Two things happened last week, igniting dismay and controversy. The most profound was the brutal assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. The other was the cancellation of long-time, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, who made a bad joke about it. The competing narratives highlight a great divide in our country.
Even a week later, it seems everyone has chosen sides. Either you are still horrified by the bullying and cancellation of Kimmel, or you are still upset by what Kimmel said about Kirk’s death.
His obnoxious joke led a hunk of ABC stations to threaten to preempt his show. Their action was supplemented by the chairman of the FCC Brendan Carr, who ominously threatened ABC’s broadcast license if they did not act against Kimmel. So, they did, cancelling the show which began its run back in 2003.
Is this controversy about the censorship of Jimmy Kimmel or compassion for Charlie Kirk?
“Imagine being more upset about a canceled TV show than a political assassination and still thinking you are a decent human being.”
That was a tweet attributed to Ted Nugent, the hard-right-leaning rockstar. At last count, it had been viewed 26 million times and liked 389,000.
Nugent has a point about the apparent lack of sorrow for Kirk and his family. Most of the news business and the nation’s cultural elite barely mentioned Kirk’s assassination last week.
The passions of the left were channeled into outrage, not over the assassination itself, but as the triggering event leading to the cancellation/censorship of Kimmel. The main concern seems to be that this cancellation is the beginning of the end of democracy, a harbinger of an authoritarian presidency. Trump Run-a-muck, Trump Unleashed, King Trump.
Almost all my friends, family and associates were shocked when I made my personal viewpoint public. I told Wolf Blitzer, the CNN veteran and an old friend that I was less concerned about censorship and more concerned about the bad manners evidenced by Jimmy Kimmel and Company.
Kimmel falsely claimed that Tyler Robinson, the killer of Kirk, was a member of MAGA. The facts, of course, indicate that Robinson was a left-winger radicalized by perceived evil and injustice toward trans people and others.
By the time you read this, tens of thousands of enthusiastic believers at the big stadium in Glendale, Ariz., and millions more around the country will have watched last Sunday’s funeral memorial for the Gen Z culture crusader. Everyone from President Trump to VP J.D.Vance was there.
However meaningful and touching the epic memorial, Charlie’s death is a blow to Trump’s conservative agenda. Kirk almost single-handedly converted America’s young men to the Republican/conservative cause, convincing them to reject Democrats and their too-cool-for-school progressive politics, usually so seductive to young voters.
Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded as a teenager, remade America’s political landscape. As the left frets about what Jimmy Kimmel’s cancellation really means, the right has its martyr.
