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A lot of things can be true at the same time: - The FCC shouldn't be involved in content moderation, and the FCC Chair is obviously on an authoritarian power t

A lot of things can be true at the same time: - The FCC shouldn't be involved in content moderation, and the FCC Chair is obviously on an authoritarian power trip. - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory. - Clearly the market was already deciding that Kimmel's show is irrelevant (Nielsen ratings quite clear on that). - The FCC is only involved in content because of how TV broadcasting worked ~50 years ago (large swaths of RF spectrum allocated to certain license holders, only a few channels -could- exist due to technical reasons, thus fairness rules). - ABC's distributors threatened to stop airing the network, which is what actually caused Disney/ABC to act, it's hard to say what impact the FCC Chairs comments actually had. - The idea that the FCC needs to act to protect the TV Broadcasting systems is ridiculous, just let it all die, we're very far past the "public square" era of media. - Had the FCC made no comment, and Disney pulled the show due to the distributors actions, it would have obviously just been "cancel culture but from the right", instead Brendan Carr wants to get in the headlines and so here we are. It's all a perfect Scissor Statement. You can absolutely not care about Kimmel, you can think the FCC's TV licensing scheme is pointless and outdated, you can be 0% surprised Disney only cares about money and Carr is an idiot, and still you can get into a heated argument about this stuff. My own mother texted me "Free speech is dead" and hurah, now I get to do 3 hours of reading to say "it never really existed in broadcast television and also yes, this is bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" and boom now I'm the fascist. "Sort by Controversial" is such a troubling timeline.

