Free speech is dead in America — thanks to Brendan Carr, the overzealous top cop at the Federal Communications Commission.
That, at least, is the hyperventilating and dubious claim from critics who are aghast that the FCC’s chairman had the temerity to threaten Disney and its ABC network to discipline — maybe even fire — Jimmy Kimmel over his absurd, distasteful and above all false commentary on the Charlie Kirk assassination.
The First Amendment supposedly protects all sorts of speech — even the claptrap uttered by the host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” who breezily asserted that the “MAGA gang” was looking to capitalize on Kirk’s assassination by making the killer out to be “anything other than one of them.”
The killer, of course, is a trans-obsessed leftist lunatic, which Kimmel should have known at the time. That’s why Carr came out swinging, reminding ABC and Disney they have business before his agency, which under law he could throttle if they didn’t at least put Kimmel in the penalty box.
It didn’t matter. The left and its MSM allies claimed the Constitution was being burned before our very eyes. Trump and his FCC chair were staging a totalitarian coup. Disney unsuspended Kimmel.
Sorry guys, Brendan Carr is far from the first — or worst — practitioner of alleged First Amendment overreach. In fact, you can make a good case that his invoking of the Communications Act of 1934 to enforce its “public interest” guidelines on free, local TV (as opposed to cable) is exactly what Congress meant when it sought to curtail stuff like obscenity or Kimmel’s shameless prevaricating.
Liberal agitprop
Let’s be real: We’re in an age where there’s good evidence of “60 Minutes” interviews edited to make Kamala Harris sound smarter, and make Joe Biden sound less sleepy. ABC’s “The View” is regarded as a news program even as it features left-wing women bantering about their hatred of all things Trump.
Kimmel’s comment fits nicely into this relentless stream of leftist agitprop we see on regulated airwaves that are supposed to provide both sides of the political debate.
How did we get to this point? Go back in history to thank the thought police under the Obama administration, which it turns out has much to do with the biased and quite frankly anti-free-speech content you have been seeing all over network TV for years.
In particular, let’s recall the dozens of conditions it imposed on Comcast in 2011 to greenlight the cable-TV giant’s $30 billion purchase of NBCUniversal. Those included some very un-free-speechy stuff — not only who must be hired by the company, with a strict emphasis on now dubiously legal Diversity Equity and Inclusion measures — but also what should appear on the air.
“NBCU will report annually on its diversity efforts with particular emphasis on programming/content, procurement and pipeline programs,” the consent decree stated. It would make those disclosures not just to the US government but to a slew of race-based organizations including the NAACP.
If you’re wondering why you rarely see conservatives on Colbert, who is conceivably to the left of Kimmel, or why Al Sharpton is a long-running host on MSNBC and a contributor to “news” content on NBC, this is it.
Comcast told me it stopped complying with the consent decree when its term ended in 2018, but I found that its DEI obsession with metrics on hiring and programming remains largely intact. It proudly stated as much on its website until earlier in the year when Carr launched an inquiry into Comcast’s practices.
Online censorship
Just last week, Google admitted it canceled YouTube creators who were off message on COVID-19 following “repeated and sustained outreach” from “senior Biden officials, including White House officials,” in response to a GOP House investigation into online censorship by Bidenistas.
Facebook faced similar pressure. Biden’s free-speech assault included putting pressure on the likes of JPMorgan and Bank of America to “debank” conservatives including a certain conservative in the White House.
Tell me, did Brendan Carr invent debanking as well?
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