Not a Mistake but a Message: What Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension Says About Free Speech in 2025
By LONNIE KING
We like to think comedians live on the front line of free speech: a messy, noisy zone where norms are tested and hypocrisy gets lampooned. For decades television’s late-night monologues have been a public pressure valve — necessary, abrasive, democratic.
This week, that valve was shut.
ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely after a monologue about the killing of Charlie Kirk; the move came only after the FCC chair publicly criticized the remarks and major affiliates, including Nexstar and Sinclair, pulled the program from local broadcasts.
President Trump didn’t hide his pleasure. And this on the heels of his public celebration of CBS’s move to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — writing that Colbert had been “fired” and mocking his talent.
At that time, Trump explicitly suggested the same fate awaited other late-night critics, name-checking Jimmy Kimmel as “next.”
That public gloating matters because it didn’t come from a neutral observer: it was a signal from a would-be dictator.
When the president of the United States openly praises one network’s decision and points to another host as a target, what looks like a spontaneous corporate reaction begins to look like part of a deliberate playbook.
Strategic and premeditated
Call it what it is: this feels less like a one-off reprimand than the execution of a strategy. The evidence — Trump’s gloating about Colbert, his explicit prediction that “Jimmy Kimmel is next”, repeated threats from FCC Chair Brendan Carr, and rapid affiliate preemptions — creates a chain of action and signal that lines up too neatly to be accidental.
In sequence:
- CBS announces the end of The Late Show
- The president gloats and forecasts further discipline for late-night critics
- The FCC chair publicly criticizes Kimmel and hints at regulatory consequences
- Large affiliate groups pull Kimmel from the air
- ABC suspends the show
Those facts are documented and contemporaneous, and they make the inference of a politically useful, coordinated threat plausible.
And here’s another key fact: Kimmel’s remarks weren’t mocking Kirk’s death itself. They were aimed squarely at the MAGA effort to distance itself from the suspect and spin the killing for political points.
In other words, the “offense” wasn’t disrespect for the dead — it was disrespect for the narrative.
That’s what really made his words intolerable: he punctured the script. And it betrays the true motivation here, because silencing him protects not a grieving family but a political movement’s image.
The Washington Post captured it perfectly:
“What happened to Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t a single business decision by ABC. It was the culmination of political intimidation, regulatory saber-rattling, and corporate fear — a textbook example of how satire gets silenced in an authoritarian climate.” (Washington Post, Sept. 18, 2025)
That’s exactly the point: when presidential gloating, FCC threats, and network capitulation line up, you don’t just have fallout from a joke — you have a deliberate shrinking of the space where dissent is allowed.
You can call my inference an allegation — and I should be clear about that — but it’s an allegation grounded in observable behavior and timing, not mere suspicion.
From ridicule to risk
Here’s the deal. You can have sympathy for the family of the slain man, and still recognize this for what it is: a scene-managed narrowing of who gets to criticize power.
The facts are plain: an administration official signals displeasure; powerful corporate actors respond; the network quietly takes the show off the air. The pattern reads less like incidental consequence and more like an engineered lesson.
For the broadcast entities, when the government’s regulatory head — the chair of the FCC — hovers in the background with talk of investigations, fines or license risks, speech that ruffles the powerful ceases to be merely controversial. It becomes dangerous to the bottom line.
The appearance of regulatory pressure transforms private decisions into de facto public coercion: broadcasters aren’t just reacting to outraged viewers, they’re calibrating for the appetite of those who control their licenses.
That dynamic is how a free press can be starved without a single statute changing.
More than a single show
This is not merely an assault on one entertainer’s gig. It’s an assault on a civic habit. Late-night comedy does something journalism too often cannot: it translates political power into human ridicule.
When the powerful make ridicule intolerable, they narrow the window through which the rest of us can hold them accountable in everyday culture. Authoritarian politics rarely begins with tanks and laws; it begins with throttling voices and norming self-censorship.
Today the throttle looks like corporate preemption prompted by a regulatory menace.
There are reasonable lines to draw. No one is advocating violence or mean-spirited harassment. But if content is judged and penalized not on legal standards — libel, direct incitement, or clear falsehood — but on political convenience, then we enter a world where the First Amendment becomes purely ceremonial.
Private companies have levers; regulatory officials have teeth; together, they form a lever so effective it requires only a show of force to silence dissent.
Why the response matters
If you think this is hyperbole, look at the reaction from Hollywood unions and free-speech groups: they didn’t call ABC’s move a mere business decision. They called it a threat to free expression.
That’s because workers in the creative industries understand the precedent: one suspension becomes two; one network’s silence becomes many voices’ self-censorship.
So, what should we do?
First, stop pretending this was an isolated scandal. Treat it as a test — of regulatory norms, corporate courage, and public commitment to an open culture.
Second, demand transparent standards from regulators: if the FCC believes a broadcast has crossed a legal line, show the charge, explain the process, and let a court or independent review weigh it.