ajross 1y ago
> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory. Was it really though? Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican. He had a republican background, but it didn't motivate the killing which didn't seem to have any particular ideology beyond (maybe) trans identity politics and/or edgelord memery. So yeah, that was wrong. But if that's "irresponsible and inflammatory", then isn't it equally so to blame "democrats" or "the left", also groups with which Robinson has no documented affiliation? And we can all agree that this is happening pervasively on the right, at all levels. The double standard here seems troublesome to me, and likely deliberate. Which, I'll add, what actually the point Kimmel was trying to make. > now I get to do 3 hours of reading to say "it never really existed in broadcast television and also yes, this is bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" and boom now I'm the fascist You're not a fascist, but you do seem to be sort of an apologist. Doesn't the linked article directly refute the "not nearly as bad as you think" bit? It's happening again!
- erulabs 1y ago
  > Was it really though? Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican. He had a republican background, but it didn't motivate the killing which didn't seem to have any particular ideology beyond (maybe) trans identity politics. So yeah, that was wrong. Look I don't even pretend to know the truth. But the sitting governor of Utah, the highest authority on the investigation (which is being done by Utah state investigators), said the shooter had a "leftest ideology". NYT source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/kirk-shooting-suspect-ideology-partner.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/kirk-shooting-suspect-... Now its fine to not believe the governor, but I am not one of the investigators so thats as good as I can get unless I believe in a conspiracy by the state of Utah itself, which I think warrants evidence. Personally I don't believe in "group X verbed Y", as I do not believe that groups can act. Liberals didn't shoot anyone, conservatives didn't shoot anyone; a single individual person shot someone. Group identity is not interesting to me, nor do I find it helpful. I do find it very inflammatory tho, and think is a deplorable thing to say to uninformed viewers at home. By "not nearly as bad as you think", what I mean is, the FCC has always policed content on broadcast television. Shows have been cut mid-air due to foul language. We have never had "freedom of speech" on broadcast television. And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action, that it was actually ABC's distributors who caused the ruckus, then this is bog-standard "cancel culture", which, while bad, is hardly the death of free speech. I'd be perfectly unbothered if broadcast television died completely, thus reducing the FCCs ability to control the media period. Yes, I'd love to live in a world with less censorship, less stupidity, less government control, but that's not the world we live in, and its not the world we used to live in, either.
  - ajross 1y ago
    > By "not nearly as bad as you think", what I mean is, the FCC has always policed content on broadcast television For boring stuff like sex and profanity! When was the last time a show was pulled under threat of FCC action because of political speech? Has it ever happened before? And it's happening again, just days after it worked the first time. Your cynicism, whether it's deliberate or not, is serving you very badly here. > And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action Good grief. Brendan Carr literally made the threat on camera, in public. That's the way extortion works. You don't have to take the action because the target submits.
hakunin 1y ago
> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory. I agree that we should be disavowing violence. The problem is that for 10 years democratic lawmakers and media figures are disavowing violence on both sides, while republican lawmakers and media figures are doing the opposite: stoking the flames, promoting the idea of civil war, telling everyone that the country is stolen from them, that immigrants are out to get them, that democrats are out to get them, etc. According to this rhetoric, democrats are to blame for all of this. When something bad happens and it's not democrats who caused it, they come up with a conspiratorial explanation for how it's still democrats. So when one side keeps constantly disavowing, and the other side keeps constantly attacking, at some point disavowing becomes literally the wrong thing to do. You can't lay down your weapon while the other person just keeps hitting, and expect the hitting to stop. What we are being shown repeatedly by republicans is that violent, divisive rhetoric actually leads to electoral victories, and grants free license to become "president for one side only" and do whatever that side wants. If democrats continue to disavow and apologize, they will end up simply extinct. This is why some democrats stopped doing that.
- zahlman 1y ago
  > for 10 years democratic lawmakers and media figures are disavowing violence on both sides, while republican lawmakers and media figures are doing the opposite It was not a Republican media figure who made that video of herself holding "a mask styled to look like the severed, bloody head" of the POTUS. Among the biggest-name political Twitch streamers, it's not the right-wingers who are being shown to have all sorts of clips calling for political violence, making threats that include brandishing firearms on stream, doxxing people etc. — all of which are blatant TOS violations, but which never seem to get them banned. From the evidence available to me, the CEO of Twitch seems to be quite friendly with the most egregious of those streamers. > So when one side keeps constantly disavowing, and the other side keeps constantly attacking, at some point disavowing becomes literally the wrong thing to do. You can't lay down your weapon while the other person just keeps hitting, and expect the hitting to stop. I can assure you the other side feels the same way. There are even supercuts out there of Trump repeatedly disavowing violence that he was still accused of not disavowing.
thrownawayohman 1y ago
Man you are delusional. How many pols and their elk where clamoring for civil war because a YouTuber got shot that they _assumed_ was a leftist? How many of those same people said anything when a democratic state senator and their spouse was murdered, and another pair seriously wounded? This is the type of nonsense that really bothers me with this site. It’s an attempt to “both sides” everything in a pathetic attempt at seeming logical.
