posting on Bluesky but they only found out too late, after they got fired because their political posts were being shared elsewhere.
There have already been few HN users who have been targeted for their radical views and have paid the price.
That's my take. Its worse this time because it's coming from the government, but in a sense that makes it actually an opportunity to fight it in court (and they absolutely should.) In any case, the rules of engagement have been clear for years: if we don't like you, then we're coming for your livelihood.
It actually sickens me how many people that supposedly cared about liberty just completely switched their schtick overnight. I'm not surprised that some of these people were two faced liars, I'm just surprised by the sheer scale and the shamelessness of it. It's like I'm living in a world surrounded by aliens.
"When you look at these other TV shows, what's interesting is the FCC does have a rule called the Equal Opportunity Rule, which means, for instance, if you're in the run-up to an election and you have one partisan elected official on, you have to give equal time, equal opportunity, to the opposing partisan politician,"
This is classic Trump era politics. Bully people with a tangential connection to a obscure law. That way it has an air of legality. Well it meanders through the courts. In the end it doesn't matter if it gets ruled down or not. This gives you time to be rule as a de facto authoritarian.
The Kimmel case is a straightforward protection racket.
Nexstar, the owner of 39% of the local TV stations in the country, wants the FCC to change their rules to allow them to merge with [other conglomerate name I forget] to increase their local market ownership share to 80%.
(If you listen to what Kimmel said, he mainly mocked Trump.)
Beyond the obvious state censorship issues here, its worth noting that Kimmel's monologue on Sep 15 appeared before add'l evidence (texts, discord chats) came out about Tyler Robinson's incoherent beliefs. This means that Kimmel's implied accusation (Tyler was MAGA) was a real possibility at the time, rather than willful misinformation.
I took his statement to be deeper than MAGA vs liberal.
Regardless of the spin, the view that political opponents are existential risks to the republic and thus demand to be killed for the good of all of is what he was suggesting that is shared.
Yes, this is more or less how I read the statement, but I can see why others had a less charitable reading. I don't want to nitpick it too much, because its a pretextual charge during a tense moment.
Yes, they could have spent time, first creating an informal "communication safety" group between some Government agency and Disney/ABC. But I feel like this is splitting hairs.
I do remember that, and it turns out there's so many reasons to have fired TC that people had pages of listicles on why he could have been fired https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... and none of them were cancel culture it turns out. Fox already lied and paid out hundreds of millions on dominion, it couldn't handle paying for any more lies.
Yeah, I am sure soon we be given good reasons why "they couldn't handle" JK either. Just scroll down the comments. See, ABC affiliates wanted him gone... :-)
TC has now an audience larger than the entire Fox News. Maybe JK will do the same.
Off to the USSR we go unless Congress gets brave. Sadly I told people who came here from the USSR where I use to work 40 years ago we were heading towards being the USSR, but a bit different.
They said "no way", well here we are, well on our way. Just a different flavor of the same type of thing.
I get multiple news notifications within minutes of all these things, that’s pretty different than unfettered authoritarianism where people don’t even know it’s happening.
If everyone is aware of what’s going on and we still elect these people, that’s more on us than them no?
I served in the Navy 40 years ago on a nuclear submarine opposed to the Soviet Union so I had an interest in learning about our enemy. People like Stephen Kotkin have said Stalin and those around him were true believers in communism, while the situation in America feels like early Putinism, which was about money and power. But the suppression of those critical of the regime is the same.
Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine created echo chambers. [0] Equal air time to different point of views of a topic turned into 100% or 99% network pushed point of view. This removed a standard person from having quality engagement to content designed an manipulated for personal gain by the networks. It was a good bridge to living together versus living divided.
This is the way shakedowns work. Disney backed down on Kimmel because he's "just a comedian" or it's "just one show" or he was "failing anyway". So now they're marks. It's always easy to squeeze a mark for a second time than to shake down a fresh one.
The View is "soft news", it's a "minor talk show", it's "daytime TV". It's not like they're coming after This Week or World News Tonight. Right?
Just shows that they want to cave, they’re not being forced, they can fight and win but they want to be threatened and cave. If we get out of this mess I hope these people are also made responsible for the outcomes as enablers.
I'm sure there's some Republicans on HN. I'm curious why/if you think that, if the public pressuring companies to fire people for some things (what some people call "cancelling") is wrong, it's somehow more appropriate for the government to do it? Or is this just a matter of, "well, they did it for years, now it's our turn" for you?
(If you don't actually support this party, consider refraining from sharing your opinions of why Republicans support this. And for what it's worth, I don't think the downvotes for those actually sharing their opinions [in a productive way] are deserved, even if I disagree with them.)
There are actually quite a few Republicans, such as Karl Rove, who are irate at the current administration for its attacks on free speech.
But broadly speaking, and this truly transcends partisan divisions, there are very many people whose commitment to free speech only extends insofar as they like the speech being protected. It is actually quite rare to find somebody who will advocate "I think the speech you are saying is reprehensible, but I will stake my life on defending the right for you to say it."
All attempts to justify it logically are in vain, deep down lots of people just want to smash the "others" - the lies are like a depth-first search for the shortest path to finding a point where they can finally just drop all pretense.
Most republicans I know despised Kimmel but think the government overstepped. I’m not a Republican, but I am conservative. I think these moves are inexcusable.
I think you should understand that a lot of R's vote along party lines and just felt that Trump would be the lesser of two evils. I would rephrase your question to ask for people that support this specific action, as opposed to membership in the party.
I am a Republican, not necessarily thrilled with how things are going, and I completely oppose forcing Kimmel out of a job for this. It is not only unconstitutional in my opinion, but also extremely petty.
I also am Republican and believe in free speech but I believe it was OK to fire Kimmel b/c he's an employee who serves at the whim of his employer.
It isn't a free speech issue b/c the government didn't fire him. Nor do I think the government had much to do with Kimmel's firing.
I believe Kimmel displayed extremely poor taste in his choice of topics and wording, enough for any reasonable business to fire his ass. Maybe he can come back in a year.
But also: in my view, this isn't exactly "the government" doing it. It comes across that the major ABC affiliates already didn't like the show and have been looking for an excuse to get rid of Kimmel for a while. His show has been fading into irrelevance; if you exclude the videos with "Trump" in the title, the Youtube channel has been doing terribly of late relative to the subscriber count (over 20M). And even the Trump videos look lackluster next to the consistently popular documentaries on, say, Veritasium (which puts out science documentaries and has a similar subscriber count). At any rate, "pressure" like this isn't a 1A violation as far as I can tell; no law is being made by Congress.
And also, it does matter what the cause of action is. An allegation that your political opponents are trying to dodge responsibility for a serious crime committed by one of their own, is pretty heavy. Maybe you don't think that's worse than, say, insulting someone in a bigoted way; but the Republicans I've heard from seem to consider that the latter standard isn't applied consistently anyway. Which is to say: if they're getting called "Nazis" and "fascists" and there's no penalty for that, it seems like that ought to establish a standard whereby other insults of comparable severity are fair game.
One thing I've heard many times in right-wing political discourse, though I'm not sure of the exact phrasing, is "my rules applied fairly > your rules applied fairly > your rules as you apply them".
> I don't think the downvotes for those actually sharing their opinions [in a productive way] are deserved
In my experience, the arguments very often come from a place of hurt and a genuine sense of being mistreated. It's hard for them to end up being shared very productively.
Simple. The Republicans remember when they were cancelled for not wanting to take a vaccination that was just invented months earlier; when they were deplatformed from Twitter constantly; when Reddit rejoiced at the death of one of their heroes; when "right wing violence is more common" became a meme as Minneapolis was literally burning. They watched a kid who they believed had a legitimate self-defense case get thrown the book in Wisconsin by a prosecutor called out by even the judge for brazen unfairness; with unprecedented levels of online hate rather than openness to discussion. They watched CNN accuse right wingers of exaggerating "mostly peaceful" protests with a car literally burning in the background. They stopped caring about your feelings, because you didn't care about theirs.
> They stopped caring about your feelings, because you didn't care about theirs.
Free speech is not about feelings. It's a principle, one enshrined in the US Constitution. If you don't believe in free speech, just say it. Say you don't want free speech, free assembly, free religion, and the free press. Don't cry about hurt feelings, though. That's what children do.
1A makes freedom of speech a legal principle, but it also exists as a philosophical principle and a moral value.
But fair play is also a moral value held by many.
For years, in my experience, it was unilaterally the "blue tribe" in the US who would point at XKCD 1357, and argue that the constitutional protection of freedom of speech doesn't extend to being able to keep your job, since the job doesn't come from the government in the first place (and because of "at-will" employment laws, and because of your employer's freedom of association). But if you believe this, then you have to accept that it can also be used against you.
I personally think it matters quite a bit exactly what was said, along with how strongly it was identifiably tied to the company, and what the PR effect would be. Companies shouldn't, absent other extenuating factors, have to keep around someone whose mere presence will hurt the business. But it's also unfair if companies are given an inaccurate impression of what customers on balance actually think about the matter.
> If you don't believe in free speech, just say it. Say you don't want free speech, free assembly, free religion, and the free press. Don't cry about hurt feelings, though. That's what children do.
It comes across that you have decided what GP's values really are, and are trying to extract a confession through bullying. This is not a productive mode of discourse.
They stood for free speech; but judging by the downvotes here, the left didn't care about their free speech. If it did, my post above wouldn't be at -4, while the inflammatory answer above is still in the black.
The left instead rationalized it under "free speech is not freedom from consequences", called them Nazis, fascists, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, you'd need a thesaurus. Every slur in the thesaurus, they used. When your opponent plays dirty, actively seeks to get you fired from your job, and your figureheads get killed (Kirk) or nearly killed (Trump), why uphold the rules?
