Jimmy Kimmel’s show was suspended indefinitely on Wednesday.

The question is whether that is a result of organic pressure from the crowd, which, if so, is great. I’m on board.

Jimmy Kimmel is a schmuck. Jimmy Kimmel is the worst. Jimmy Kimmel has been trash for over ten years.

Jimmy Kimmel was the funny guy who used to tell jokes, going all the way back to his days on KROQ 106.7 in Los Angeles. When I was in high school, I was listening to “Kevin and Bean in the Morning” because my carpool mates refused to listen to anything else. Jimmy Kimmel was “The Sports Guy,” and he was funny and obviously very talented.

And then Kimmel somehow became a late-night host. He then decided it was incumbent upon him to become, as my friend Guy Benson has said,  the “Woke Pope of Late Night.” He would lecture you every night and be incredibly d***ish all the time.

That was his shtick. He would go on TV and lecture you and be terrible.

There are numerous times that Jimmy Kimmel should have been canceled, where he said things that were so egregious, terrible, and gross that he should have been done.

By the standards of the modern woke media, they should’ve just dug up his old stuff and gone after him. There’s old tape from “The Man Show with Adam Carolla” of Jimmy Kimmel simulating groping a woman without her permission and mimicking having sex with her from behind without her knowledge.

That didn’t get him canceled.

Jimmy Kimmel dressed up in blackface, back in the day. He dressed up as NBA star Karl Malone in blackface. That didn’t get him canceled.

Forget about his old stuff. He didn’t get canceled for saying on the air that people should die in hospitals if they took Ivermectin for COVID, stating, “Doctor Fauci said that if hospitals get any more overcrowded, they’re going to have to make some very tough choices about who gets an ICU … that choice didn’t seem so tough to me. Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right on and we’ll take care of ya. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, Wheezy.” 

I’m very happy to see Jimmy Kimmel go, for whatever reason. He was a horror show. His morality is completely backward. His obvious, dripping disdain and hatred for anyone who disagrees with him are perfectly clear and have been clear every night for years. No one could more richly deserve being taken off the air than Jimmy Kimmel.

The question is whether the federal government had anything to do with him being taken off the air. Policy cannot be a blunderbuss.

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Charlie Kirk was killed while advocating for free speech. He was killed while engaging in political debate. And one of the legacies that Charlie Kirk left us with is the necessity for such political debate, the necessity for free speech.

Again, that doesn’t mean speech without consequences. It means the necessity for debate. And what that requires is that the government not be involved, for example, in shutting down free debate.

So the question with regard to Kimmel is whether this is an organic outgrowth of natural outrage over Jimmy Kimmel, or whether it was forced by the federal government.

Kimmel had said in his monologue: “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 doing everything they can to score political points from and in between the finger pointing.”

By the time that Kimmel broadcast this on Monday night, it was perfectly clear that it was not true. We all knew. All the evidence shows that the shooter murdered Charlie because the shooter was in a gay relationship with a trans-furry, and had decided that Charlie was hateful because Charlie said that men were not women, etc.

We knew that already. So was Kimmel lying? I believe Kimmel knew he was lying.

I also know that there are a bunch of delusional people on the Left who are trying to pretend that either the shooter had no political motivations at all, which is totally crazy, or that the shooter was MAGA, which is even crazier.

Perhaps in his own head, Kimmel was part of that delusional crew who thought that because the shooter grew up in a MAGA house, that meant he was MAGA, despite the fact that all the evidence shows he was anything but.

So the question is whether these local affiliates canceled Kimmel because they were upset with him, or they canceled Kimmel because they came under pressure from the FCC. 

Nexstar ABC put out a statement:

Nexstar Media Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: NXST), today announced that the company’s owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future, beginning with tonight’s show. Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC‑affiliated markets. … 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. 

The question is, was that natural, or was that a result of the fact that Nexstar is currently trying to push a $6.2 billion merger through FCC scrutiny and the fact that the FCC chair, Brendan Carr, seemingly threatened action against Kimmel, ABC, and Disney?

I like Brendan Carr. But the FCC should not be threatening action against ABC or its affiliates or Disney based on Jimmy Kimmel being a jackass. He’s been a jackass his entire career.

Social censure is perfectly appropriate. The blowback from the public is totally natural and good because Jimmy Kimmel is a schmuck who should have been taken off the air ten years ago.

But I do not want the FCC in the business of telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be false.

Why? Because one day the shoe will be on the other foot. I know that we’ve gotten out of the habit of this. I know that a lot of people on the Right are saying, “The shoe will never be on the other foot, and if it is, the Left will just do it anyway.”

But preemptively breaking things because you believe that the Left is going to break the things still makes the things broken — and you can’t unbreak them. 

I’m an advocate of the idea that things that are not yet broken probably should not be.

If we are now in a world where we’re going to preemptively break the plate because we believe that the bad guy is going to break the plate, all the plates are going to get broken. And regardless of what you do, that’s going to get used against you. The shards will be used as weapons against you. I promise you, if the FCC is removing local affiliate licenses or threatening to do so, based on Jimmy Kimmel being a jackass, the next time a Democrat is elected, which will happen sooner or later, you will say the FCC should not be involved in this sort of stuff.

I’m not saying Kimmel shouldn’t be taken off the air.

I’m not saying the social sanction shouldn’t have forced him off the air.

I’m not saying any of these local affiliates shouldn’t have said they don’t want to air Kimmel’s show anymore.

I’m saying they should have done all that ten years ago. If, best case scenario, the public forces the local affiliates to react and take him off the air, totally legit.

But I do not like that the FCC muddied the waters here. I think it is bad politics, and I think it is bad policy. Because if Democrats win the presidency and you get a Democrat in charge of the FCC, you know which affiliates are going to get threatened.

Let the public be outraged, and let the public outrage organically drive for Kimmel’s ouster.

Legally, you’ve muddied the waters on First Amendment grounds in much the same way that the Biden administration was threatening Facebook with consequences if it did not remove certain material. 

If you wish to hand power back to the Democrats, what you do here is overreach or at least create the perception of overreach.

So two things can be true at once: I’m very, very happy that Jimmy Kimmel is off the air. He is a schmuck. He’s the worst. Don’t let the door hit him on the way out.

But also, the government should not be muddying the waters.

If they do, they put themselves at risk of significant overreach, and that could come back to haunt us.