- delichon 1y ago
  https://tinyurl.com/mtwkby87 https://tinyurl.com/mtwkby87 What have you got against their elk?
kelnos 1y ago
> What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory. What Kimmel said[0] was fairly innocuous and not all that big a deal. What he said was actually true, in general, about conservative discourse, regardless of what the shooter's politics are. Carr directly threatened ABC's broadcast license over protected speech, even in the context of the FCC's mandate and the rules around broadcast licensing. Kimmel's ratings are irrelevant. Murdering someone with terminal cancer is still murder. [0] There still seems to be a bunch of confusion and misinformation about what Kimmel said, so: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it." If you truly believe that's the kind of thing the FCC should be threatening a network's broadcast license over, I'm not sure it's possible to have a productive discussion with you about this.
- soperj 1y ago
  > I'm not sure it's possible to have a productive discussion with you about this. My immediate reaction was similar, I'm not sure he's saying that it is wrong though, he said "can be".
- zahlman 1y ago
  > There still seems to be a bunch of confusion and misinformation about what Kimmel said, so: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it." The FCC should not be threatening ABC over this, but the statement is, on the available evidence, wrong, irresponsible and inflammatory. It's wrong because it insinuates that the killer was "one of them" (completely untrue per Utah state investigators), irresponsible because there was no good reason to believe it (the alternative narratives require some deep reading into cryptic fringe political groups) and because of the timing, and inflammatory because of the nature of the allegation (it's not a nice thing to say about anyone even when it's demonstrably true). > What he said was actually true, in general, about conservative discourse, regardless of what the shooter's politics are. The statement cannot be evaluated for "truth in general" because it referred to a specific incident. If he'd wanted to assert something about what "the MAGA gang" generally does, he could have done so. But the point was specifically to tie into current events. (I also don't really understand the objection. What, are conservatives not supposed to disavow political violence? Is everyone on the right supposed to accept responsibility for the consequences of every other right-wing political philosophy? Please be careful about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity .)
jrmg 1y ago
Here’s a full transcript of the monologue - which is absurdly hard to find in all the coverage. https://pastebin.com/25ZmRNwj https://pastebin.com/25ZmRNwj
- ajross 1y ago
  > absurdly hard to find in all the coverage. By design. If it was actually offensive Fox would be playing it non-stop. The offense has been excavated from inside an implication of a phrase in a nested clause in a sentence saying something unrelated. Kimmel said (as part of an argument that republicans were playing politics by pointing fingers) that republicans were trying to prove that Robinson was not a republican , from which you have to infer that Kimmel meant to say Robinson was a republican.
  - UmGuys 1y ago
    What do the people claiming to be offended find offensive about it? I thought the issue was the orange one didn't like him and wanted him cancelled.
    - ajross 1y ago
      Well, that is the "real" issue, sure. But the pretense was that Kimmel accused republicans of inspiring the killer.
      - UmGuys 1y ago
        How so? I thought I watched the monologue and didn't hear anything like that. Not even an implication.
    - theshrike79 1y ago
      They have been told by right-wing media that Jimmy Kimmel said something HORRIBLE about Charlie Kirk. Nobody checks what he actually said, they're just angry because they were told to be angry.
throw0101a 1y ago
> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and irresponsible. Exactly which words were wrong/irresponsible/irresponsible? Do you have a video clip and timestamp of the specific statements? > - Clearly the market was already deciding that Kimmel's show is irrelevant (Nielsen ratings quite clear on that). Quite the coïncidence that this is the second comedian that has been canceled, the first being Colbert. As Timothy Snyder, a historian on Central/Eastern Europe, the Holocaust, and totalitarians regimes, commented: General pattern in regime change: the comedy gets better and then it gets banned. * https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1968466394384650367 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/196846639438465036... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder > - ABC's distributors threatened to stop airing the network, which is what actually caused Disney/ABC to act, it's hard to say what impact the FCC Chairs comments actually had. The owner of many ABC stations is looking to fulfill a $6.2B merger/acquisition: * https://www.nexstar.tv/nexstar-media-group-inc-enters-into-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-tegna-inc-for-6-2-billion-in-accretive-transaction/ https://www.nexstar.tv/nexstar-media-group-inc-enters-into-d... * https://deadline.com/2025/08/nexstar-acquires-tegna-local-tv-merger-donald-trump-1236491712/ https://deadline.com/2025/08/nexstar-acquires-tegna-local-tv... They need to get FCC approval. Instead of deciding the deal on its merits, the Trump administration has made it known if you rub its tummy you will get what you want (export policy isn't decided on (say) national security evaluations, but if you give money: Nvidia 15% export tariff, UAE buying $2B of Trump-family crypto). Instead of procedural government decisions (i.e., rule of law), you get government decisions based on the temperament of the boss.
UmGuys 1y ago
I disagree with your second point. I believe Utah, dislike Kimmel, and believe he said nothing wrong. In fact he pretty much stated facts with a sprinkle of his brand of comedy. You're drifting into lalaland. It's very clear it was cancelled because of government action. Why are you making up weird stories. Everything has been reported. For whatever reason you're trying to justifying government censorship. This article isn't about Kimmel it's about another show MAGA hates apparently. And the cult leader guy blew a hole threw your convoluted thesis yesterday when he openly admitted he disagrees with the first amendment.