EDIT: > Admit that your position is an unprincipled one and based on feelings rather than thought.
Admit that the right has realized that neither side gives a damn about principles; but the left has no right to claim to be principled after 2020.
You seem to be done editing this finally, so I'll quote (in case you edit it again) and respond:
> When your opponent plays dirty, when your figureheads get killed or nearly killed, why uphold the rules?
The Constitution wasn't shredded after Lincoln's assassination, Kennedy's, the attempt on Reagan. Why shred it now? You either believe in the principles, or you do not. If you don't, just admit it instead of complaining about hurt feelings or people playing dirty. Be an adult.
Damn, you managed to edit it while I was typing that, but the irony in this is rich:
> actively seeks to get you fired from your job
The Vice President of the United States is calling for people to be fired for speech. Again, you either believe in the freedom of speech or you don't. It's very clear that you do not. So again, be an adult. Admit that your position is an unprincipled one and based on feelings rather than thought.
EDIT: Removed "or Roosevelt" from attempted assassinations, he was the former president, not the sitting president, at the time.
> If it did, my post above wouldn't be at -4, while the inflammatory answer above is still in the black.
Ah ok, so only your right to free speech is important and no one is allowed to react negatively to it and have their own free speech. Thanks for making that clear.
I don't know though, maybe going from downvotes to making assumptions about something like 50m people is a bit of a stretch? And for what it's worth, I upvoted it, and I would certainly fall under "the left"
Correct. He didn't use a legal framework, and did it anyway. They even convinced Twitter to ban retweeting an unfavorable New York Post article that turned out true!
> Not a single one of these articles supports the claim that the Biden administration used the law to make speech illegal in the same manner that trump used the fcc to make speech illegal.
TFA doesn't establish that Trump did any such thing, nor even that the FCC did any such thing.
I don't think Republicans characterize it that way. I find myself right leaning, and while I like most of Trumps agenda, I often disagree with his tactics. I increasingly have to fact check stuff like this to see if he crossed a line. The problem is there's too much BS, summarizing, and mischaracterising going on. Direct quotes (sometimes requiring context) are needed to get to the bottom of things. It's exhausting. I will say, right or wrong the left brought this on - it is a response to their bad behavior.
Back in 2022, when Musk was buying Twitter and the Biden administration was asking social media companies to moderate potentially harmful medical misinformation, it felt like every third comment here was someone hollering about free-speech absolutism. Where did all those people go?
Lots of right wing people on this platform, evident by the heavy hand moderation if you go against the common grievance of the day.
Which I mean I guess makes sense. Any place that is so feverish about crypto, ai, newFad2.0, or is super into #factsNotFeelinfg always seems like it attracts the same crowd
Pure kayfabe. ABC needed any excuse to get rid of a show that no longer made sense in the modern era of streaming. NBC and CBS must be furious that they didn’t think of this first.
Edit: Ha I forgot that CBS actually did think of it first with Colbert’s show getting axed too.
You can’t resell old episodes. They only talk about news and celebrities relevant to each specific week. They’re instantly dated - no one is rewatching old episodes beyond a week. Even if there are some stragglers still watching them with their ancient cable TV subscriptions, they’ll be gone within five years and who wants to invest in a dying show with an expiration date?
Don't be naive. There was no jawboning from the previous administration to networks to cancel someone -- especially someone who always made fun of the President.
However, this is a a classic example of violation of 1A. (I agree that the thing that was probably in the grey area was they asked Twitter to remove certain COVID-19 medical disinformation tweets -- But, come on, many people were consuming horse dewormers for COVID and dying. )
The right's cancel culture is a violation of constitution because it's the government that's doing the cancelling.
Kimmel was fired because his ratings were shit, and advertisers didn't want him doubling down on a lie. Sorry, the FCC thing is just an excuse for people who don't want to admit that.
We also found out that Kimmel was planning a second attack on MAGA when the executives at ABC were already on-edge about the timing causing a backlash; simultaneously when Kimmel's ratings have dropped 43% since January to under 1.1M, which is "advertisers bailing out" territory. That's a lot duller than the Brendan Carr theory.
It's tangential, as most people here aren't involved in traditional media, but this is a government that is interested in suppressing speech it dislikes [1]. Not actively harmful speech, threats and the like, just things they dislike. If this continues it could have significant impact for companies in the US, working with the US, and people working in the US but from other countries. This is the same administration that wants to go through social media posts and comments of people visiting the country to screen them for bad thoughts. Members of the administration are calling on people to rat each other out to their employers for this thoughtcrime.
> a recent example, out of Congress. Calling on social media companies to ban users because they said something he dislikes.
Social media commonly already has terms of service which forbid glorification of violence. Expecting TOS to be applied fairly (i.e. without consideration of who got shot and who did the shooting) seems entirely reasonable to me.
Time to toss symbols and words. When everyone is the same thing that everyone's accusing one another of being, then signaling is done. We've reached the symbolic impasse that arbitrariness only enforces.
There's nothing coherent statement-wise coming out of the political leadership of all parties. That explains everything. No one is communicating. The news says nothing. All that matters is actions. And without a system of explanation for those actions, the species is dead.
Listen to the experts:
“...by getting rid of the clumsy symbols ‘round which we are fighting, we might bring the fight to an end.”
Henri Bergson Time and Free Will
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less," said Humpty-Dumpty.
"The question is whether you can make the words mean so many different things," Alice says.
"The question is which is to be master—that is all," he replies.
Lewis Carroll
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.”
Philip K. Dick
ABC is owned by Disney, which owns many subsidiaries. The one thing they and their shareholders care about is cold, hard cash. If you don't agree with what they're doing, then consider speaking the loudest way you can, with your wallet.
Disney owns:
- Hulu
- Disney+
- ESPN+
- National Geographic
- Pixar
- Marvel
- A whole lot more
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_the_Wa...
And the parks.
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I'm not a US citizen so take what I write below with a grain of salt.
I always thought the US to be a stronghold of democracy and free speech. I know, it's a naive view and we know how huge companies and corrupt politicians can subvert the system. But still, I thought it had a decent law system that, although imperfect like any other system, kept things from going back to the dark ages.
I don't believe that anymore after what I've seen this year. A few individuals can completely takeover the government, keep committing bigger and bigger crimes and nothing happens. All they get is outrage on social media, which they are happy to shrug off.
I know democracy and free speech are fragile things and we have to be constantly watching but I didn't imagine it would be this ephemeral in the US.
> I always thought the US to be a stronghold of democracy and free speech.
Every single story and moral guidance I've ever been told from childhood, whether from movies, books, church, or culture in general is that people like those in power right now are the bad guys.
I no longer have any idea what people on the other side actually think. I don't think they know anymore either. I think they just want to exert power and control and revenge over their personal grievances and boogeymen, and seem to be under a constant bombardment of ideology to convince people to untether themselves from any moral restraint or connection with the out-group.
I am one of the scary minorities they use as a boogeyman, and their rhetoric about the group of people I belong to is so unattached from my daily life, the values that I hold, and my own attitudes that it would be comical if it didn't come out in sideways glances, scowls, and stares of people on the street. Nobody ever even bothers to ask, to even have a moment of conversation to see that there is a real person. I try to walk through life friendly, open, and interested in people. We walk around with conceptions of other people built for us, not ones that we have made ourselves.
The only thing that seems to help is to try to be offline as much as possible, to be in community with people and in real space.
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Thanks, I genuinely appreciate the perspective. Do you find that perspective is primarily gotten from real life conversations, or from discourse online/social media/political commentators?
I often fantasize about being able to just converse openly and be able to mutually share experiences. I was raised very conservative and speak the language and know the values. I don't hold those beliefs anymore because of experiences I've had that made them contradictory to hold. But I still appreciate why someone who hasn't had my experiences might hold them.
For my "side", among all the people that I talk to who, who would be considered pretty far to one side, everyone wants primarily to be left alone, not harassed, and wants to coexist, and be respected. Is it the same from yours?
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I get this is a rhetorical question, but I'm still unsure where your hangups are coming from.
Most of my friends are some flavor of Christian. They use my pronouns around me. I don't take their Lords name in vain around them. Sometimes, coexistance and respect are really as simple as that.
how can you say you only want cooperation when the viewpoints you and your brethren share are dehumanising, against a peaceful world, against caring for the environment, against minorities, against queer folk, and against international cooperation?
we arent talking about “how many immigrants should we allow”, we’re talking about “trans people shouldnt exist”, “christianity is the true religion”, “deport all legal immigrants”, “gay people shouldnt have human rights”
The person you’re responding to may not believe those things, and may not want those things or think it’s possible or reasonable. Let them speak about it at least before assuming that group affiliation means those things.
FWIW I believe dehumanization is a horrendous thing, especially when aimed at relatively powerless minorities.
The people currently in power do believe and act on those things. Claiming they aren't the bad guys (and especially voting for them) demonstrates tacit acceptance of those beliefs and policies whether you like it or not. You don't get to support people who do bad things and claim you don't agree with the bad things.
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I'm talking about cooperation in the context of the prisoner's dilemma example, not cooperation in general. I don't need or want to cooperate with people who have nothing to offer me, my family, or my community
See, now thats at the heart of it isn't it!
What /would/ someone have to offer you, your family or your community? What do you value? What does your community value? How do you know folks have nothing to offer?
Selfish take
And before you downvote me, explain how the concept of charity maps to non-cooperation unless you yourself has something to gain
> it's because we get downvoted/banned/doxxed (on most platforms) when we do say what we think.
