Patriotism on the Russian plan
Let’s cut right to it. The New York Times reports:
ABC announced on Wednesday evening that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show “indefinitely” after conservatives accused the longtime host of inaccurately describing the politics of the man who is accused of fatally shooting the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Conservatives lied. (Surprise!) They pitched yet another patented right-wing hissy fit, and ABC folded:
The decision to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live” was made by Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, and Dana Walden, the company’s television chief, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private process.
Nexstar Media Group, the broadcast group that carries ABC programming, fell into line as well. *
The companies caved after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr characterized Kimmel’s comments as “some of the sickest conduct possible.” Carr made a not-so-veiled threat to yank ABC’s broadcast license if the company did not suspend Kimmel. Carr alleged to extreme-right podcaster Benny Johnson that Kimmel had deliberately misled “the public by claiming Charlie Kirk’s assassin was a MAGA Conservative.” Read on and you’ll see that that is bullshit.
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Spocko posted this Wednesday night to Mastodon:
Here is the section that supposedly lead to #ABC taking #JimmyKimmel off the air.
Listen to what Kimmel says & then see how the #Trump admin characterized it (according an NBC story https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/disneys-abc-pulls-jimmy-kimmel-live-fcc-chair-blasts-hosts-charlie-kir-rcna232033 )
“During his monologue on Monday night, Kimmel raised the possibility that Tyler Robinson, the suspect in the killing, might have been a pro-Trump Republican.”
#uspol
The original story that carried that line has since been corrected to read, “During his monologue Monday night, Kimmel criticized Republicans for how they responded to Kirk’s killing.” Because that is accurate.
Here is what Kimmel actually 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.”
Kimmel also mocked Trump’s “grieving” process. Asked how he was holding up, Trump told reporters, “I think very good, and by the way,” he said, and immediately changed the subject to the new gilded ballroom he’s building onto the White House.
Conservatives’ opportunistic attack on Kimmel (and Stephen Colbert before him) is not just fascist behavior. It is religious fundamentalist behavior. The too are different but closely aligned here. I’ve lived in the South long enough to know.
I went to see Monty Python’s Life of Brian when it came out in 1979. Outside the theater stood two neatly dressed evangelical dudes handing out Bible tracts. They urged me not to enter because the movie “makes fun of our Lord.”
No, dudes. It pokes fun at you. You and your lord are not the same. But criticism, and especially mockery, are things fundamentalists and totalitarian regimes cannot abide. That is what Kimmel has been suspended for, not for demeaning Kirk or for celebrating his murder. But totalitarian regimes like Vladimir Putin’s Russia, for example, are loathe to allow little details like that to get in the way of purging dissidents. (Don’t stand too close to windows in tall buildings.)
John Ganz (Unpopular Front) just had a friend from Russia text him last night, “This is all feeling awfully like home.”
Speaking of Russia, Mark Twain once wrote of American-style patriotism:
“We teach the boys to atrophy their independence. We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter– exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, & so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it & out of place–the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.”
How prescient. How MAGA.
Donald Trump’s MAGA disciples especially bristle at comparisons to 1930s Germany. Just not enough to reconsider taking actions that evoke them.
First they came for the Civil Servants
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Civil Servant
Then they came for the Immigrants
And I did not speak out
Because I was not an Immigrant
Then they came for the Universities
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a University
Then they came for the Media
And I did not speak out
Because I was not the Media
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
* It appears that Nexstar made the first move in this cascade.
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