ajross 1y ago

> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory. Was it really though? Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican. He had a republican background, but it didn't motivate the killing which didn't seem to have any particular ideology beyond (maybe) trans identity politics and/or edgelord memery. So yeah, that was wrong. But if that's "irresponsible and inflammatory", then isn't it equally so to blame "democrats" or "the left", also groups with which Robinson has no documented affiliation? And we can all agree that this is happening pervasively on the right, at all levels. The double standard here seems troublesome to me, and likely deliberate. Which, I'll add, what actually the point Kimmel was trying to make. > now I get to do 3 hours of reading to say "it never really existed in broadcast television and also yes, this is bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" and boom now I'm the fascist You're not a fascist, but you do seem to be sort of an apologist. Doesn't the linked article directly refute the "not nearly as bad as you think" bit? It's happening again!

erulabs 1y ago
> Was it really though? Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican. He had a republican background, but it didn't motivate the killing which didn't seem to have any particular ideology beyond (maybe) trans identity politics. So yeah, that was wrong. Look I don't even pretend to know the truth. But the sitting governor of Utah, the highest authority on the investigation (which is being done by Utah state investigators), said the shooter had a "leftest ideology". NYT source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/kirk-shooting-suspect-ideology-partner.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/kirk-shooting-suspect-... Now its fine to not believe the governor, but I am not one of the investigators so thats as good as I can get unless I believe in a conspiracy by the state of Utah itself, which I think warrants evidence. Personally I don't believe in "group X verbed Y", as I do not believe that groups can act. Liberals didn't shoot anyone, conservatives didn't shoot anyone; a single individual person shot someone. Group identity is not interesting to me, nor do I find it helpful. I do find it very inflammatory tho, and think is a deplorable thing to say to uninformed viewers at home. By "not nearly as bad as you think", what I mean is, the FCC has always policed content on broadcast television. Shows have been cut mid-air due to foul language. We have never had "freedom of speech" on broadcast television. And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action, that it was actually ABC's distributors who caused the ruckus, then this is bog-standard "cancel culture", which, while bad, is hardly the death of free speech. I'd be perfectly unbothered if broadcast television died completely, thus reducing the FCCs ability to control the media period. Yes, I'd love to live in a world with less censorship, less stupidity, less government control, but that's not the world we live in, and its not the world we used to live in, either.
- ajross 1y ago
  > By "not nearly as bad as you think", what I mean is, the FCC has always policed content on broadcast television For boring stuff like sex and profanity! When was the last time a show was pulled under threat of FCC action because of political speech? Has it ever happened before? And it's happening again, just days after it worked the first time. Your cynicism, whether it's deliberate or not, is serving you very badly here. > And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action Good grief. Brendan Carr literally made the threat on camera, in public. That's the way extortion works. You don't have to take the action because the target submits.

hakunin 1y ago

> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory. I agree that we should be disavowing violence. The problem is that for 10 years democratic lawmakers and media figures are disavowing violence on both sides, while republican lawmakers and media figures are doing the opposite: stoking the flames, promoting the idea of civil war, telling everyone that the country is stolen from them, that immigrants are out to get them, that democrats are out to get them, etc. According to this rhetoric, democrats are to blame for all of this. When something bad happens and it's not democrats who caused it, they come up with a conspiratorial explanation for how it's still democrats. So when one side keeps constantly disavowing, and the other side keeps constantly attacking, at some point disavowing becomes literally the wrong thing to do. You can't lay down your weapon while the other person just keeps hitting, and expect the hitting to stop. What we are being shown repeatedly by republicans is that violent, divisive rhetoric actually leads to electoral victories, and grants free license to become "president for one side only" and do whatever that side wants. If democrats continue to disavow and apologize, they will end up simply extinct. This is why some democrats stopped doing that.

zahlman 1y ago
> for 10 years democratic lawmakers and media figures are disavowing violence on both sides, while republican lawmakers and media figures are doing the opposite It was not a Republican media figure who made that video of herself holding "a mask styled to look like the severed, bloody head" of the POTUS. Among the biggest-name political Twitch streamers, it's not the right-wingers who are being shown to have all sorts of clips calling for political violence, making threats that include brandishing firearms on stream, doxxing people etc. — all of which are blatant TOS violations, but which never seem to get them banned. From the evidence available to me, the CEO of Twitch seems to be quite friendly with the most egregious of those streamers. > So when one side keeps constantly disavowing, and the other side keeps constantly attacking, at some point disavowing becomes literally the wrong thing to do. You can't lay down your weapon while the other person just keeps hitting, and expect the hitting to stop. I can assure you the other side feels the same way. There are even supercuts out there of Trump repeatedly disavowing violence that he was still accused of not disavowing.

thrownawayohman 1y ago

Man you are delusional. How many pols and their elk where clamoring for civil war because a YouTuber got shot that they _assumed_ was a leftist? How many of those same people said anything when a democratic state senator and their spouse was murdered, and another pair seriously wounded? This is the type of nonsense that really bothers me with this site. It’s an attempt to “both sides” everything in a pathetic attempt at seeming logical.

delichon 1y ago
https://tinyurl.com/mtwkby87 https://tinyurl.com/mtwkby87 What have you got against their elk?

kelnos 1y ago

> What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory. What Kimmel said[0] was fairly innocuous and not all that big a deal. What he said was actually true, in general, about conservative discourse, regardless of what the shooter's politics are. Carr directly threatened ABC's broadcast license over protected speech, even in the context of the FCC's mandate and the rules around broadcast licensing. Kimmel's ratings are irrelevant. Murdering someone with terminal cancer is still murder. [0] There still seems to be a bunch of confusion and misinformation about what Kimmel said, so: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it." If you truly believe that's the kind of thing the FCC should be threatening a network's broadcast license over, I'm not sure it's possible to have a productive discussion with you about this.