And what opinions are these?
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> A few individuals can completely takeover the government
That's not what's happening.
When most people serving in positions of government do so in good faith, most forms of government work, including the American one. When most people serve in bad faith, most forms of government do not work, including the American one.
The American system has checks in place to keep what is happening from happening, but those checks aren't working because those who would exercise them aren't doing so, as withholding those checks benefits them personally, at least in the short term. The underlying theory of the American system is that if you distribute power enough, one or a few bad actors can't seize total power.
But, there are just too many people in elected office right now who did not take their oath to uphold the Constitution in good faith. Namely, in Congress which has simultaneously demonstrated that it is unwilling to effectively wield the impeachment check, and is unable to do effective legislative work, leading to a latent desire for a stronger executive. In this circumstance, no form of government will hold up without a correction towards replacing all the bad-faith actors.
It's been worse before in America and we've returned to normal, so I have hope as an American. See McCarthyism in the 1950's, when people like Kimmel were blackballed from working:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Maybe before social media. I have a hard time seeing how this country will self-correct.
What's really pathetic about the current situation is that McCarthyism was at least rooted in the fear that Soviets would bomb and kill people, which given Russia's conduct in Ukraine and other places was well-founded. The current authoritarian backsliding is because... woke? Truly the dumbest of timelines.
It helps to understand what "woke" is. I've asked around and the general consensus seems to be "It's called being a decent fucking human being." The problem with that is different people have different values and therefore different interpretations of what it means to be decent, but nonetheless, if you disagree then you're a fascist. And if you're a fascist, then it's okay to punch you. In fact, if you're a fascist then it's okay to murder you, half the very-online nuts on social media will celebrate when you get murdered and say you had it coming.
I think this is why some people are concerned.
I don’t think it works that way for most people, maybe for some radicals but there are radicals on every side. Yesterday I overheard a conversation where a man was talking about a trip to our capital (in EU country) and how there were "strangepeople" (I wrote it together as it’s an insult as one word here and he meant it that way), wearing pink and rainbow and he was frightened and how’s he glad he returned to our small city in the middle of nowhere.
Did I thought he was a fascist and did I want to kill him? No, he seemed like a decent man who’s just afraid of things he’s not familiar with and who believe in stuff pushed by crazy radicals because he has no experience with people and situations unknown to him.
Did I want to punch him? No, I wanted to discuss with him, but I haven’t got time, as I needed to pick up my kid from the same art school he was bringing his kid in.
So tell me, why is he concerned about people who he saw on metro and who were not threatening him? Should he be afraid of me, because I probably could be described as woke as I think that you should let others be, if they don’t hurt you or others? I don’t care about online media, this is real life example.
It means meaning has collapsed, and it collapses because our meanings come in word-form, and those are arbitrary. We can make them mean whatever we want them to mean, and then keep saying them. That's what's going on.
That would be called concern trolling where I am from. This idea that "woke" has somehow threatened people is an amusing but rings more hollow every day.
Right wing authoritarianism is by far the biggest terrorist threat in the united states - right wingers literally threaten war on social media on the regular and love their guns, elected officials are literally conspiracy theorists who talk about jewish space lasers and weather control systems, women have lost the right to abortions, we are testing the waters on gay marriage and mixed race marriage, we started a global trade war, the courts, congress, and the executive branch are controlled by one party and no one is doing any balance of powers.
This all happens and I still hear people talk to me like "the liberals just shouldn't say X on twitter because its rude!!!" as if that's going to stop the white nationalists currently on the rampage in the government.
It's something that's been eroding for a long time, starting mostly with the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the political desire at the time to put an end to the New deal era style of big government from the 1930s and 40s.
There have been periods of pause, and even reverse, but two terms of the Trump administration trailing on the heels of the tea party movement in the 2010s have really done a lot of damage at all levels of US government.
By now, so many politicians, lawyers, and judges, are compromised it's going to take some pretty extreme changes to the way people are voting to make an impact.
I don't see that happening in the near future, even if I do see it happening in the long term.
This is twisting history and reality, big government is exactly what's happening right now. The FCC abusing its power to silence speech is big government. The government using its power over universities to control them is big government. This is the fruit of that tree.
Such is the paradox of the modern Republican party. For the last so many decades they have claimed to want a smaller government. Then went handed the keys to the kingdom they immediately increase its size and get right to abusing its power.
In the Reagan years, money started to became more important than voters. Under Bush 2 and recent Supreme Court Decisions, bribes became legal. Per the Court they called them "tips".
So Congress people spend more time fund raising (taking bribes) than helping their district.
Nothing real has gotten done in many districts for multiple decades. Real wages, when compared to inflation, and has been falling for decades. When I was very young, laws where passed that actually helped people. As a very young kid, I remember waking up as a kid with coal flakes on my window sill due to its use in the mills. That ended in the 70s.
Now, to get more money the laws that cleaned up the environment are being cancelled, why, rich are "tipping" congress people.
The US is done, time for civilization advancement to be carried on by another Country. Hopefully the EU can get its act together.
What you have here has nothing to do with the law, and has to do with power. Disney willingly pulled Kimmel off their own networks, because a major distributor of their content(Sinclair) threatened to not air it, which accounts for about 20% of the viewership of the show.
> Disney willingly pulled Kimmel off their own networks, because a major distributor of their content(Sinclair) threatened to not air it, which accounts for about 20% of the viewership of the show.
"This is a nice merger deal, shame anything should happen to it…" does not look like a recipe for a free will / willing action to be made.
For the record, the merger is with Nexstar, not Sinclair, but the point is the same:
* https://www.nexstar.tv/nexstar-media-group-inc-enters-into-d...
Why did Sinclair threaten to not air it?
"In recent months, both broadcasters have announced their intent to buy or sell local TV assets — Nexstar is in the process of effectuating a $6 billion merger with peer broadcaster TEGNA, and Sinclair is executing on a mixture of station acquisitions and sales — all of which require the approval of the FCC."
https://thedesk.net/2025/09/nexstar-sinclair-jimmy-kimmel-fc...
Because Sinclair needs the FCC to approve a merger for them. They read between the lines and know that to get it approved they need to apply pressure on ABC to can Kimmel to appease someone.
I wish the law that restricted the number of public stations/licenses a single entity could own was still in place. It was created to prevent what's happening now, silencing of varied and different ideas, views, and opinions.
Maybe they were coerced by the government. Or maybe they canceled Kimmel for the same reason the Trump administration was pissing themselves over Kimmel, because Trump and Sinclair are politically aligned and therefore inclined to act in similar ways anyway...
> Sinclair's stations have been known for featuring news content and programming that promote conservative political positions. They have been involved in various controversies surrounding politically motivated programming decisions,[172][173] such as news coverage and specials during the lead-ups to elections that were in support of the Republican Party.[174][175][172]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Polit...
My read is they weren't coerced, but did as Trump desired because they like Trump. Either way, it should go to court.
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since the 1970s democratic backsliding is the primary origin story for todays authoritarian regimes. look at turkey, russia, the philippines, venezuela, nicaragua, poland, hungary, india... theres a playbook. you can now add usa to that list. a good counter example is what happened last year in South Korea. the president declares martial law out of nowhere but before he could consolidate power the courts and the people resisted (not easily mind you, he had significant support) but the checks and balances held things together. but in the other examples you can see how when one of those checks fails it essily cascades into a chain reaction that can be hard to stop. that's what you're witnessing in the usa: taking congressional power to the executive, control of the courts, control of the media, using the national guard domestically to control dissent. well you get the idea. it already seems too late. there won't be some red line crossed where people get out their guns to defend their "freedom" if they haven't already noticed how eroded its become. theres still voting -- just like in all those countries above.
There's supposed to be checks & balances, of Congress, the courts, and the President keeping one another in check.
But the GOP holds all three. Even the court system has fallen apart, with the Supreme Court using shadow dockets with no explanation, not establishing any precedent, just overriding lower courts to rule by fiat as they please. The GOP congress is utterly maga whipped, with only very rare signs of protest; deathly afraid of provoking Trump's ire.
Even still there's constant legal losses for the administration. But the shock and awe, the endless acting bad, in bad faith, doing bad things, and disrespecting the constitution, the liberties, the democracy: it's very grinding and very hard to see such pure malice against our history and rights and decency performed so ruthlessly so regularly.
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The current controversy is related to how to protect free speech.
A man was assassinated holding a mic practicing free speech. Celebrating the assassination can be interpreted as a form of celebrating attacks on free speech, because the murdered mic holder was saying average political views.
Therefore people argue that we have to shame (not imprison or kill) celebrations on attacks on free speech to protect free speech.
Did Jimmy Kimmel celebrate the assassination? (He did not.)
No, enough people were angered by him when he accused Trump supporters of killing Kirk that abc had to pull for financial reasons. Not sure why he would’ve said that on a comedy show.
No, Kimmel accused Trump supporters of publicly trying to distance themselves from the shooter.
Yes, but in the same breath Kimmel said the assassin was a MAGA supporter.
Kimmel's words:
"...the MAGA gang [was] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them..."
The assassin may have indeed once been a MAGA supporter - his family certainly appear to be so. But political beliefs can change quickly as his history demostrates:
The assassin found true love in a transsexual roommate/lover.So overcome was he by his love for his transsexual roomie and so offended by MAGA supporter Charlie Kirk's objections to LGBTQ+, that he engraved LGBTQ+ graffiti on 30-06 ammo and shot Charlie Kirk in the neck with one of the bullets. He left the remaining bullets with the rifle IIRC.
