Another comedian silenced. Who’snext?

Opinion

To tweak a famous line from Mad Men: if you don’t like what’s being said on a late-night show, change the channel.

Unless, of course, you’re the current president of the United States. Then you just get the show pulled off the air entirely.

On Monday, comedian and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel used some of his opening monologue to address the political fallout from the murder of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was shot and killed at a college in Utah.

This is what Kimmel said:

“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.”

Kimmel didn’t say anything hateful. He wasn’t encouraging violence. He offered, all things considered (have you been on the internet?), pretty mild commentary about the politicization of the murder of a controversial public figure.

And yet, this is the comment that got his show yanked from the air, per ABC, “indefinitely,” a move that affects more than Kimmel. It affects every single person who works on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

But I wonder if it was actually another Kimmel crack from the same monologue that drew the ire of President Donald Trump. Trump was asked by a reporter how he was personally holding up after the killing of his friend. He responded that he was “very good” and started banging on about the ballroom he’s building at the White House.

“He’s at the fourth stage of grief: construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody called a friend,” Kimmel quipped. “This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”

Again, these comments are not about Charlie Kirk. They are about the president of the United States.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr said on a podcast complaining about Kimmel’s comments. And so, the FCC leaned on ABC and ABC put their late-night man on hiatus.

According to Rolling Stone, who spoke to two inside sources, “multiple execs felt that Kimmel had not actually said anything over the line, but the threat of Trump administration retaliation loomed.”

This kind of censorship and government overreach should raise major red flags for anyone who even remotely cares about freedom of speech — and, to be honest, any other freedoms they currently enjoy.

The only words the FCC should worry about are the seven you can’t say on TV. Using one’s power and influence to silence one’s critics is dictator behaviour, make no mistake, and muzzling comedians who mock and satirize their country’s leader is straight out of an authoritarian playbook.

Trump has been very clear about his intentions with late night as a whole. His response to Paramount and CBS cancelling Stephen Colbert’s show — a move they claim was for business reasons — was gleeful. “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” he wrote on Truth Social, his own social media platform.

He was similarly giddy about Kimmel.

“Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” he wrote on Truth Social. “That leaves Jimmy (Fallon) and Seth (Meyers), two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”

You know, a very normal thing for the supposed leader of the free world to say about his fellow Americans.

I am a bit surprised that networks are capitulating when late-night shows are, first and foremost, a vehicle to promote Hollywood movies and TV shows. But I guess this is what happens when the entire industry is now just six companies in a trench coat deferring to a guy who loves to sue for cartoon amounts of money.

Yes, comedians have lost their jobs for saying things that run from poor taste to outright hateful. And yes, “freedom of speech” does not mean “freedom from consequences.” But someone, say, losing their sitcom for a racist comment owing to pressure from the viewing public is a lot different than a show being put on hiatus because of pressure from the government.

It’s not just Americans who should be worried about this pattern. It’s everyone who cares about the values of democracy. And turning l’affair Kimmel into a debate about late-night’s relevancy, as I have seen online, is also a distraction; it should be a big fat yellow canary.

I mean, what’s next? What other kinds of art and commentary will be crushed under the weight of government pressure? Who else will disappear off the air?

It all feels like a bad TV show, except it’s really happening. Keep your eyes open.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

If you value coverage of Manitoba’s arts scene, help us do more.
Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project.