A Deeply Fractured US

[Remius]

Progenitors of cancel culture upset about being canceled. Funny.

Interesting claim. I remember freedom fries and cancelling Dixie chicks as the first salvoes in that tit for tat. Or John Lennon and sinead O’Connor before that or Mohammed Ali…

 

[Jarnhamar]

Don't forget TLCs Waterfalls being racist.

 

[RangerRay]

Jimmy IMO was - is a rich dick who had a platform to preach to the idiots.

I didn’t find him funny or entertaining, but it’s obscene that the FCC is threatening media companies over anodyne statements by unfunny comedians.

I remember late night TV saying worse things about Reagan, Bush and Clinton. They probably laughed at it.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Sure, there was an ocean of late-night hosts calling for consequences against incendiary comments by prominent left-leaning people for the past couple of decades.

Regardless what one believes about the balance or imbalance of where consequences for expression of belief have been landing, it is a fact that people against these consequences have been complaining without effect for years. Over time, some give up and move to the old standby: tit-for-tat. And then people call for something less than tit-for-tat to be tried again. If it didn't work before, why would it work now?

 

[lenaitch]

Right to offend and subversion are different.

Are you trying to claim that a gaggle of late night talk show hosts, on competing networks, and possibly other media personalities, are some form of fifth column?

Subversion: a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system by persons working secretly from within.
(Merriam Webster)

 

[Fishbone Jones]

While we're discussing fairness, let's not forget all those people that lost work, income and were ostracised and cancelled by the left. In no small part by late night commentators.

 

[dapaterson]

While we're discussing fairness, let's not forget all those people that lost work, income and were ostracised and cancelled by the left. In no small part by late night commentators.

Names?

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Names?

Liberals conveniently forget how many people they've canceled in the last decade | Blaze Media

Liberals have celebrated the firing of conservatives from Roseanne Barr to Tucker Carlson over their speech.

www.theblaze.com

12 People Canceled by the Left After Expressing Conservative Views

Cancel culture runs rampant in today’s America. A 10-year-old tweet that mysteriously “resurfaces,” a past campaign donation, or even the slightest critique of any of the left’s sacred tenets seems to be enough to draw the attention of an angry mob—or even get someone fired. With more and more...

www.heritage.org

There's lots more if you want to do your own research.

 

[RangerRay]

While we're discussing fairness, let's not forget all those people that lost work, income and were ostracised and cancelled by the left. In no small part by late night commentators.

The woke cancel culture perpetuated by the left was bad enough. But this is now being perpetuated by the government and the FCC in particular. There used to be a time when conservatives prided themselves as being free speech absolutists.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

The woke cancel culture perpetuated by the left was bad enough. But this is now being perpetuated by the government and the FCC in particular. There used to be a time when conservatives prided themselves as being free speech absolutists.

Previous governments to this one share that. Democrat governments are not immune to deserved critique. Using lawfare (FBI, DOJ, CIA) to cancel conservatives is part of their fare.

 

[McG]

If this video is the full clip behind some current hysteria, it would seem Kimmel did not actually say the shooter was MAGA.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1968851218731520019

Is there more to this than the clip reveals?

 

[Genetk44]

Unless you’re Jimmy Kimmel

 

[Brad Sallows]

There used to be a time when conservatives prided themselves as being free speech absolutists.

Maybe this has escaped the notice of many here, but there isn't one kind of conservative in the US. A few offhand: paleo-cons, neo-cons, trad-cons (traditional), so-cons (social), libertarians, classical liberals. The ascendant faction getting up everyone's noses right now is nat-con (national). Of course there are overlaps in the sets of what they believe and seek to conserve, but I suspect the set of what all share in common is small.

What sets the nat-cons apart from pretty much all the others is that they are a mirror image of the left when it comes to principles - they set them aside whenever it serves; ends justify means. These are the conservatives who decided to fight the left - they do think of it as a fight, if their rhetoric is a guide to their thoughts - using essentially the same tactics, and this is one characteristic they have almost to themselves.

Slandering all conservatives with the doctrines of the nat-cons is vacuous; appealing to the nat-cons to adopt the principles of the other factions is pointless by definition. To emphasize: if anyone wondered what a right-wing version of the left-wingers that have been doing their thing for the past couple of decades would look like, nat-cons are it.

 

[Brad Sallows]

If this video is the full clip behind some current hysteria, it would seem Kimmel did not actually say the shooter was MAGA.

Most of the hysteria is that Kimmel said "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." That's difficult to interpret as anything but a suggestion that Kirk was "one of them", however left-handed Kimmel tried to make it. It wasn't true; it was known when Kimmel said it that it wasn't true; and Kimmel reasonably knew it. One of the tangential stories to emerge is that Kimmel supporters are pissed that ABC didn't edit out an obviously irresponsible and incorrect commentary. (To be clear, that's non-MAGA people angry at their own for not policing themselves.)

People are angry about the suggestion; they'd be angry to higher degrees if the statement had been more direct.

 

[OldSolduer]

Progenitors of cancel culture upset about being canceled. Funny.

No kidding.

I always thought some of these late night hosts were jerks. It was OK to make fun of George W Bush and others but not okay to make fun of Democrats.

SO was the shooter a left wing loon or a right wing loon? Or just a loon

(my apologies to loons everywhere)

 

[mariomike]

It was OK to make fun of George W Bush and others but not okay to make fun of Democrats.

President Johnson put it this way,

After being trashed numerous times by the Smothers Brothers, President Johnson wrote them, "It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives."

 

[Brad Sallows]

President Johnson put it this way,

Johnson was a long time ago. The watershed was Obama - comedians almost entirely stopped lampooning the president, whether because of their own political leanings or because they didn't want to take the heat for doing anything to take the shine off. The situation persists because the Republican-Democrat balance is perceived to sit on a knife edge, and the outcome of winning or losing matters more every election cycle. Few who talk abstractly about speaking "truth to power" are willing to risk unsettling their own power.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Sorry I don't speak progressive left.

Some might say some of it sounds a bit like the totalitarian dialect, though

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Most of the hysteria is that Kimmel said "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." That's difficult to interpret as anything but a suggestion that Kirk was "one of them", however left-handed Kimmel tried to make it. It wasn't true; it was known when Kimmel said it that it wasn't true; and Kimmel reasonably knew it. One of the tangential stories to emerge is that Kimmel supporters are pissed that ABC didn't edit out an obviously irresponsible and incorrect commentary. (To be clear, that's non-MAGA people angry at their own for not policing themselves.)

People are angry about the suggestion; they'd be angry to higher degrees if the statement had been more direct.

I have read there is a surge of registered Dem. voters switching to Rep. This might actually be good for the right of centre part of the GOP as it increase their mass and help counter the far right types.

 

[McG]

Most of the hysteria is that Kimmel said "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." That's difficult to interpret as anything but a suggestion that Kirk was "one of them",

I think you really need to want that interpretation to see it. The statement says nothing about who/what the shooter was or was not. The statement only comments on a level of effort that some were making to communicate who he was not … and that is not a wrong observation. Plenty of Trump supporters, apologists, team members, and Trump himself made statements assigning political identity & motive to the shooter before anything was known.