Was the assassin a MAGA supporter at the moment he pulled the trigger? Beats me!
the man’s speech was against human rights for black people, women, lgbtq+. people are allowed to have free speech against those beliefs too. they are not “average”.
This mischaracterization was a view that many on the left have already disproven in the past few days (major black, gay, and women influencers who have changed their views on Kirk) when they looked into it, which is why a mass outflow from the left is being witnessed.
It’s not a surprise with the bubble people are living in though.
>Therefore people argue that we have to shame (not imprison or kill) celebrations on attacks on free speech to protect free speech.
So what you're saying is "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences?"
Odd. I suspect the same people arguing that now would have been outraged at the very thought before Charlie Kirk's death. Because they celebrate the death of people also practicing free speech all the time while insisting that freedom of speech exists to defend the speech you disagree with, not the speech you agree with.
It's just weird how fast their principles turn on a dime when it's one of theirs.
We're still a stronghold of democracy and free speech. That doesn't mean threats don't occasionally present themselves. In fact, it should be welcomed, as it gives each new generation the opportunity to re-affirm their commitment to free speech.
Free speech has been under threat at the academic and cultural level for a while now, especially in the 2010's. All of that was a good thing in my opinion, because a generation of college students were able to see firsthand what happens when we try and silence dissent.
This situation is admittedly more dangerous, as the federal government is attempting to suppress speech via governmental subsidies (as far as I can tell, I don't have all the facts).
But this is also an opportunity. It's a moment for those on the political left to see clearly why protecting speech is, in fact, a very good thing. So hopefully the sane people on both sides of the aisle can reflect on where we're at, how we got here, and how we get out of this situation. To me it's clear - we reject both explicit and implicit attempts to suppress speech we don't like, full stop. We don't kill people, we don't get people fired, we don't threaten to withhold funding. We need to collectively agree to do this across the board, for everyone in this country.
This feels like a principled, fantasy response. We're not at the "shaking fists on podiums" stage of this issue.
I don't know how to interpret "shaking fists on podiums", but it reads as "we're not at the stage where we talk these things out". The only other option is violence, so if you're saying that then say it directly.
I think they’re saying this isn’t debate club. When companies are being threatened, when universities are being told their research grants will be illegally withheld unless they punish students or faculty for exercising constitutional rights, when civil servants are being vetted by political apparatchiks for their political views, it’s not a hypothetical question about the boundaries of civil discourse.
Bunch of drama queens here.
When I was in college we had 3 days of a small group of Vietnam war protests. Right away the administration kicked everyone off campus who wasn't an employee or student. The next day they told the remaining 3 protestors to either leave or be expelled. One left, the other 2 went back to class. Everybody put their heads back in their books. I was sooooo grateful we had an enlightened administration.
That's the way to handle protesting students! The university is not a political podium, it is a place to learn.
The only "free speech" that matters is whether the government is punishing you for it.
A lot of things can be true at the same time:
- The FCC shouldn't be involved in content moderation, and the FCC Chair is obviously on an authoritarian power trip.
- What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory.
- Clearly the market was already deciding that Kimmel's show is irrelevant (Nielsen ratings quite clear on that).
- The FCC is only involved in content because of how TV broadcasting worked ~50 years ago (large swaths of RF spectrum allocated to certain license holders, only a few channels -could- exist due to technical reasons, thus fairness rules).
- ABC's distributors threatened to stop airing the network, which is what actually caused Disney/ABC to act, it's hard to say what impact the FCC Chairs comments actually had.
- The idea that the FCC needs to act to protect the TV Broadcasting systems is ridiculous, just let it all die, we're very far past the "public square" era of media.
- Had the FCC made no comment, and Disney pulled the show due to the distributors actions, it would have obviously just been "cancel culture but from the right", instead Brendan Carr wants to get in the headlines and so here we are.
It's all a perfect Scissor Statement. You can absolutely not care about Kimmel, you can think the FCC's TV licensing scheme is pointless and outdated, you can be 0% surprised Disney only cares about money and Carr is an idiot, and still you can get into a heated argument about this stuff. My own mother texted me "Free speech is dead" and hurah, now I get to do 3 hours of reading to say "it never really existed in broadcast television and also yes, this is bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" and boom now I'm the fascist.
"Sort by Controversial" is such a troubling timeline.
Here’s a full transcript of the monologue - which is absurdly hard to find in all the coverage.
https://pastebin.com/25ZmRNwj
> absurdly hard to find in all the coverage.
By design. If it was actually offensive Fox would be playing it non-stop. The offense has been excavated from inside an implication of a phrase in a nested clause in a sentence saying something unrelated.
Kimmel said (as part of an argument that republicans were playing politics by pointing fingers) that republicans were trying to prove that Robinson was not a republican , from which you have to infer that Kimmel meant to say Robinson was a republican.
> What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory.
What Kimmel said[0] was fairly innocuous and not all that big a deal. What he said was actually true, in general, about conservative discourse, regardless of what the shooter's politics are.
Carr directly threatened ABC's broadcast license over protected speech, even in the context of the FCC's mandate and the rules around broadcast licensing.
Kimmel's ratings are irrelevant. Murdering someone with terminal cancer is still murder.
[0] There still seems to be a bunch of confusion and misinformation about what Kimmel said, so: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it." If you truly believe that's the kind of thing the FCC should be threatening a network's broadcast license over, I'm not sure it's possible to have a productive discussion with you about this.
> I'm not sure it's possible to have a productive discussion with you about this.
My immediate reaction was similar, I'm not sure he's saying that it is wrong though, he said "can be".
> There still seems to be a bunch of confusion and misinformation about what Kimmel said, so: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it."
The FCC should not be threatening ABC over this, but the statement is, on the available evidence, wrong, irresponsible and inflammatory. It's wrong because it insinuates that the killer was "one of them" (completely untrue per Utah state investigators), irresponsible because there was no good reason to believe it (the alternative narratives require some deep reading into cryptic fringe political groups) and because of the timing, and inflammatory because of the nature of the allegation (it's not a nice thing to say about anyone even when it's demonstrably true).
> What he said was actually true, in general, about conservative discourse, regardless of what the shooter's politics are.
The statement cannot be evaluated for "truth in general" because it referred to a specific incident. If he'd wanted to assert something about what "the MAGA gang" generally does, he could have done so. But the point was specifically to tie into current events.
(I also don't really understand the objection. What, are conservatives not supposed to disavow political violence? Is everyone on the right supposed to accept responsibility for the consequences of every other right-wing political philosophy? Please be careful about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity .)
Man you are delusional. How many pols and their elk where clamoring for civil war because a YouTuber got shot that they _assumed_ was a leftist? How many of those same people said anything when a democratic state senator and their spouse was murdered, and another pair seriously wounded?
This is the type of nonsense that really bothers me with this site. It’s an attempt to “both sides” everything in a pathetic attempt at seeming logical.
> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory.
I agree that we should be disavowing violence.
The problem is that for 10 years democratic lawmakers and media figures are disavowing violence on both sides, while republican lawmakers and media figures are doing the opposite: stoking the flames, promoting the idea of civil war, telling everyone that the country is stolen from them, that immigrants are out to get them, that democrats are out to get them, etc. According to this rhetoric, democrats are to blame for all of this. When something bad happens and it's not democrats who caused it, they come up with a conspiratorial explanation for how it's still democrats.
So when one side keeps constantly disavowing, and the other side keeps constantly attacking, at some point disavowing becomes literally the wrong thing to do. You can't lay down your weapon while the other person just keeps hitting, and expect the hitting to stop.
What we are being shown repeatedly by republicans is that violent, divisive rhetoric actually leads to electoral victories, and grants free license to become "president for one side only" and do whatever that side wants. If democrats continue to disavow and apologize, they will end up simply extinct. This is why some democrats stopped doing that.
> for 10 years democratic lawmakers and media figures are disavowing violence on both sides, while republican lawmakers and media figures are doing the opposite
It was not a Republican media figure who made that video of herself holding "a mask styled to look like the severed, bloody head" of the POTUS.
Among the biggest-name political Twitch streamers, it's not the right-wingers who are being shown to have all sorts of clips calling for political violence, making threats that include brandishing firearms on stream, doxxing people etc. — all of which are blatant TOS violations, but which never seem to get them banned. From the evidence available to me, the CEO of Twitch seems to be quite friendly with the most egregious of those streamers.
> So when one side keeps constantly disavowing, and the other side keeps constantly attacking, at some point disavowing becomes literally the wrong thing to do. You can't lay down your weapon while the other person just keeps hitting, and expect the hitting to stop.
I can assure you the other side feels the same way. There are even supercuts out there of Trump repeatedly disavowing violence that he was still accused of not disavowing.
> Twitch
There are only 2 sides on twitch right now, both illiberal. One side has the political philosophy that amounts to "if Trump does it, we support it". The other side is a fringe far left (e.g. tankies).
Except the former "philosophy" is supported by 90% of republicans, and the latter is ostracized by democrats. Even AOC (the once symbol of far leftism) shifted towards more mainstream liberal democratic values. These twitch lefties don't vote. They are politically nowhere in this country.
And you are comparing president of the country to twitch streamers. President is not supposed to be an edgy instigator and influencer, he's supposed to be president for everyone.
And yet, every disavowal that Trump made, he ended up blaming democrats in the same breath. He constantly berates everyone on the left, sues, destroys politically, or otherwise silences anyone who criticizes him. I'm supposed to feel like he's my president even if I didn't vote for him, but I cannot, because he makes that distinction very clear.
> One side has the political philosophy that amounts to "if Trump does it, we support it".
I disagree that this is an accurate characterization of the side that isn't the "fringe far left".
> and the latter is ostracized by democrats.
