The Regime’s Weaponization of Grief and the Targeted Media Threats from FCC
All hands on deck, everyone! Jimmy Kimmel’s been fired reinstated!
Goodness gracious, events move fast in 2025! Great work, everyone, on your boycotts and calls. And as quickly as this event popped up and was swatted back down, it is worthwhile to keep in perspective that this is a bigger issue than Jimmy Kimmel.
To those unsure why there was the public outrage about Kimmel, this is less about the “Who,” than the “How.” You might have already seen some think pieces comparing the temporary consolation of Kimmel’s show to “cancel culture” casualties of the past, and it is incumbent on us right now to be aware of the distinction between Kimmel’s situation and that of Roseanne Barr, Louis C.K., Harvey Weinstein and others. When a critical mass of public opinion decides that a public figure’s opinions are awful and annoying, or that they don’t want to see their face on the television after hearing stories of the people they assaulted, we call that “cancel culture” when a more accurate term is “threat of boycott.” As much hand-wringing as it inspires, cancel culture is the public finding its power to multilaterally cancel the free speech of one person by withholding their consent. In other words: the public exercised their free speech.
Cancel culture may be imperfect in selecting the subjects of its ire, but other methods of cancelling speech are less discussed, accruing less alarm from talking heads, despite being more unilateral. A moneyed individual like Peter Thiel, for example, is capable of filing or bankrolling a libel or defamation lawsuit to punish speech they don’t like by monetarily damaging or even bankrupting the speaker. It is an unfortunate reality in the United States that truth tends to be a less effective defense against a frivolous libel litigator than a war chest of money to pay your own legal team. Cancellation predates social media—but before Twitter and other platforms democratized it for good and ill, cancellation through the media, the courts, or both was the sole purview of the rich and powerful.
Trump’s cronies have their hands on the levers of regulation at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and they have shown their willingness to pull them. This is the latest, most unilateral chiller of dissent. Whereas before a judge—hopefully with the ability and willingness to properly interpret the law—could adjudicate the outcome of a libel dispute (for parties with the funds to make it to that finish line), the FCC now acts as a gatekeeper between profit-seeking corporations and their desired mergers. No one had to bring a single lawful complaint against Jimmy Kimmel. Brendan Carr simply gave his firing as a condition for a merger approval, and ABC agreed.
One can’t help but wonder how reluctantly ABC and its parent company, Disney, made that concession. We do though know, corporations sure do like their mergers, don’t they? (And money, until it starts hurting them—their reputation and bottom line!) For ‘corpos’ what an attractive thing, to take a market competitor off the map and replace it as a pawn under your command. And in the media sector, each new acquisition allows a company to further monopolize our attention, giving a shrinking number of boards of directors a wider and tighter grip over our window for discerning how the world operates, and what we think and how we’ll behave.
Or should we say: What we’re allowed to think.
Because the precipitating comment that led to Kimmel’s firing was concerned with the regime’s rather desperate attempts to define the identity of Charlie Kirk’s assassin and focus the anger of a grieving public on… the demographic that includes his roommate. (“The shooter was trans! No? Uh, the bullets were trans, I mean- I meant the roommate was trans! The roommate transed him!”)
In other words, we are being compelled to process the life of Charlie Kirk, and his murder, in a very specific government-approved fashion.
A mind-boggling number of firings have occurred already across numerous sectors of this economy for anything from irreverent comments that are somewhat difficult to defend, to factually correct statements, as in the case of MSNBC’s former contributor, Matthew Dowd, to sharing direct quotes from Charlie Kirk himself in a campaign instigated and egged on by the Vice President and Stephen Miller. Even our U.S. military personnel are not without scrutiny.
These standards don’t seem to apply to Trump’s propaganda enterprise. After the despicable comment made by Brian Kilmeade blatantly expressing that homeless people should be given "involuntary lethal injection”, we saw no threats of license removal from Trump’s cronies at the FCC. Free speech for me but not for thee.
In light of these events, “cancel culture” seems like little more than a competition between teams of who can shout the other down the hardest, with the MAGA regime having the full weight of the government to bring to bear. May the best team win? Even some MAGA folks get this, as they routinely invoke the specter of us evil liberals using the same tools against them. At any rate, this dynamic does not protect speech; it chills it.
At least some people are keeping their eye on the ball. Quite a few of us, actually, seem to be clued into the fact that the ones making decisions about who loses their livelihood, and who seem ready, perhaps even eager to cave to the regime’s demands, tend to be corporations. And we know how to hit corporations where it hurts. So let’s continue working our phones, writing those letters to the editors, boycotting with our wallets and canceling your subscriptions! See our Calls To Action here.
Relevant Reading:
The comedians who cried cancel culture
https://www.michigandaily.com/statement/the-comedians-who-cried-cancel-culture/
After Racist Tweet, Roseanne Barr’s Show Is Canceled by ABC
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/business/media/roseanne-barr-offensive-tweets.html
Louis CK admits sexual misconduct allegations are true
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41950043
The cases against Harvey Weinstein: A timeline of allegations and trials
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/20/nx-s1-5075185/harvey-weinstein-allegations-trials-timeline
Cancel Culture Is Only Getting Worse
https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2020/09/13/cancel-culture-is-only-getting-worse/
Uncommon Law: The Past, Present and the Future of Libel Law in a Time of “Fake News” and “Enemies of the American People”
https://legal-forum.uchicago.edu/print-archive/uncommon-law-past-present-and-future-libel-law-time-fake-news-and-enemies-american
The head of the FCC is now the (second) most dangerous man in America | Opinion
https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/media/2025/07/29/brendan-carr-fcc-trump/85415115007/
The real bias monitor at CBS is Donald Trump
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/12/cbs-bias-donald-trump
Disney's ABC pulls 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' after FCC chair criticizes the host's Charlie Kirk comments
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/disneys-abc-pulls-jimmy-kimmel-live-fcc-chair-blasts-hosts-charlie-kir-rcna232033
Did Disney lose $4B in market cap after suspending Jimmy Kimmel's show?
What we know
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/09/23/disney-jimmy-kimmel-market-cap/
Disciplinary actions for commentary on the assassination of Charlie Kirk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplinary_actions_for_commentary_on_the_assassination_of_Charlie_Kirk
Horror ‘It Girl’ Gretchen Felker-Martin on DC pulling Red Hood after Charlie Kirk comments: ‘I had no regrets
https://www.tcj.com/horror-it-girl-gretchen-felker-martin-on-dc-pulling-red-hood-after-charlie-kirk-comments-i-had-no-regrets/
Matthew Dowd’s firing begins flood of people facing consequences for their comments on Kirk’s death
https://apnews.com/article/dowd-msnbc-kirk-comments-e08f349022c9d69171cd575664141075
MSNBC pundit ousted over Kirk talk says network agreed comments were misconstrued
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/20/matthew-dowd-msnbc-charlie-kirk-comments-misconstrued
JD Vance backs mass ‘doxing’ campaign to find and harass Charlie Kirk critics
People being fired for quoting Charlie Kirk correctly as Trump targets ‘vast’ liberal network
https://www.al.com/politics/2025/09/people-being-fired-for-quoting-charlie-kirk-correctly-as-trump-targets-vast-liberal-network.html
Hegseth’s purge of service members cheering Kirk killing comes under heavy scrutiny
https://thehill.com/homenews/5511824-pentagon-hegseth-charlie-kirk-shooting-rhetoric/
Fox host says KILL HOMELESS PEOPLE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paU3IUHOp-0