What Jimmy Kimmel said about Charlie Kirk shooting that got his late night show pulled

Jimmy Kimmel initiated a new battle front in our civil cold war.

Here’s what Kimmel said:

We had 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 with everything they can to score political points from it.

Appearing on Benny Johnson’s podcast on Wednesday, FCC chairman Brendan Carr suggested that the FCC has “remedies we can look at.”  He said:

We can do this the easy way or the hard way.  These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

Nexstar owns America’s largest local broadcasting group, made up of top network affiliates, with more than 200 owned or partner stations.  When Nexstar announced that they won’t be carrying Kimmel’s show, they said:

Continuing to give Mr Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.

In my informal survey of public opinion, commentators and pundits on the Left are implying that President Trump is an authoritarian intent on censoring free speech.  Since they have been saying that for 10 years, nobody is surprised.

Commenters and pundits on the Right, are pleased that Kimmel is off the air, but would have preferred that it was a financial decision similar to Stephen Colbert’s cancellation.  They aren’t comfortable with the FCC chairman comments to ABC.

With Kimmel punished, the issue may be resolved with other broadcasters getting the message.  The general public won’t understand what happened.

The FCC has the authority to issue commercial radio and television broadcast licenses.  A broadcast license gives a station permission to use a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.  

Nexstar owns hundreds of stations licensed by the FCC.  The phrase, “not in the public interest” is the key phrase in their statement.

The FCC requires radio and television station licensees to serve the public interest.  This article from 2018 is not supportive of Trump, but is informative.  

Commercial broadcast regulations from the FCC are dense and ambiguous, but “Character Issues” are a component of the licensing process.

Licensee certifies that neither the licensee nor any party to the application has or has had any interest in, or connection with, any broadcast application in any proceeding where character issues were left unresolved, or were resolved adversely against the applicant or any party to the application;

The FCC rarely revokes or refuses to renew a broadcast license.

This is the part that the Left doesn’t understand and some on the Right don’t fully appreciate.  We are in a cold civil war, or national inflection point or course correction.

I didn’t get it.  Sparky had his surgery on September 10th.  After my brother dropped Sparky and me off at home, he called a few minutes later to tell me that Charlie Kirk had been shot.  Sparky was dead on his feet, and I didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity to consider Kirk’s assassination.  The significance wasn’t apparent to me until the public reaction started to play out.

Conservatives believe that America has been moving to the Left for decades.  Trump did not force Progressives to go too far.  There are different formulation of “political violence” public surveys, but this recent YouGov survey is typical.

Do you generally consider it to be acceptable or unacceptable for a person to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose? (%)

Orange is “acceptable”, purple is “unacceptable”.  65% of the Left say it’s unacceptable, while 90% of the Right says it’s unacceptable. 

The unhinged Progressives who gloat about Kirk’s assassination are getting fired, and Conservatives are good with that.

The next question is a bigger concern.

Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals? (%)

62% of the Left say that violence is never justified, while 85% of the Right say it’s never justified.

The Right is not going to gloat or participate in political violence, but the Kirk assassination has changed the situation.

More Conservatives appreciate that corporate media is partisan, and willing to get news from other sources.  There are people in the government and military who are deeply partisan, and must be removed from their positions.  At this point, any legal means, without much regard for past practice or precedence, is acceptable.

The FCC has the authority to revoke or fail to renew a station’s broadcast license.  The FCC is required to have a valid justification, the decision would be controversial and litigation would follow.   Conservatives don’t care.

It’s commonly said that with legal issues, “the process is the punishment.”  The system should not work like that, but Conservatives don’t care.  Even if stations won, it would be expensive.  Network management may find it unappealing to fight to retain late night TV shows that lose money.  Programming that pushes the limits won’t seem worth the effort.

With the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a larger percentage of Americans realize that we are in a national conflict.  Some institutions will be reformed, some will change drastically and some will be lost.