As our Free Speech becomes "Me Speech"

Sometimes, when I’m feeling spiritually adrift, I turn to girl supergroups of the eighties for guidance. Which naturally leads me to Exposé, and their 1988 hit single “Seasons Change, People Change.” Was I a fan of the actual songcraft or of their tinny synth-pop sound? Of course not. I’m a man, for crap’s sake. Back in my formative eighties years, I liked to listen to Zeppelin, preferably something with a heavy backbeat like “When the Levee Breaks” or “Black Dog.” You know, things you could listen to in good conscience with your bros while riding in a van with an airbrushed howling-coyote-under-a-full-moon on the side. As all Men of Refined Taste in the eighties did.

But I’ll be damned if those girl prophets didn’t speak to me with their musical treatise on time and human nature. Yes indeed, sisters. You nailed it! Seasons do change. People do change. Roughly a quarter of the people in my life are unrecognizable, both politically and morally, from 15 years ago. And maybe I am too, because I kinda despise them for it. Not because I give a rip about politics or party dynamics. But because I do about fixed principles, which seem to come conditionally unfixed at an alarming rate these days.

For instance, remember when all purported people-of-the-right were pro-free speech? As late as about five minutes ago? I always have been. And even if I weren’t a free-speech defender, naturally — and I most assuredly still am — I would force myself to be for selfish, professional reasons. Since my very livelihood has depended on freely expressing my own opinions (not always popular ones) for over 30 years.

I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I learned early on in my civic education that what makes America, America (or at least the version of America that I truly love), is that even if I hate what you say, you have the right to say it, and I have to respect that right. I might want to throw an elbow to your solar plexus for saying it. But I can’t, at least not physically. (Though I can with my free speech.) Because the beauty of our marketplace of ideas is that you have the right to offend me, and I don’t have to shop at your booth, but I can’t shut it down. Which is traditionally what has made us, us. It’s not all screaming eagles and lofty Jeffersonian rhetoric. More often, it’s just about tolerating the people we can’t stand. Which made us the most dangerous country in the world, in a good way. Because nothing was so sacred that it couldn’t be questioned. Meaning we were constantly Working Things Out. A useful way to keep dishonest people more honest.

But now, we’re becoming dangerous for different reasons, and not in a good way. Plenty (including me) would say it happened during the Great Wokeness Scare of the twenty-teens. Others (including me) could point to what happened to Charlie Kirk last week, when someone who didn’t like the things he said (as I mostly didn’t) shot him through the throat. And now we’re seeing it with Jimmy Kimmel’s show getting yanked off the air by ABC after Trump’s FCC stooge, Brendan Carr, a man who looks like an inbred ferret (sorry, but I’m using my free speech while it still exists), overtly threatened the network on the podcast of another Trump dingleberry, Benny Johnson. Lots (though not all) of wingers will celebrate, of course, because Kimmel regularly did his job — a job they have no stomach for, and which they hated him for doing. As a late-night host in a long, irreverent American television tradition, it is, or was, Kimmel’s duty to mock absurdity. And nobody in our nation’s history has provided more absurdity-per-capita than their Dear Leader, of whom too many believe a harsh word should never be spoken. (Including and especially the Dear Leader himself, who just sued the New York Times for no good reason for $15 billion.) Which is why so many of these purported free-speech warriors aren’t for Free Speech, but for Me Speech, as the great anti-authoritarian writer, Timothy Snyder, just called it. Meaning they think they should be allowed to say whatever they want (however vile or untrue), but should be allowed to shut everyone else down as their curdled, desiccated spirits dictate.

Jimmy Kimmel, patriot

To be sure, the precipitating incident wasn’t one of Kimmel’s finest moments. While Charlie’s Kirk’s shooter’s political predilections were initially murky (he grew up in a Trumpy, pro-gun family, was not a registered voter by party affiliation, but seemed to make a strong, leftward drift when he took up with a transitioning man), Kimmel accused MAGA of politicizing Kirk’s death while refusing to acknowledge that the shooter was one of their own. (This seemingly turned out not to be the case, even if there were enough meme-tells in the shooter’s language to get him widely suspected of being an alt-right Groyper, so much so that Nick Fuentes, King of the Groypers, publicly complained about getting unfairly demonized.)

Did Kimmel make a mistake? Seemingly. Should he have apologized for it? Probably. But how many untrue things does Trump say on a daily basis, for which he never gets held to account, or apologizes? In his first term, back before Jeff Bezos hollowed out the Washington Post to make it more Trump-friendly, the Post documented how Trump made 30,573 false or misleading statements in four years. Which comes out to nearly 21 falsehoods PER DAY. An astounding level of dishonesty. And yet, how did Trump get punished? America reelected him in a near-landslide. Even as he faced multiple criminal indictments, for which his stacked Supreme Court virtually assured he would never face any penalty.

Should we really hold our late-night comics to a higher standard than we do the President of the United States? That’s the sad clown-show we want to live in?

And now the Sad-Clown-in Chief and his Insane Clown Posse have thrown the throttle open while clamping down on free speech, using Charlie Kirk’s death (and those who ghoulishly celebrated it), and every other excuse they can think of as pretext. Here are some Drudge headlines from just the last 24 hours:

MAGA Vows To Silence Foes
Will Prosecute ‘Hate’ Speech
Vance: Watch Your Mouth!
Troops Punished For Socials
Don Turns Darker
Threatens ABC’s Jon Karl To His Face
MAGA Intensifies Crackdown On Free Speech
Cancel Culture – Now Run By Conservatives
His Wife Called Kirk A ‘Nazi.’ He Was Fired
Texas Tech Student Who Protested Is Jailed, No Longer Enrolled
Critics See DOJ Carrying Out President’s Revenge

Mind you, while FCC Chair Brendan Carr didn’t have to officially do anything to get ABC to axe Kimmel, the noises he made alone were enough to cause an acute case of premature capitulation. Which is how it usually works in thugged-out societies. Create a climate of fear, and the fear does the work for you. The Gambino family member who shows up to the corner grocer’s, collecting tribute each week, never actually has to break the grocer’s legs to make his point. His just showing up is enough to stress what’s coming if compliance isn’t forthcoming. Causing the grocer to reach for the money in his till before any physical violence ever befalls him.

Of which Kimmel was similarly an obvious victim.

It’s popular, these days, to mock those who cite our authoritarian tilt as being hysterical, or having Trump Derangement Syndrome. Which is a lazy, stupid phrase meant to short circuit all valid criticism, and which I put the sword to here. But sometimes, if it looks, squawks, and barks like authoritarianism, it does so for a very simple reason:

Because it is.

If that’s the society you want to live in, feel free to dismiss what just happened to Jimmy Kimmel. But if it’s not, start taking your freedom more seriously, before you no longer have it.

Slack Tide by Matt Labash is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Bonus Tracks You know you want it. Here’s Led Zeppelin doing my favorite Zeppelin song, “When The Levee Breaks,” featuring what is arguably the greatest rock’n’roll drum lick of all-time. John Bonham’s, of course. Zeppelin reworked a 1929 country-blues song by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. And when they recorded it in the lobby of Headley Grange, a former poorhouse in East Hampshire, two mics were suspended over a flight of stairs, catching that glorious echo.

And here is a long-time favorite internet remix of mine, “Black Sabotage” — a mash-up of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” and the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.” Before I blew out my ACL several years ago, it was my workout jump-rope music of choice, for obvious reasons. Now I’m slower and more careful, while listening to Engelbert Humperdinck. Getting old sucks.