Kim Strassel, in her recent WSJ op-ed, ('Back to Censor Culture', Sept. 19, p. A13) got it right when
she sounded off about the Trumpian Right's new found campaign for "cancel
culture":
"By and large 'cancel culture' on the left meant social media shaming, threats of boycotts, walkouts, lost advertising and elite sneering that provoked the cancellations. But Biden's FCC didn't tell ABC to fire Roseanne Barr. And no regulator pressured Spotify to ditch Joe Rogan. The right has learned how to use these pressure campaigns too (see the Bud Light reactions). So progress was already being made."
She was correct, so why the need to drag in federal power to force media companies to come to heel? In its Monday editorial (‘Ted Cruz’s Finest Hour), the WSJ editors themselves may have set the tone, writing:
"Most Republicans are afraid of uttering even a syllable of disapproval about the Trump Administration, so kudos to Ted Cruz for noticing the danger from Brendan Carr’s use of regulatory threats to stifle free speech.
The Texas Senator used his podcast on Friday to criticize Mr. Carr, who runs the Federal Communications Commission, for his threats against Disney, its ABC network and its station affiliates if they didn’t punish Jimmy Kimmel. Disney then pulled the late-night host off the air “indefinitely.”
Would that the disreputable bonehead honcho Brendan Carr - now heading the FCC - had also read it before popping off his threats to ABC-Disney (to get Jimmy Kimmel off the air). But Carr had already absorbed Trump's brand of authoritarianism by osmosis. Realizing - like Traitor Trump - media owners (like the universities, law firms and other corporations) faced complex financial and political dynamics under the newly aggressive Trump 2.0 administration. Which as we know wields outsized leverage over any entity dependent on federal regulation or financial support.
How did Trump mutate into such a god-awful dictator in the intervening 4 years he was out of power? Easy. First, Trump learned from fellow tyrant Viktor Orban in Hungary how he could gain control of the media. E.g.
Then there are the bully boy tactics themselves used to crash norms and laws, given the corrupt conservo Supremes conferred almost total power on the orange fungus. Perhaps this aspect has been best summarized in David French's latest column (Sept. 22):
Opinion | Crony Capitalism Has Reached a New Low - The New York Times
Writing:
"There’s a pattern to President Trump’s second term. He breaks the law and bullies his opponents — and yet he still wins. The examples are legion. He barrels through the First Amendment rights of law firms and universities, and they cut a deal. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission threatens to revoke broadcasting licenses over Jimmy Kimmel, and ABC yanks him off the air. He files a meritless lawsuit against CBS, and the network writes him a huge check.
One of Trump’s most consequential victories occurred on Friday, when he reportedly reached a deal with the Chinese government to hand control of TikTok, the wildly popular social media app, to a consortium of American investors, including Oracle and Andreessen Horowitz, which are connected to the billionaire Trump allies Larry Ellison and Marc Andreessen.
In the process, he defied a law passed by Congress and risked American national security. All to preserve access to a social media app while he negotiated a deal that benefited his billionaire allies, pulling even more of America’s public square into MAGA’s sphere of influence.
So there we have it. Alas, it may be too late to turn back the authoritarian tide now, given Russians waited too long when Putin went after puppets that belittled him. They couldn't see then they're failure to act cost them their liberty- what little they had."
But hold strain. ABC announced yesterday Kimmel will return tonight, for the time being beating back the Trumper fascists. Since ABC’s decision, at least five Hollywood unions,
collectively representing more than 400,000 workers, publicly condemned the
company. Meanwhile, hundreds of A-class celebrities including Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Robert DeNiro and many others, signed an ACLU letter condemning the move. Howard Stern announced he was cancelling
his Disney Plus subscription and thousands of others have followed- many
ordinary customers. See e.g.
Disney Has Lost BILLIONS After Canning Jimmy Kimmel
The screenwriters’ union decried what they called “corporate
cowardice,” and organized a protest last week outside the main gate at Disney
headquarters in Burbank, Calif. Damon Lindelof, a creator of ABC’s “Lost,” said
that if Mr. Kimmel’s program did not return from suspension, he couldn’t “in
good conscience work for the company that imposed it.” Other Disney
actors, producers also threatened action, ‘No Kimmel, No work’.
Kimmel’s return tonight on ABC will make for one of the most anticipated episodes of a late-night television show in years. But what remains to be seen is the extent to which he has agreed to be muzzled. To tell the truth, his original mild comments criticizing Trump (NOT Kirk) - which got him suspended -were a total Trump misfire. John Oliver, a guest on the particular Kimmel show, said the same in his Sunday night HBO broadcast. See e.g.
John Oliver DESTROYS Trump & ABC Over Kimmel Firing
So an entire 'storm in a teacup' was started by the MAGA Mafia, and its top thugs - Brendan Carr and Mob Boss Trump. But a concerted constellation of citizens threw a counterpunch - hitting ABC - Disney in its profit margins - to bring Jimmy Kimmel (and free speech) back to this embattled nation.
See Also:
Disney brings back Jimmy Kimmel, sidelined after Charlie Kirk comments - The Washington Post
And:
by Thom Hartmann | September 23, 2025 - 5:02am | permalink
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett is refusing to apologize for saying Trump is following Hitler’s playbook. She’s right.
We’ve seen this movie before. Or at least our grandparents did. Dictators can’t take a joke.
On February 4, 1939 — seven months before their invasion of Poland kicked off World War II — the man with oversight responsibility for German media officially forbade five comedians from ever again performing in public. As the headline in The New York Times explained:
“Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime”
And:
by Bill Berkowitz | September 20, 2025 - 4:41am | permalink
In the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, President Trump and his allies are insisting — without a shred of evidence — that a vast left-wing conspiracy are plotting violent attacks in this country. Naomi Klein, in her book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” popularized the term “shock doctrine” -- based on the economic term “shock therapy” -- theorized that in times of war, political turmoil, natural disasters, and one might add, assassinations, right wing forces will push forward their agenda, regardless of how unpopular it may be.
After 9/11, for instance, the Bush administration launched a perpetual War on Terror; after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans lost public schools and hospitals while tens of thousands of Black residents were displaced. Trump’s narrative now risks becoming another such shock, weaponized to expand repression under the guise of security.
And:
What Is ‘Consequence Culture’? - The New York Times
And:
by Steven Harper | September 22, 2025 - 4:42am | permalink
In the final minutes of FBI Director Kash Patel’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 16, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) acknowledged the obvious: Individuals on the left should not have celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but influential voices on the right were inflaming the situation.
The bottom line, Tillis observed, was that escalation of the rhetoric on the right was making the FBI’s job of law enforcement more difficult.
Trump Disagrees
Sen. Tillis’s analysis would have come as a shock to President Donald Trump, who blamed the episode on the “radical left.” Speaking Wednesday night from the Oval office only hours after Kirk’s death on September 10—before the identity or motives of the assassin were known—he issued a video message from the Oval Office:
And:
by Jeff Cohen | September 21, 2025 - 5:06am | permalink
As corporate media accelerate their censorship of comedians and journalists, we must realize that we got to this dire situation because of old-fashioned, bipartisan corruption in Washington, D.C. The problem didn’t begin with President Donald Trump. It began long ago, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, when presidents of both parties and Congress decided to put the nation’s media system in the hands of a small number of ever-larger corporations.
Those corporations were big political donors to both parties. Enormous mergers were approved. Antitrust laws were ignored. Federal Communications Commission rules were changed, and caps on mega-ownership were relaxed or eliminated.
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