Kimmel is back on television.
This is a good thing.
Disney was foolish to “suspend” him. Even if it was “indefinitely.”
But Disney has every right to control the content on any platform it owns. It isn’t censorship. It’s a corporation deciding what it wants to promote.
If someone comes over to my house for dinner upon my invitation and starts discussing topics I don’t like, I get to kick them out of my house. It is entirely my right to do so. I control the content of speech in my house.
None of this is a violation of the First Amendment.
It might be foolish. It might be loathsome. It IS censorship. It might be a violation of the principles of free speech…in its purest theoretical form.
But what it is NOT is a violation of the First Amendment.
Let’s remember what the First Amendment actually states:
CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW….
Stop!
That’s as far as anyone need go.
The First Amendment protects us (meaning Americans—sorry Millenials and Gen Z, it doesn’t apply to Europe, the Middle East, China, or any other place on the planet) from governmental intrusion. (And any Boomers out there who don’t know this—well, shame the HELL on you!)
Nothing more.
Every non-governmental entity has the absolute right to censor speech—based on content—in its business, locations, what it allows its name to be affiliated with. The whole gamut.
There are some nuances. Public entities (i.e. anything that constitutes a governmental body or is funded by the government or has some governmental function could—I wrote COULD) be precluded from content discrimination under the First Amendment. But that, as I wrote, is more nuanced. The law has some clear guidance, but there are always new and different issues coming up.
Bottom line: Disney has the right to promote whatever speech it wants and to block whatever speech it doesn’t want.
As stupid as that may be, Disney has the right to do it.
What was wrong here was the FCC threatening Disney’s broadcast license because of content.
That, dear readers, is the First Amendment violation.
Should Kimmel be able to spout whatever he wants, no matter how stupid and wrong and hilarious it might be?
Personally, I think so. (And no, I don’t think what he said in this case was stupid. It was wrong, but not stupid. And I don’t mean “wrong” in a moral sense. I mean factually, he was wrong.)
But I don’t own Disney. My boys do. One share each. Now that’s power!
So Disney, and its money obsessed board and officers get to do whatever the fuck they want.
Walt Disney said all he wanted to do was entertain. I don’t know if that’s a quote, but it was something like that.
I call bullshit.
He wanted to make money.
And that’s what the Disney Corporation is all about. Making money.
The Mouse wants cash!
There is nothing wrong with that. But deep down, there is something wrong with trying to censor a comedian.
But it isn’t a First Amendment violation.
Just like when all the students on college campuses came to near riots every time a speaker came to discuss a topic these overprivileged, self-righteous lib-tards didn’t like (the “cancel” culture). It wasn’t a violation of the First Amendment.
At least not on private university grounds. Public…well, there might be an issue there.
But it was profoundly STUPID.
And the whole “cancel” culture was the forerunner to what we now see from the right.
By the way, on a tangent here, the right as we know it today, like most Republicans and the MAGA junkies, are not conservative. Trump is not a conservative.
Just ask William F. Buckley, Jr.
And if anyone asks who William F. Buckley, Jr. is…
But the Dems who supported or even acquiesced to cancel culture, well, you are not true liberals either.
You are no better than censorship on the right, crushing dissent, trying to prevent open and free dialogue because you don’t like the viewpoint.
It is a curious day in America when the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Washington Post are dead wrong on the First Amendment but the Wall Street Journal nails it in spades.