It looks to me like, far from being ostracized, Hasan Piker is getting to do another round of puff pieces in sympathetic outlets.
> And you are comparing president of the country to twitch streamers.
No; you are the one who spoke of "lawmakers and media figures", so I am comparing media figures to media figures.
> I disagree that this is an accurate characterization of the side that isn't the "fringe far left".
The evidence is there. Trump has been thrashing back and forth on tariffs, explaining 2 mutually-exclusive reasons to have them, and they justify it each time. Trump has been infringing on free speech and due process at levels beyond anything democrats have ever done (if you don't count republican conspiracy theories), and they justify it. I have listened to a lot of debates, and nobody can answer a question "what would Trump do that would make me vote for democrats instead".
> Hasan Piker is getting to do another round
Again, these people are not voters.
> I am comparing media figures to media figures.
I'm sorry, I should've been clearer. You said "It was not a Republican media figure who made that video […]" and "it's not the right-wingers who are being shown to have all sorts of clips". I understood that as you making a point that democrats are worse than republicans in general because of these examples. Which cannot be true because the entire Trump cabinet and most republican lawmakers are now doing the most heated and divisive rhetoric constantly and unapologetically, as though they are influencers and agitators, not government of a 2-party nation. Their actions speak even louder than words. So what you're pointing out in totality pales in comparison to what republicans are doing. And I'm saying: you cannot point to leftie twitch streamers that don't have any political power, and compare them to the literal White House and republican lawmakers, to judge the magnitude of the problem on each side.
However, even if we single out just the media figures, it's absolutely insane how much conspiracy, lies, and divisive rhetoric has been fed into right wing minds. And it's almost awe-inspiring how lockstep all republican pundits are with each other. Nothing like that exists on the left.
Do you live under a fucking rock? Right wingers are all mindlessly screaming about antifa and transgenders online, and calling out for civil war.
> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and irresponsible.
Exactly which words were wrong/irresponsible/irresponsible? Do you have a video clip and timestamp of the specific statements?
> - Clearly the market was already deciding that Kimmel's show is irrelevant (Nielsen ratings quite clear on that).
Quite the coïncidence that this is the second comedian that has been canceled, the first being Colbert. As Timothy Snyder, a historian on Central/Eastern Europe, the Holocaust, and totalitarians regimes, commented: General pattern in regime change: the comedy gets better and then it gets banned.
* https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/196846639438465036...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder
> - ABC's distributors threatened to stop airing the network, which is what actually caused Disney/ABC to act, it's hard to say what impact the FCC Chairs comments actually had.
The owner of many ABC stations is looking to fulfill a $6.2B merger/acquisition:
* https://www.nexstar.tv/nexstar-media-group-inc-enters-into-d...
* https://deadline.com/2025/08/nexstar-acquires-tegna-local-tv...
They need to get FCC approval.
Instead of deciding the deal on its merits, the Trump administration has made it known if you rub its tummy you will get what you want (export policy isn't decided on (say) national security evaluations, but if you give money: Nvidia 15% export tariff, UAE buying $2B of Trump-family crypto).
Instead of procedural government decisions (i.e., rule of law), you get government decisions based on the temperament of the boss.
> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory.
Was it really though? Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican. He had a republican background, but it didn't motivate the killing which didn't seem to have any particular ideology beyond (maybe) trans identity politics and/or edgelord memery. So yeah, that was wrong.
But if that's "irresponsible and inflammatory", then isn't it equally so to blame "democrats" or "the left", also groups with which Robinson has no documented affiliation? And we can all agree that this is happening pervasively on the right, at all levels.
The double standard here seems troublesome to me, and likely deliberate. Which, I'll add, what actually the point Kimmel was trying to make.
> now I get to do 3 hours of reading to say "it never really existed in broadcast television and also yes, this is bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" and boom now I'm the fascist
You're not a fascist, but you do seem to be sort of an apologist. Doesn't the linked article directly refute the "not nearly as bad as you think" bit? It's happening again!
> Was it really though? Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican. He had a republican background, but it didn't motivate the killing which didn't seem to have any particular ideology beyond (maybe) trans identity politics. So yeah, that was wrong.
Look I don't even pretend to know the truth. But the sitting governor of Utah, the highest authority on the investigation (which is being done by Utah state investigators), said the shooter had a "leftest ideology". NYT source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/kirk-shooting-suspect-...
Now its fine to not believe the governor, but I am not one of the investigators so thats as good as I can get unless I believe in a conspiracy by the state of Utah itself, which I think warrants evidence.
Personally I don't believe in "group X verbed Y", as I do not believe that groups can act. Liberals didn't shoot anyone, conservatives didn't shoot anyone; a single individual person shot someone. Group identity is not interesting to me, nor do I find it helpful. I do find it very inflammatory tho, and think is a deplorable thing to say to uninformed viewers at home.
By "not nearly as bad as you think", what I mean is, the FCC has always policed content on broadcast television. Shows have been cut mid-air due to foul language. We have never had "freedom of speech" on broadcast television. And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action, that it was actually ABC's distributors who caused the ruckus, then this is bog-standard "cancel culture", which, while bad, is hardly the death of free speech. I'd be perfectly unbothered if broadcast television died completely, thus reducing the FCCs ability to control the media period.
Yes, I'd love to live in a world with less censorship, less stupidity, less government control, but that's not the world we live in, and its not the world we used to live in, either.
> By "not nearly as bad as you think", what I mean is, the FCC has always policed content on broadcast television
For boring stuff like sex and profanity! When was the last time a show was pulled under threat of FCC action because of political speech? Has it ever happened before? And it's happening again, just days after it worked the first time.
Your cynicism, whether it's deliberate or not, is serving you very badly here.
> And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action
Good grief. Brendan Carr literally made the threat on camera, in public. That's the way extortion works. You don't have to take the action because the target submits.
Extortion doesn't count for much if the FCC had no leg to stand on. I would have loved to have seen the fine and the resulting court-case, but unfortunately for everyone ABC pulled the program because of complaints from its broadcasters. We do not (as far as I know), have the ability to know to what extent the FCC Chair's comments mattered at all.
I absolutely agree the FCC is overstepping and that the FCC Chair is doing a bad thing by making such comments, but until the FCC as an organization actually issues a fine or pulls a license, nothing has actually happened. If what I'm saying puts me into some particular camp that you're opposed to, well, the scissor statement worked. And that makes me much more upset than any of this drama.
> We do not (as far as I know), have the ability to know to what extent the FCC Chair's comments mattered at all.
Two things - firstly, it wasn't a comment, it was a threat to kill ABC's ability to broadcast by the person with power to revoke their license. There's a difference.
Secondly, if you don't want to have the appearance of responsibility for your thumb on the scale, don't put your thumb on the scale. Don't just say that your thumb was one of many and it could've been anyone's pressure that caused the cancellation. There should be no confusion.
That’s totally fair and I agree. I definitely do not think what the FCC Chair said was appropriate.
> Extortion doesn't count for much if the FCC had no leg to stand on.
What on earth are you saying here? It worked. Obviously it "counts", it actually happened! The show was pulled from the air! You're saying that censorship isn't "technically censorship" if in some alternative universe Disney fought back and won? They didn't!
As for your opinion about the reach of the FCC's powers or the risk to broadcasters of regulatory action, clearly Bob Iger's lawyers disagree with you, and I'm going to bet they're rather better at their jobs than median HN commenters.
Edit: I'm going to call it here. The final reply below seems like 100% apoloigsm to me. The argument seems to be that somehow this is all a mistake, that Disney just got the wrong idea and torpedoed their own show by no fault of the government. And we all know that's not what happened. I don't know how to reply, so I won't.
Do you have any statement from ABC or Disney that they pulled the show due to FCC comments?
Per PBS.org:
> ABC, which has aired “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” since 2003, did not immediately explain why it suspended the show on Wednesday. But its announcement came after both Nexstar and Sinclair said they would stop airing Kimmel’s show on their ABC-affiliated stations.
Until we get any indication that the FCC chair's comments were the source of the cancelation, I maintain that while what Carr said was stupid and bad, and what the FCC mostly does is stupid and bad, and while what Disney mostly does is stupid and bad, that this is not some new form of fascism.
It's clear you think I'm an idiot, so I'm quite sure my words will mean nothing to you, but please, hear this: A megacorporation took an action that has caused you to have strong animosity towards a fellow citizen based on perceived but not actual happenings. Resist the urge to be pissed off. I will happily march with you when and if the federal government actually attacks freedom of speech.
I don’t know why I can’t reply to the OPs original comment but it’s obvious that the person you’re replying with is either arguing in bad faith or just being obtuse.
> unless I believe in a conspiracy by the state of Utah itself
What about political incentives? The conservative media sphere was falling over themselves to rush to label the shooter before any evidence or even a statement of "ideology" was given by the Utah gov, such that the WSJ posted and retracted an article about how the shooter was trans. An observation of that was what got Kimmel turned off the air. It wasn't what the Utah gov eventually said, it was all that had taken place before then.
> And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action, that it was actually ABC's distributors who caused the ruckus
What if the chair caused the ruckus with the distributors by making public comment and explicitly threatening to pull ABC's status, on a timeline before the distributor made the call? Why is this explicit threat of removal, not just taken against the show, but against the entire network, not considered an action?
> Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican.
He literally didn't though? Why does this mistake keep being made. Kimmel made 0 assertions about the shooter. He did make assertions about the President and his conduct, however.
He... sorta did: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them [...]"
The sentence is convoluted but clearly implies that "this kid" was "one of the MAGA gang".