soperj 1y ago
> I'm not sure it's possible to have a productive discussion with you about this. My immediate reaction was similar, I'm not sure he's saying that it is wrong though, he said "can be".
zahlman 1y ago
> There still seems to be a bunch of confusion and misinformation about what Kimmel said, so: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it." The FCC should not be threatening ABC over this, but the statement is, on the available evidence, wrong, irresponsible and inflammatory. It's wrong because it insinuates that the killer was "one of them" (completely untrue per Utah state investigators), irresponsible because there was no good reason to believe it (the alternative narratives require some deep reading into cryptic fringe political groups) and because of the timing, and inflammatory because of the nature of the allegation (it's not a nice thing to say about anyone even when it's demonstrably true). > What he said was actually true, in general, about conservative discourse, regardless of what the shooter's politics are. The statement cannot be evaluated for "truth in general" because it referred to a specific incident. If he'd wanted to assert something about what "the MAGA gang" generally does, he could have done so. But the point was specifically to tie into current events. (I also don't really understand the objection. What, are conservatives not supposed to disavow political violence? Is everyone on the right supposed to accept responsibility for the consequences of every other right-wing political philosophy? Please be careful about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity .)

jrmg 1y ago

Here’s a full transcript of the monologue - which is absurdly hard to find in all the coverage. https://pastebin.com/25ZmRNwj https://pastebin.com/25ZmRNwj

ajross 1y ago
> absurdly hard to find in all the coverage. By design. If it was actually offensive Fox would be playing it non-stop. The offense has been excavated from inside an implication of a phrase in a nested clause in a sentence saying something unrelated. Kimmel said (as part of an argument that republicans were playing politics by pointing fingers) that republicans were trying to prove that Robinson was not a republican , from which you have to infer that Kimmel meant to say Robinson was a republican.
- UmGuys 1y ago
  What do the people claiming to be offended find offensive about it? I thought the issue was the orange one didn't like him and wanted him cancelled.
  - ajross 1y ago
    Well, that is the "real" issue, sure. But the pretense was that Kimmel accused republicans of inspiring the killer.
    - UmGuys 1y ago
      How so? I thought I watched the monologue and didn't hear anything like that. Not even an implication.
  - theshrike79 1y ago
    They have been told by right-wing media that Jimmy Kimmel said something HORRIBLE about Charlie Kirk. Nobody checks what he actually said, they're just angry because they were told to be angry.

throw0101a 1y ago

> - What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and irresponsible. Exactly which words were wrong/irresponsible/irresponsible? Do you have a video clip and timestamp of the specific statements? > - Clearly the market was already deciding that Kimmel's show is irrelevant (Nielsen ratings quite clear on that). Quite the coïncidence that this is the second comedian that has been canceled, the first being Colbert. As Timothy Snyder, a historian on Central/Eastern Europe, the Holocaust, and totalitarians regimes, commented: General pattern in regime change: the comedy gets better and then it gets banned. * https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1968466394384650367 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/196846639438465036... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder > - ABC's distributors threatened to stop airing the network, which is what actually caused Disney/ABC to act, it's hard to say what impact the FCC Chairs comments actually had. The owner of many ABC stations is looking to fulfill a $6.2B merger/acquisition: * https://www.nexstar.tv/nexstar-media-group-inc-enters-into-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-tegna-inc-for-6-2-billion-in-accretive-transaction/ https://www.nexstar.tv/nexstar-media-group-inc-enters-into-d... * https://deadline.com/2025/08/nexstar-acquires-tegna-local-tv-merger-donald-trump-1236491712/ https://deadline.com/2025/08/nexstar-acquires-tegna-local-tv... They need to get FCC approval. Instead of deciding the deal on its merits, the Trump administration has made it known if you rub its tummy you will get what you want (export policy isn't decided on (say) national security evaluations, but if you give money: Nvidia 15% export tariff, UAE buying $2B of Trump-family crypto). Instead of procedural government decisions (i.e., rule of law), you get government decisions based on the temperament of the boss.

UmGuys 1y ago

I disagree with your second point. I believe Utah, dislike Kimmel, and believe he said nothing wrong. In fact he pretty much stated facts with a sprinkle of his brand of comedy. You're drifting into lalaland. It's very clear it was cancelled because of government action. Why are you making up weird stories. Everything has been reported. For whatever reason you're trying to justifying government censorship. This article isn't about Kimmel it's about another show MAGA hates apparently. And the cult leader guy blew a hole threw your convoluted thesis yesterday when he openly admitted he disagrees with the first amendment.