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| The whole Jimmy Kimmel brouhaha this week really crystalizes whether the First Amendment can survive Donald Trump. That matters to whether this blog can continue, and much more importantly, whether you and everyone else in American can continue to think and speak freely. |
This post won't seem entirely related to weather and climate like usual, but it's an important topic. The future of real information and freedom and free speech is very much at stake. As is the risk of authoritarianism.
As I'm sure you've heard you might have heard, Jimmy Kimmel's late night show was "pre-empted indefinitely" Wednesday. All for supposedly insensitive remarks regarding this month's murder of Charlie Kirk.
We're hearing a lot about Jimmy Kimmel and he's going to come up a lot in this post. But this isn't really about Jimmy Kimmel. It's about us. Essentially under Donald Trump's regime, we are all potential Jimmy Kimmels. Or worse.
The whole thing this week is part of a fast-rising push by Donald Trump and his minions to block anything but adoring praise for our Orange god.
It's fascist and stomps all over the First Amendment, but here we are.
Trump's idea of "free speech" is only speech that he likes. He claimed the other day that 97 percent of the news stories about him are negative. "I think that's really illegal, personally."
Even if his 97 percent figure was true, which it isn't, there would be nothing "illegal" about it. And he prefaced that statement with "I'm a very strong person for free speech."
Sure, Jan.
No wonder the late night talk show hosts have been mocking him.
Naturally, Trump is apparently going after late night comedians and daytime talk show hosts first. Unlike his predecessors in the Oval Office, he is too much of our Snowflake In Chief to withstand the usual late night comics digs and zings against presidents.
Trump's administration pushed CBS to announce plans to end Stephen Colbert's show. He has repeatedly said he intends to end the late night comedy/talk shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.
That he's going after comedians first is telling.
"Comedy does not change the world, but it's a bellwether. We're the banana peel in the coal mine. When a society is under threat, comedians are the ones who get sent away first," Jon Stewart said during his 2022 Mark Twain Award acceptance speech.
Stewart was prescient, wasn't he?.
This blog is not a big target. Yet. Mostly because I'm really not much of a comedian. And I'm really small potatoes. But you have to wonder, as Stewart said, that if comedians are the first target the rest of us are next.
We've already seen a bunch of people get fired after Trump's MAGA gang of internet trolls went after people who inadequately grieved over Charlie Kirk.
I have been critical of the Trump administration's policies or lack thereof on NOAA, the National Weather Service, climate change and other related topics.
I criticized the DOGE firing of hundreds of National Weather Service employees. I condemned cutbacks on meteorological and climate research. I've mocked Trump on his stance that climate change is a "hoax". I'm working on a piece now about how some of his Congressional minions held a conspiracy theory-filled House hearing on weather modification batshittery.
So, I figure eventually the Trump people, or at least his ragtag social media censorship army will come along to stop all this. But I'll keep going, as everybody who knows me understands it's really hard to shut me up.
It's not about me, though. It's about you. Unless somebody stops this, we are headed to a point where anything you say might get you in trouble. Even if you like Trump but say something "wrong."
HOW KIMMEL HAPPENED
There are a lot of offensive things going on here, but Kimmel is not the problem.
Let's pick it apart, like everyone else seems to be doing.
Given the atmosphere, I must offer my Captain Obvious opinion on Kirk's death. The murder was horrible, abhorrent and was incredibly wrong no matter how you slice it. Kirk absolutely did not deserve it. I hope the person who pulled the trigger is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
I'm not saying this to be nice, or to be "correct." Or to please Trump and his merry band of MAGA warriors. It's how I feel and it's how everyone I talked to about it feels.
Anyway, Trump demanded, and ABC/Disney wimpishly agreeing to suspend Jimmy Kimmel from his late night show for saying something accurate, speaking truth to power, but in the process displeasing our snowflake King "president" Trump.
Here's Kimmel's supposedly objectionable statement: "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 and doing everything they can to score political points from it."
Notice that sentence, inelegant as it is, doesn't characterize Kirk one way or another. It also doesn't precisely speculate on the motives behind the assassination.