Is that what Kimmel meant? No, his point was that they (the MAGA gang) were exploiting the tragedy to "score political points". But it's not what he said, really. So arguments over meaning can at least happen in good faith. If someone says they're offended, I think it's not unreasonable to clarify and offer an apology.
...but not obviously to be sacrificed at an altar to the FCC commisioner.
Regardless of whether he was one of the MAGA gang, they are trying to characterize him as anything but one of them. No one really knows at this point, but that hasn't stopped the characterization.
> The sentence is convoluted but clearly implies that "this kid" was "one of the MAGA gang".
What? This is crazy “find the authors purpose” gymnastics. The quote does nothing to imply that the kids is Maga or not. It does however directly commentates on “Maga gang”’s actions to try to paint him as anyone other than someone who could be MAGA. Thats the entire point of what was said
> The quote does nothing to imply that the kids is Maga or not. It does however directly commentates on “Maga gang”’s actions to try to paint him as anyone other than someone who could be MAGA
In every universe where the shooter is not "MAGA" (which, on the available evidence, includes ours), "trying to paint him as anyone else" is truthful, and not wrong. The entire point of a critique of this sort is to allege that someone did something wrong. The sentence does carry the implication that Kimmel is calling the shooter "MAGA" (i.e., either believes it, or wants to insinuate it) because otherwise there would be no reason, in Kimmel's position, to say any of it.
It feels a better strategy for all parties involved to have transitioned these shows to ABC's streaming properties (i.e. Hulu) and made them "exclusive" content for these platforms.
This would have put them out of the reach of the FCC (based on the FCC's initial spectrum is for public benefit for all claim) for now.
There is probably significant IP in both of these shows that could still have been monetized given brand familiarity. It would have been less than before but still something is better than nothing.
I don't have any data to back this up but I can't imagine a lot of people still use Over The Air TV. And the intersection of people who rely solely on OTA TV and are clamoring to watch Kimmel/View is probably even lower.
This also would probably have benefitted the administration in that it wouldn't have trigger as many alarm bells from a free speech perspective.
I don't have any idea where this will go, but the idea that our collective future is determined by the restraint of the people currently in power does not bode well.
While I don't much care for either Kimmel nor The View - this is ridiculously corrupt, authoritarian, thuggish, illegal and arrogant behavior and cannot be allowed to stand.
And shame on Disney for caving. Cowards who kneel down to kiss the ring in the face of blatantly illegal threats are not worthy of a position of public trust. And over a merger no less.
I can't think of a better moral justification to prevent a corporation from owning a bigger slice of the ecosystem than to know that said corporation will dispense of any and all integrity they may yet possess to do it.
An issue was that the right was being canceled for views not even 5 years ago and the same people complaining about Kimmel are having their exact quotes replayed justifying those types of cancellations.
From a game theoretic standpoint, tit for tat is exactly what’s supposed to happen to stabilize the situation. This has actually been proven by mathematicians that apply decision making theories to social structures.
You're conflating cancel culture, done voluntarily by private companies, with censorship, with the federal government through the FCC is dictating the outcomes of mergers and acquisitions based on compliance with speech restrictions.
This isn't entirely true, as cancel culture was also prominent at public universities.
Private companies were being pressured by government officials. That was already proven a few years ago.
Also, Kimmel is a case of a private company canceling him the FCC didn’t force anything.
The Biden administration had (and used) the ability to demote conservative news outlets on Facebook and Twitter. This cancel culture— both from the right and left— sucks and should be fought.
> The Biden administration had (and used) the ability to demote conservative news outlets on Facebook and Twitter.
This is categorically false. Are you referring to this story, where the Biden administration asked Facebook to take down Covid misinformation and "expressed a lot of frustration" when Zuckerberg told them no?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-wh...
If not, then where did you learn that the Biden administration "had (and used) the ability to demote conservative news outlets on Facebook and Twitter"?
plenty of evidence if you look
http://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/weaponizatio...
See if you can spot the difference. And i am not defending past cancellations, but there is a not so subtle difference in kind here that makes these kind of both sides arguments fall flat.
The right was cancelled by the US government?
Yes, much of the anger is coming from the petard-hoisting nature of this, and people who spent 2017-2024 trying to silence (or worse) everyone who disagreed with them and cheering on governments that tried to suppress "disinformation" and other speech they didn't like, having to come up with elaborate justifications why It's Different This Time.
I don’t watch any of these shows, but I have seen videos of the View hosts having to read “Legal Notes” on air, often after commercial breaks to “clarify” or correct things that were just said on the show. Even one video where after the “note” the host attempted to clarify off the cuff even further…only to get an another note again right away to clarify the clarification.
My feeling is if I was a media company, and I had to employ lawyers to legal check conversations in real time on a talk show because my hosts were either so dumb to know when to avoid shooting their mouths off, or couldn’t control themselves…that show better be making a metric shit ton of profit otherwise I’d yank it and put up reruns of House on the Prairie.
I think cancelling The View is overall a benefit to humanity.
But the real question is: Are they going after Fox News, OANN now too? Plenty of biased shows there.
I love my liberal principles but this is totally expected.
Ideally we live in a world where Kimmel isn't canceled but neither is someone like Roseanne Barr. But that world hasn't existed for a while.
In a prisoners dilemma both sides win by cooperation. Once a side "defects" - the other side is a sucker not to. The ship on lamenting this stuff has sailed.
Barr wasn’t cancelled by threats from the Government.
tens of thousands were
http://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/weaponizatio...
Neither was Kimmel - the real threats came from the ABC affiliates who threatened to not air his content.
Kimmel was canceled explicitly because of a threat by the government. Carr has made that clear.
The FCC, like other federal agencies, is independent. There's nothing in the article to suggest that Carr's decision to do this has anything to do with Trump, who doesn't actually have authority here. Per the article, Carr apparently doesn't think he did anything coercive either. He's just making public statements. The supposed "threat" doesn't seem to me like much of one.
And Carr is also irrelevant to the Kimmel firing. ABC faced pressure from affiliates and his ratings had been declining for a long time.
> The FCC, like other federal agencies, is independent.
That's not what Trump thinks [1].
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensu...
Carr spoke about a potential investigation by the FCC on a podcast and the affiliates and Disney bowed to that.
> Carr spoke about a potential investigation by the FCC on a podcast and the affiliates and Disney bowed to that.
Kind of like a mob member talks about a potential fire at a local establishment.
Is there a judiciary that determines whether the mob was within their rights to light your restaurant on fire, and can stop the mob from lighting the restaurant on fire?
Even if you think the FCC is just an extension of trump(fair) at this moment, their rulings aren't the final word. They still need to follow the law. If the FCC improperly attempts to withhold a license from the affiliate, the affiliate can sue and let federal judges, who are not an extension of trump, decide on the matter.
> If the FCC improperly attempts to withhold a license from the affiliate, the affiliate can sue and let federal judges, who are not an extension of trump, decide on the matter.
Which will take years to settle and you're paying fees upon fees. Or you can kiss ass and get it rubber stamped.
That's why corruption can be so corrosive: it's the "easy" way through the problem.
Why are people playing dumb and ignoring this detail?
It's not being ignored. It's being judged to be incorrect.
Because the political playbook is to argue in bad faith and conservatives are much better convincing their base of that than democrats. Why are many of them convinced that left wing violence is a scourge when right wing violence outweighs it by an overwhelming majority [0] unless you do mental gymnastics after tons of mass shootings (as Kash Patel, who one would think would be aware of related trends to domestic terrorism, so eloquently put it: “I’m sorry. Dylann Roof?”[1])
[0]https://theconversation.com/right-wing-extremist-violence-is... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrkgM9_xOj4
That's a nuance without consequence. Barr is a random example that came to mind.
The larger point is that it's been very difficult for a while to be a conservative in media, or academia or in the workplace, due to the ease with which you were canceled. The reason people stick with principles because it helps them and the other side - it's a high ground maneuver.
But once you feel like you are consistently deprived of all the benefits of that principle, you are no longer inclined to uphold it.
So in general I would expect conservatives to now attack via pathways they were previously above. The fact that people are surprised they are getting fired for celebrating Kirk's murder is one sign of how benign the conservatives had been about that stuff. I think that's over now.
There's also a false equivalence, because when the government is on the same team as all the big tech and media companies, it doesn't have to threaten anyone into silencing speech the team doesn't like. It just happens, and then everyone pretends it's organic.
I'd be glad to have a free speech conversation about this with anyone who actually cares about free speech, but that doesn't include anyone who spent the last decade cheering every time someone they disagreed with got his livelihood taken away. One TV network dumping one "comedian" who was well past his sell-by date is a tiny, tiny counter-trend to what's been going on for years.
Absolutely not, I will not concede this point at all. People deciding you are intolerable is not the same as the government putting pressure on your employer.
You don't have to conceded anything. You think conservatives can't point to examples of the government squeezing them, under the guise of COVID stuff, DEI requirements and the like? Or they don't think there was pressure from the government to shape the news?
I want to agree with you, I am just saying it doesn't matter what you and I agree on. Conservatives have clearly seen and felt the principles not applying to their benefits and they are over it. Whether you or I can agonize about a particular misapplication of a particular principle doesn't matter.
Who was the president when Barr's show was cancelled in 2018? Some woke guy?
Jimmy Kimmel being "cancelled" has nothing to do with Jimmy. He is the canary in the coal mine. The real issue is that the federal government is using their power and might to withhold FCC licensing from groups that they do not agree with. The FCC->ABC situation is what is alarming, has nothing to do with Jimmy.
Same shit happened with CBS/Paramount.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07JQr5W3970
The government didn't step in to threaten ABC over Barr spouting off derogatory racist trash. They weren't jawboned into doing it. They just didn't want to be associated with a trash person.
