On Wednesday evening, ABC benched late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. That in and of itself is no great loss to comedy. But the circumstances under which he has been suspended should alarm anyone who cares about free speech.
The drama began on Monday, when Kimmel quipped on his show that Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin was a conservative. “We hit 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 it,” said Kimmel.
The host appears to have been so isolated in his Bluesky bubble that he actually believed that Tyler Robinson was a man of the right when all the evidence suggests just the opposite. If ABC on its own had fired the host for clueless material, that would have been entirely within their rights.
But that is not what happened. Instead, Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr went on Benny Johnson’s YouTube show and offered Disney-owned ABC a choice. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” said the country’s top regulator of broadcast television. “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.”
This is what’s known as jawboning—when state actors use threats to inappropriately compel private action. That’s an awfully nice broadcasting license you have there, Bob Iger. Shame if anything happens to it because of your Jimmy Kimmel problem.