Kimmel went on to mock Trump for answering a question about Kirk's death by bragging about White House ballroom construction.
Trump supporters would have you believe that it was just a private decision by Disney-owned ABC and Nexstar, the largest owner of television stations in the U.S.,to yank Kimmel off the air. An outfit called Sinclair also owns a lot of ABC affiliates, and wanted Kimmel pulled, too.
Well, if someone says something to make a corporation makes "look bad," they can fire him, right?
Sure, it happens all the time. But what's really going on is an ugly Intersection of fascism and money.
Nexstar needs FCC approval for a deal to acquire an outfit called Tegan. The mega-merger would reach 80 percent of U.S households. But the FCC would have to bend the rules, since a longstanding rule prevents any one company from reaching 39 percent of U.S. households.
Enter Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr. He said, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way......These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."
Basically, he said, "Nice network and TV stations you got there. It would be a shame if anything happened to them." Even right wing Republican Ted Cruz correctly criticized Carr's remarks as "right out of Goodfellas."
THE EFFECTS
You see how cute Carr and the rest of the Trumpsters are being with this. They can just say it was ABC and the television stations' decision. Never mind that they did so with a threat of a government crackdown.
That's where the First Amendment comes in. If I'm your boss and you say something objectionable, in most cases I can fire you. But the First Amendment prohibits the government from suppressing free speech. Even if it's objectionable speech. .
Apparently, the Trumpsters don't believe in the Constitution.
Even if courts or somebody resists this trampling of First Amendment rights, free speech has been chilled, which is exactly what Trump wants.
You can see it on other shows. The women on the ABC show "The View" always weigh in on the top news headlines of the day. They were silent on Kimmel's situation. Because Trump has already criticized that show so they figure they're on the cusp of being canceled.
Carr has already put "The View" in his cross hairs.
Trump has also said other talk show hosts like Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon should be off the air, too, since they mock the Fearless Leader. Jon Stewart and his friends at "The Daily Show" are somewhat more out of reach of the Trump for now because they are Comedy Central, which isn't licensed by the FCC.
However, Comedy Central is owned by Paramount Skydance Corp, which has also bended the knee to Trump's demands before.
PATRIOTISM
To their credit, late night hosts are so far now cowed by Trump. On the day after Kimmel's firing, or suspension or whatever you want to call it, the comedians rallied around Kimmel, and more importantly, the First Amendment.
Stewart's opening monologue was a mocking version of groveling acquiescence to Trump. Stephen Colbert began his monologue saying "With an autocrat, you cannot give an inch. And if ABC thinks this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive."
To be blunt, ABC was incredibly unpatriotic in suspending Kimmel. The put money before country, and look where that got them.
People are dropping their ABC/Disney/ESPN subscriptions in droves. They're canceling Disney vacations and Disney cruises. It's too soon to say how big a financial hit ABC will take, and whether the hit will last long.
Trump and his team are actually besmirching Kirk's legacy. I had a LOT of problems with what much of Kirk said while he was alive. But he really was a free speech advocate. Kirk said the Constitution protected even what he would regard as ugly, gross or evil speech.
I wonder if Kirk would agree with what's going on if he were still alive.
There are of course consequences for free speech. And if those consequences don't come from the government, that's mostly OK. Not always fair, not always targeted correctly, but at least the free market that Republicans used to embrace did its job.
The trouble with all this is it leads to just one voice in the media - from the Trump regime. The ultimate goal might be to have no independent journalism. Whatever the government says would be the "truth."
That never ends well. Look it up in your history books.
Readers who are fans of Trump should also understand that his regime can turn on you if you say or do one wrong thing. MAGA always says they stand for freedom. If you really love freedom, this is your moment to speak up.
I don't whether somebody from the regime will try to shut me and everybody else down or not, because they don't like what we say and do.
But remember, there's millions of us and only a relative few of them. We can still win this. Peacefully, with creativity, and resolve, and humor and persistence.
It's time to be loud, folks!
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