Overton Window shift basically. One side used cancel culture relentlessly for even the smallest slights. Now the other side is using the very same tactic. Many people who have kept out of the extremes have now shifted towards the right and those who ignore the shift are finding out the hard way.
I advise HN users who aren't aware of what's happening, read up on what Overton Window is and why its dangerous to continue posting the way you have without infosec.
You think you are posting only on HN but your posts are actually being distributed on other platforms by people who are very angry.
Users on Bluesky thought they were posting on Bluesky but they only found out too late, after they got fired because their political posts were being shared elsewhere.
There have already been few HN users who have been targeted for their radical views and have paid the price.
For your sake, please don't ignore this message.
I think it hits quite different when the canceling is done by a gaggle of oversensitive Karens as opposed to by members of the government.
That's my take. Its worse this time because it's coming from the government, but in a sense that makes it actually an opportunity to fight it in court (and they absolutely should.) In any case, the rules of engagement have been clear for years: if we don't like you, then we're coming for your livelihood.
It's not "worse because it's coming from the government".
The fact it is coming from the government is what makes it terrifying.
You seem to contradict yourself. It's worse, yes? Your first sentence says no while your second sentence says yes.
It actually sickens me how many people that supposedly cared about liberty just completely switched their schtick overnight. I'm not surprised that some of these people were two faced liars, I'm just surprised by the sheer scale and the shamelessness of it. It's like I'm living in a world surrounded by aliens.
Libertarians in name only
> "It's like I'm living in a world surrounded by aliens."
...
It's neat to learn who had actual principles and who was just borrowing some because they were upset they couldn't use the N word.
The actual quote from the FCC chair:
"When you look at these other TV shows, what's interesting is the FCC does have a rule called the Equal Opportunity Rule, which means, for instance, if you're in the run-up to an election and you have one partisan elected official on, you have to give equal time, equal opportunity, to the opposing partisan politician,"
This is classic Trump era politics. Bully people with a tangential connection to a obscure law. That way it has an air of legality. Well it meanders through the courts. In the end it doesn't matter if it gets ruled down or not. This gives you time to be rule as a de facto authoritarian.
2021: government asking Twitter to tell you that you're not a horse is an unconstitutional violation of free speech.
2025: it's doubleplusgood to threaten TV channels for wrongthink.
The Kimmel case is a straightforward protection racket.
Nexstar, the owner of 39% of the local TV stations in the country, wants the FCC to change their rules to allow them to merge with [other conglomerate name I forget] to increase their local market ownership share to 80%.
(If you listen to what Kimmel said, he mainly mocked Trump.)
Beyond the obvious state censorship issues here, its worth noting that Kimmel's monologue on Sep 15 appeared before add'l evidence (texts, discord chats) came out about Tyler Robinson's incoherent beliefs. This means that Kimmel's implied accusation (Tyler was MAGA) was a real possibility at the time, rather than willful misinformation.
I took his statement to be deeper than MAGA vs liberal.
Regardless of the spin, the view that political opponents are existential risks to the republic and thus demand to be killed for the good of all of is what he was suggesting that is shared.
Yes, this is more or less how I read the statement, but I can see why others had a less charitable reading. I don't want to nitpick it too much, because its a pretextual charge during a tense moment.
People are discovering that cancel culture goes both ways.
Neither one is good.
But let's not pretend that cancel culture has not been going for many years now.
Remember Fox News cancelling, their most popular at the time, Tucker Carlson Show?
I think the problem is that the FCC is getting involved here.
Yes, they could have spent time, first creating an informal "communication safety" group between some Government agency and Disney/ABC. But I feel like this is splitting hairs.
Government threats led to Tucker's cancellation?
I do remember that, and it turns out there's so many reasons to have fired TC that people had pages of listicles on why he could have been fired https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... and none of them were cancel culture it turns out. Fox already lied and paid out hundreds of millions on dominion, it couldn't handle paying for any more lies.
Yeah, I am sure soon we be given good reasons why "they couldn't handle" JK either. Just scroll down the comments. See, ABC affiliates wanted him gone... :-)
TC has now an audience larger than the entire Fox News. Maybe JK will do the same.
This is not normal.
Historically speaking it might sadly be :/
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Off to the USSR we go unless Congress gets brave. Sadly I told people who came here from the USSR where I use to work 40 years ago we were heading towards being the USSR, but a bit different.
They said "no way", well here we are, well on our way. Just a different flavor of the same type of thing.
I get multiple news notifications within minutes of all these things, that’s pretty different than unfettered authoritarianism where people don’t even know it’s happening.
If everyone is aware of what’s going on and we still elect these people, that’s more on us than them no?
I served in the Navy 40 years ago on a nuclear submarine opposed to the Soviet Union so I had an interest in learning about our enemy. People like Stephen Kotkin have said Stalin and those around him were true believers in communism, while the situation in America feels like early Putinism, which was about money and power. But the suppression of those critical of the regime is the same.
it would help if the billionaire / centimillionaire classes decided they didn't like what was going on.
who do you think is orchestrating this?
the voters? who get their information from....media conglomerates, which are controlled by....you guessed it
It’d be hectomillionaire, unless you’re referring to people with $10k.
Picomillionaires rise up!
Centimillionaire was chosen for a reason.
It's sad that the head of the FCC is ignorant of what the FCC does.
The Fairness doctrine was eliminated in the late 80's by Republicans whose talk shows were taking over AM radio.
Later, the FCC took the position that it does not have the authority to regulate content. Only technical things like frequency allocation.
Now, suddenly the Republicans want to invoke the rules they killed because someone got their feelings hurt?
Man up, GOP.
Maybe turn off the TV and read a book, or go for a walk, or take up a hobby other than being angry at everything.
Republicans are demanding "equal time."
Cool. I look forward to hearing Whoopi Goldberg on AM talk radio.
Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine created echo chambers. [0] Equal air time to different point of views of a topic turned into 100% or 99% network pushed point of view. This removed a standard person from having quality engagement to content designed an manipulated for personal gain by the networks. It was a good bridge to living together versus living divided.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine
This is the way shakedowns work. Disney backed down on Kimmel because he's "just a comedian" or it's "just one show" or he was "failing anyway". So now they're marks. It's always easy to squeeze a mark for a second time than to shake down a fresh one.
The View is "soft news", it's a "minor talk show", it's "daytime TV". It's not like they're coming after This Week or World News Tonight. Right?
Just shows that they want to cave, they’re not being forced, they can fight and win but they want to be threatened and cave. If we get out of this mess I hope these people are also made responsible for the outcomes as enablers.
I'm sure there's some Republicans on HN. I'm curious why/if you think that, if the public pressuring companies to fire people for some things (what some people call "cancelling") is wrong, it's somehow more appropriate for the government to do it? Or is this just a matter of, "well, they did it for years, now it's our turn" for you?
(If you don't actually support this party, consider refraining from sharing your opinions of why Republicans support this. And for what it's worth, I don't think the downvotes for those actually sharing their opinions [in a productive way] are deserved, even if I disagree with them.)
Y'all really need to read the guidelines
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
There are actually quite a few Republicans, such as Karl Rove, who are irate at the current administration for its attacks on free speech.
But broadly speaking, and this truly transcends partisan divisions, there are very many people whose commitment to free speech only extends insofar as they like the speech being protected. It is actually quite rare to find somebody who will advocate "I think the speech you are saying is reprehensible, but I will stake my life on defending the right for you to say it."
All attempts to justify it logically are in vain, deep down lots of people just want to smash the "others" - the lies are like a depth-first search for the shortest path to finding a point where they can finally just drop all pretense.
Most republicans I know despised Kimmel but think the government overstepped. I’m not a Republican, but I am conservative. I think these moves are inexcusable.
I think you should understand that a lot of R's vote along party lines and just felt that Trump would be the lesser of two evils. I would rephrase your question to ask for people that support this specific action, as opposed to membership in the party.
I am a Republican, not necessarily thrilled with how things are going, and I completely oppose forcing Kimmel out of a job for this. It is not only unconstitutional in my opinion, but also extremely petty.
I also am Republican and believe in free speech but I believe it was OK to fire Kimmel b/c he's an employee who serves at the whim of his employer.
It isn't a free speech issue b/c the government didn't fire him. Nor do I think the government had much to do with Kimmel's firing.
I believe Kimmel displayed extremely poor taste in his choice of topics and wording, enough for any reasonable business to fire his ass. Maybe he can come back in a year.
Not a Republican, or even an American, but I do have opinions about this (and I have heard from Republicans about it).
Basically, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305810 has the right of it, for the most part.
But also: in my view, this isn't exactly "the government" doing it. It comes across that the major ABC affiliates already didn't like the show and have been looking for an excuse to get rid of Kimmel for a while. His show has been fading into irrelevance; if you exclude the videos with "Trump" in the title, the Youtube channel has been doing terribly of late relative to the subscriber count (over 20M). And even the Trump videos look lackluster next to the consistently popular documentaries on, say, Veritasium (which puts out science documentaries and has a similar subscriber count). At any rate, "pressure" like this isn't a 1A violation as far as I can tell; no law is being made by Congress.
And also, it does matter what the cause of action is. An allegation that your political opponents are trying to dodge responsibility for a serious crime committed by one of their own, is pretty heavy. Maybe you don't think that's worse than, say, insulting someone in a bigoted way; but the Republicans I've heard from seem to consider that the latter standard isn't applied consistently anyway. Which is to say: if they're getting called "Nazis" and "fascists" and there's no penalty for that, it seems like that ought to establish a standard whereby other insults of comparable severity are fair game.
