The Naked Emperor
"But he hasn't got anything on!" said the boy...
Trump’s pet FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, threatened to take away ABC’s broadcast license because a late-night host/comic, Jimmy Kimmel made some “negative” remarks about the murder (and the murderer) of Charley Kirk. (I don’t know much about Jimmy Kimmel; for various reasons I was never a fan of late-night TV in general, and besides—it was always on past my bed-time.)
Kimmel, and his firing, represent much more than the man, his individual TV career or the way ABC (in all their corporate inhumanity) handled this manufactured crisis.
Kimmel and the way he was treated, are symbols (just like the non-punishment of far worse comments from the creatures of Fox TV) of the current health—or lack of it—of the First Amendment.
I watched Kimmel’s monologue on You-tube. He didn’t criticized Kirk at all; he even said that he thought Trump felt some real grief at Kirk’s killing (though, when Trump was asked how he felt about Kirk’s shooting, he spent more time talking about the grandiose excrescence of a ballroom he was foisting on the country.)
It’s also worth keeping in mind—considering that Trump bases most of his behavior on adolescent vengeance—that Kimmel. god-bless-him, has been a bee in Trump’s bonnet for a long time..
In his brief critical comments (and I’ve read far, far worse on Facebook) Kimmel did make one very important point: He said that the Republicans are using Kirk’s murder to “score political points.”
Well, of course they are!
You’d have to be a particularly innocent child not to see how they (especially the men that own and operate MAGA)—have immediately begun to sanctify Kirk; to cynically use his murder, his life and death, as a thin excuse to speed up their premeditated plan to destroy the fundamental principles of democracy.
Here’s a handy rule for judging the substance of Trump-and-gang’s outrage:
You can always tell when their complaint is either faked or evidence of a diseased mind—or both: The louder the bellowing, the more insincere and/or crazy the bellower…
Trump, and the odious crowd from Project 2025—before they had any idea who the murderer was, or his motive—immediately started howling about The Left, The Radicals, Antifa, George Soros—The Entire Democratic Party! And—for that matter, anyone, anywhere, they can squeeze into the role of villain for their fascist fantasies…
And these skin-headed, red-tie fascists are just beginning their crusade—gnawing away like rats at the First Amendment—devouring the basic right of all Americans to freedom of speech and to publicly air our grievances against the government. That’s what the American Revolution was for—to get rid of kings and transfer their power to the people.
If we’re not allowed to say out loud that the Emperor, his FCC chairman—and the rest of the servile boot-licking courtiers that make up his cabinet—are completely naked, and that these people are trying to fit our democracy into their personal autocratic fairy-tale; If we can’t say these things out loud, then everything else we do (political campaigns, lawsuits, speeches in congress) becomes a hollow side-show. If we don’t have the right to speak our minds, especially about our government’s attack on our very right to speak our minds, then, effectively, we have no more democracy.
Were Kimmel’s words too harsh or tasteless? Maybe, maybe not; that might depend on whether you’re a man or woman, black or white, gay or straight, Christian or non-Christian… What’s essential now—in this feverish atmosphere of public shock transmuted instantly into manipulated political hysteria—what’s essential is to keep in mind that Kirk was, as much as anything else, a political figure, a certified, right-wing celebrity. And it’s also vital to appreciate the supreme irony of this situation (if irony still exists in Trump’s America). The irony of Kirk’s death and the ensuing anti-democratic suppression of free speech by his “followers”—is that Kirk based his entire persona—his success as a public figure—on the very existence of the universal right to free speech.
That Trump and the head of the FCC and various other influential government and political figures are using even the palest criticism of Kirk as an excuse to shut down his critics is the ultimate proof that Colbert and Kimmel—and everybody else like them—are absolutely necessary for the very survival of our democracy.