Kimmel didn't deserve to be censored by ABC
By: Rob Mirldi
Your Turn
Guest columnist
..... Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, we hardly knew ye!.
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After 22 years of late-night barbs and blasts at the political establishment, the censorship hand of the lord of Disney, fearing the almighty interventions of the Federal Communications Commission, bowed to the avowed purge, of the or gang king and his minions.
..... And like that, Jimmy Kimmel, one of the clearest voices of dissent and criticism of the trump administration, was gone form his ABC late-night talk show, joining the award-winning Stephen Colbert in desenter's purgatory. Sadly, only Jimmy Fallon - the least political of the big three - remained to fight the culture war.
..... But surprise, surprise, Disney relented, Kimmel was back. Was it the fear of boycotts? The potential besmirching of the mickey Mouse legend? Or did they just not want to be associated with a censorship purge that was being associates with an authoritarianism we thought we defeated in 1945?
..... What started as another American political assassination, albeit of a firebrand conservative, is turning into a full-blown witch hunt of not only anyone who does not worship the fallen Charlie Kirk but also, as President Downland Trump brands them: "The radical left 0which] has done tremendous damage to the country. but we're fixing it."
..... Thomas Jefferson and the creators of the Bill of rights are squirming nightly. You do recall that the First Amendment - ratified by the states - guarantees that central governmental authorities cannot silence speech they dislike, unless it incites violence or threatens an individual.
..... And yet Trump is taking America down a path we have not trod in many years. Maybe ever since the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791.
Remember John Peter Zenger?
..... The name John Peter Zenger keeps coming into my head. In the middle 1990s I twice receive the New York Bar Association's Zenger Award. Embarrassedly, I did not know exactly what Zenger had done back in 1735 in New York city. and here is his legacy.
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Although there was no written free speech protection in the colony of New York, the German-born printer Zenger knew why he had come to America - he hoped they could criticize their rulers they and did wrong - or were corrupt. But the authorities saw it otherwise.
..... Royal Governor William Cosby balked when Zenger accused him of hiring relatives and stacking juries to alter court outcomes. Crimes, even back then. He charged Zenger with seditious libel, which, in essence, meant he had defamed the government in hope of causing rebellion.
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Uh, yes, that is what the press and critics - those who disagree with the authorities - do when they sense misconduct. And then the people can decide. That was the idea. The king doesn't get to cut off your tongue when you speak in ways he doesn't like - or show him to be a corrupt malfeasant. and you don't need his approval to speak.
..... Before the Firs Amendment was passed, no law to protect the press existed. But when Zenger went on trial, ordinary citizens knew little about the law sent a resounding message: criticism of royal governors or would-be kings is permuted. Nay, it is necessary,. Zenger went free.
Kimmel is our John Peter Zenger
..... Jimmy Kimmel is John Peter Zenger. Make no mistake about it, he is the modern press that now comes in many forms, from podcasts to late night TV hosts to newspaper columnists. "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of the press." And Trump cannot with a phone call to an under-boss override it. unless we let him.
..... The Kimmel suspension - he was booted for a monologue that barely sniffed at anything remotely offensive or dangerous - raises a nova ripple in this latest authoritarian siege. Kimmel appears nightly on more than 200 television stations in the ABC network, owned by Disney, never a flaming font of radicalism. (His monologue, by the way, was viewed Online by 3.7 million people.)
..... And those stations - including big-money market in New York, Chicago, San Francisco - are licensed by the Federal Communication Commission, a five-member board with three Republicans and two Democrats.
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Every eight years the government gives permission to a broadcaster to use our airwaves - they are publicly owned - to make a lot of money, with very few responsibilities. They issue licenses - 12,000 of them - to operate stations in the "pubic interest, convenience, and necessity," which doesn't mean much, except no curse words are allowed.
..... The FCC used to demand more but it never insisted that television networks not criticize the president. In fact, there's no clause in the license that says you must behave in a way that will please the government. Censorship is not permitted. Please underline hat.
..... So when the Chairman of the FCC went after Kimmel for what he saw as inappropriate remarks on the Kirk killing, Disney scrambled, fearful of their licenses - and revenue. Poor Kimmel, he did not even come close to the legal threshold for prohibited speech on violence.
..... The Framers expected when they installed the First Amendment hat without safeguards the party in power would silence the opposing political party, while also muting critics and dissenters, claiming the nation's fate was at stake.
..... The horrific assassination of Kirk should raise our debate level very high because it begs the question of whether headed rhetoric led to violence. But it also raises for the umpteenth time how unleashed firepower gets in the wrong hands. And, moreover, whether this alleged shooter's lifetime of violence videos trained him to become an assassin. Discuss that, please, not Kimmel.
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But instead the president has chosen to go after people he sees as adversaries; to do what he's wanted to all along - silence critics. Start with NPR and PBS; get rid of Voice of America. Now let's go to the TV networks. Bounce Colbert. Even though the First Amendment prevents removing broadcast licenses for political reasons.
..... But here's the rub: the First Amendment regulates the government, but not the private corporate might of the Disney and the media monopolies that control the broadcast world. unless Trump leaned on them. Disney can fire its hosts.
..... But be clear, Mr President, your bully rhetoric is a piece in the political assassination. You think it helps undivided us when, after Kirk's murder, you declare the left at fault?
..... This is not a new story cultivated by the left. JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, George Wallace.
Of late, Kirk, Melissa Hortman in Minnesota, the burning of the Pennsylvania governor's house. who knows if the January 6 [2021] marauders at the capitol really would have hung Mike Pence?
..... And then there are federal judges being bombarded with threats - an unprecedented 500 last year [2024] - pleading that the rhetoric be turned down.
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Former federal Judge Allyson K. Duncan observed: "As sitting judges we are becoming increasingly visible and increasingly vulnerable ... the level of venom in the conversation has approached one with which I an unfamiliar."
..... Are Trump's actions part of this?
..... "Of course," Duncan replied.
..... Mr. President, take the advice of the Republican Utah Governor Spencer Cox who said after the killing of Kirk: "Build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now. Not by pretending differences don't matter, but by embracing our differences and having those hard conversations."
..... Without the venom.
..... Rob Miraldi's First Amendment writing has won numerous awards. He taught journalism at the State University of New York for many years. Email: rob.miraldi@gmail.com