One thing I've heard many times in right-wing political discourse, though I'm not sure of the exact phrasing, is "my rules applied fairly > your rules applied fairly > your rules as you apply them".
> I don't think the downvotes for those actually sharing their opinions [in a productive way] are deserved
In my experience, the arguments very often come from a place of hurt and a genuine sense of being mistreated. It's hard for them to end up being shared very productively.
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Simple. The Republicans remember when they were cancelled for not wanting to take a vaccination that was just invented months earlier; when they were deplatformed from Twitter constantly; when Reddit rejoiced at the death of one of their heroes; when "right wing violence is more common" became a meme as Minneapolis was literally burning. They watched a kid who they believed had a legitimate self-defense case get thrown the book in Wisconsin by a prosecutor called out by even the judge for brazen unfairness; with unprecedented levels of online hate rather than openness to discussion. They watched CNN accuse right wingers of exaggerating "mostly peaceful" protests with a car literally burning in the background. They stopped caring about your feelings, because you didn't care about theirs.
> They stopped caring about your feelings, because you didn't care about theirs.
Free speech is not about feelings. It's a principle, one enshrined in the US Constitution. If you don't believe in free speech, just say it. Say you don't want free speech, free assembly, free religion, and the free press. Don't cry about hurt feelings, though. That's what children do.
1A makes freedom of speech a legal principle, but it also exists as a philosophical principle and a moral value.
But fair play is also a moral value held by many.
For years, in my experience, it was unilaterally the "blue tribe" in the US who would point at XKCD 1357, and argue that the constitutional protection of freedom of speech doesn't extend to being able to keep your job, since the job doesn't come from the government in the first place (and because of "at-will" employment laws, and because of your employer's freedom of association). But if you believe this, then you have to accept that it can also be used against you.
I personally think it matters quite a bit exactly what was said, along with how strongly it was identifiably tied to the company, and what the PR effect would be. Companies shouldn't, absent other extenuating factors, have to keep around someone whose mere presence will hurt the business. But it's also unfair if companies are given an inaccurate impression of what customers on balance actually think about the matter.
> If you don't believe in free speech, just say it. Say you don't want free speech, free assembly, free religion, and the free press. Don't cry about hurt feelings, though. That's what children do.
It comes across that you have decided what GP's values really are, and are trying to extract a confession through bullying. This is not a productive mode of discourse.
They stood for free speech; but judging by the downvotes here, the left didn't care about their free speech. If it did, my post above wouldn't be at -4, while the inflammatory answer above is still in the black.
The left instead rationalized it under "free speech is not freedom from consequences", called them Nazis, fascists, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, you'd need a thesaurus. Every slur in the thesaurus, they used. When your opponent plays dirty, actively seeks to get you fired from your job, and your figureheads get killed (Kirk) or nearly killed (Trump), why uphold the rules?
EDIT: > Admit that your position is an unprincipled one and based on feelings rather than thought.
Admit that the right has realized that neither side gives a damn about principles; but the left has no right to claim to be principled after 2020.
You seem to be done editing this finally, so I'll quote (in case you edit it again) and respond:
> When your opponent plays dirty, when your figureheads get killed or nearly killed, why uphold the rules?
The Constitution wasn't shredded after Lincoln's assassination, Kennedy's, the attempt on Reagan. Why shred it now? You either believe in the principles, or you do not. If you don't, just admit it instead of complaining about hurt feelings or people playing dirty. Be an adult.
Damn, you managed to edit it while I was typing that, but the irony in this is rich:
> actively seeks to get you fired from your job
The Vice President of the United States is calling for people to be fired for speech. Again, you either believe in the freedom of speech or you don't. It's very clear that you do not. So again, be an adult. Admit that your position is an unprincipled one and based on feelings rather than thought.
EDIT: Removed "or Roosevelt" from attempted assassinations, he was the former president, not the sitting president, at the time.
> If it did, my post above wouldn't be at -4, while the inflammatory answer above is still in the black.
Ah ok, so only your right to free speech is important and no one is allowed to react negatively to it and have their own free speech. Thanks for making that clear.
This basically sums it up.
The right was upset that free speech worked both ways.
They are now enforcing that grievance with government power.
> while the inflammatory answer above is still in the black.
Which answer are you referring to?
I don't know though, maybe going from downvotes to making assumptions about something like 50m people is a bit of a stretch? And for what it's worth, I upvoted it, and I would certainly fall under "the left"
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Correct. He didn't use a legal framework, and did it anyway. They even convinced Twitter to ban retweeting an unfavorable New York Post article that turned out true!
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mark-zuckerbe...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-wh...
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO02/20220914/115106/HHRG...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/14/facebook-...
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54552101
Trump's single greatest political achievement is to make everybody forget who was president in 2020.
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> Not a single one of these articles supports the claim that the Biden administration used the law to make speech illegal in the same manner that trump used the fcc to make speech illegal.
TFA doesn't establish that Trump did any such thing, nor even that the FCC did any such thing.
I don't think Republicans characterize it that way. I find myself right leaning, and while I like most of Trumps agenda, I often disagree with his tactics. I increasingly have to fact check stuff like this to see if he crossed a line. The problem is there's too much BS, summarizing, and mischaracterising going on. Direct quotes (sometimes requiring context) are needed to get to the bottom of things. It's exhausting. I will say, right or wrong the left brought this on - it is a response to their bad behavior.
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Please avoid Christophobic language. Thanks.
lol what?
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Why is this site full of weirdos man
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Back in 2022, when Musk was buying Twitter and the Biden administration was asking social media companies to moderate potentially harmful medical misinformation, it felt like every third comment here was someone hollering about free-speech absolutism. Where did all those people go?
It's different when they do it.
Lots of right wing people on this platform, evident by the heavy hand moderation if you go against the common grievance of the day.
Which I mean I guess makes sense. Any place that is so feverish about crypto, ai, newFad2.0, or is super into #factsNotFeelinfg always seems like it attracts the same crowd
Pure kayfabe. ABC needed any excuse to get rid of a show that no longer made sense in the modern era of streaming. NBC and CBS must be furious that they didn’t think of this first.
Edit: Ha I forgot that CBS actually did think of it first with Colbert’s show getting axed too.
Stupid take. These shows are cheap to produce and still get good ratings. They're profitable. What are they being replaced with?
You can’t resell old episodes. They only talk about news and celebrities relevant to each specific week. They’re instantly dated - no one is rewatching old episodes beyond a week. Even if there are some stragglers still watching them with their ancient cable TV subscriptions, they’ll be gone within five years and who wants to invest in a dying show with an expiration date?
We need a third party, because this is just the pendulum swinging away from one cancel culture to another.
This is not cancel culture. It is a violation of the First Amendment.
Don't be naive. There was no jawboning from the previous administration to networks to cancel someone -- especially someone who always made fun of the President.
However, this is a a classic example of violation of 1A. (I agree that the thing that was probably in the grey area was they asked Twitter to remove certain COVID-19 medical disinformation tweets -- But, come on, many people were consuming horse dewormers for COVID and dying. )
The right's cancel culture is a violation of constitution because it's the government that's doing the cancelling.
Kimmel was fired because his ratings were shit, and advertisers didn't want him doubling down on a lie. Sorry, the FCC thing is just an excuse for people who don't want to admit that.
Can you speak more intelligently to your point. What laws were violated? Why would the FCC care about profitability of a show and advertisers?
HN threads are open to diverse opinions, but deserve more than vitriol
What lie was Kimmel doubling down on? I found his comedic observations pretty accurate, which is why they stung the MAGA faithful.
We also found out that Kimmel was planning a second attack on MAGA when the executives at ABC were already on-edge about the timing causing a backlash; simultaneously when Kimmel's ratings have dropped 43% since January to under 1.1M, which is "advertisers bailing out" territory. That's a lot duller than the Brendan Carr theory.
geeze we sure strayed far from "legalize comedy" pretty quickly. Here we are, discussing quips like they're a military operation.
So many political posts on the front page
It's tangential, as most people here aren't involved in traditional media, but this is a government that is interested in suppressing speech it dislikes [1]. Not actively harmful speech, threats and the like, just things they dislike. If this continues it could have significant impact for companies in the US, working with the US, and people working in the US but from other countries. This is the same administration that wants to go through social media posts and comments of people visiting the country to screen them for bad thoughts. Members of the administration are calling on people to rat each other out to their employers for this thoughtcrime.
[1] https://clayhiggins.house.gov/2025/09/15/higgins-calls-upon-... - a recent example, out of Congress. Calling on social media companies to ban users because they said something he dislikes.
> a recent example, out of Congress. Calling on social media companies to ban users because they said something he dislikes.
Social media commonly already has terms of service which forbid glorification of violence. Expecting TOS to be applied fairly (i.e. without consideration of who got shot and who did the shooting) seems entirely reasonable to me.
There’s a lot of politics happening to us in real life right now too
Obviously caught your attention. So it’s made it front page for a reason
Time to toss symbols and words. When everyone is the same thing that everyone's accusing one another of being, then signaling is done. We've reached the symbolic impasse that arbitrariness only enforces.
There's nothing coherent statement-wise coming out of the political leadership of all parties. That explains everything. No one is communicating. The news says nothing. All that matters is actions. And without a system of explanation for those actions, the species is dead.
Listen to the experts:
“...by getting rid of the clumsy symbols ‘round which we are fighting, we might bring the fight to an end.” Henri Bergson Time and Free Will
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less," said Humpty-Dumpty. "The question is whether you can make the words mean so many different things," Alice says. "The question is which is to be master—that is all," he replies. Lewis Carroll
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.” Philip K. Dick