Third, pressure corporate boards to protect editorial space; the calculus of short-term risk cannot be permitted to calcify into permanent suppression.
One Last Thought…
Democracies survive not because power is always benevolent, but because culture stubbornly tolerates dissent.
Whoever thought the late-night joke would one day merit a regulatory threat probably misread the public’s appetite for frank speech.
We should take this moment as a call to reclaim that appetite — loudly, insistently, and in the open. Because if late-night humor is too dangerous to air, it won’t be long before criticism of any kind follows it into silence.
Grace and grit to you! — LK
This is SO good, I've gotta share it!
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Not a Mistake but a Message: What Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension Says About Free Speech in 2025
By LONNIE KING
We like to think comedians live on the front line of free speech: a messy, noisy zone where norms are tested and hypocrisy gets lampooned. For decades television’s late-night monologues have been a public pressure valve — necessary, abrasive, democratic.
This week, that valve was shut.
ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely after a monologue about the killing of Charlie Kirk; the move came only after the FCC chair publicly criticized the remarks and major affiliates, including Nexstar and Sinclair, pulled the program from local broadcasts.
President Trump didn’t hide his pleasure. And this on the heels of his public celebration of CBS’s move to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — writing that Colbert had been “fired” and mocking his talent.
At that time, Trump explicitly suggested the same fate awaited other late-night critics, name-checking Jimmy Kimmel as “next.”
That public gloating matters because it didn’t come from a neutral observer: it was a signal from a would-be dictator.
When the president of the United States openly praises one network’s decision and points to another host as a target, what looks like a spontaneous corporate reaction begins to look like part of a deliberate playbook.
Strategic and premeditated
Call it what it is: this feels less like a one-off reprimand than the execution of a strategy. The evidence — Trump’s gloating about Colbert, his explicit prediction that “Jimmy Kimmel is next”, repeated threats from FCC Chair Brendan Carr, and rapid affiliate preemptions — creates a chain of action and signal that lines up too neatly to be accidental.
In sequence:
Those facts are documented and contemporaneous, and they make the inference of a politically useful, coordinated threat plausible.
And here’s another key fact: Kimmel’s remarks weren’t mocking Kirk’s death itself. They were aimed squarely at the MAGA effort to distance itself from the suspect and spin the killing for political points.
In other words, the “offense” wasn’t disrespect for the dead — it was disrespect for the narrative.
That’s what really made his words intolerable: he punctured the script. And it betrays the true motivation here, because silencing him protects not a grieving family but a political movement’s image.
The Washington Post captured it perfectly:
That’s exactly the point: when presidential gloating, FCC threats, and network capitulation line up, you don’t just have fallout from a joke — you have a deliberate shrinking of the space where dissent is allowed.
You can call my inference an allegation — and I should be clear about that — but it’s an allegation grounded in observable behavior and timing, not mere suspicion.
From ridicule to risk
Here’s the deal. You can have sympathy for the family of the slain man, and still recognize this for what it is: a scene-managed narrowing of who gets to criticize power.
The facts are plain: an administration official signals displeasure; powerful corporate actors respond; the network quietly takes the show off the air. The pattern reads less like incidental consequence and more like an engineered lesson.
For the broadcast entities, when the government’s regulatory head — the chair of the FCC — hovers in the background with talk of investigations, fines or license risks, speech that ruffles the powerful ceases to be merely controversial. It becomes dangerous to the bottom line.
The appearance of regulatory pressure transforms private decisions into de facto public coercion: broadcasters aren’t just reacting to outraged viewers, they’re calibrating for the appetite of those who control their licenses.
That dynamic is how a free press can be starved without a single statute changing.
More than a single show
This is not merely an assault on one entertainer’s gig. It’s an assault on a civic habit. Late-night comedy does something journalism too often cannot: it translates political power into human ridicule.
When the powerful make ridicule intolerable, they narrow the window through which the rest of us can hold them accountable in everyday culture. Authoritarian politics rarely begins with tanks and laws; it begins with throttling voices and norming self-censorship.
Today the throttle looks like corporate preemption prompted by a regulatory menace.
There are reasonable lines to draw. No one is advocating violence or mean-spirited harassment. But if content is judged and penalized not on legal standards — libel, direct incitement, or clear falsehood — but on political convenience, then we enter a world where the First Amendment becomes purely ceremonial.
Private companies have levers; regulatory officials have teeth; together, they form a lever so effective it requires only a show of force to silence dissent.
Why the response matters
If you think this is hyperbole, look at the reaction from Hollywood unions and free-speech groups: they didn’t call ABC’s move a mere business decision. They called it a threat to free expression.
That’s because workers in the creative industries understand the precedent: one suspension becomes two; one network’s silence becomes many voices’ self-censorship.
So, what should we do?
First, stop pretending this was an isolated scandal. Treat it as a test — of regulatory norms, corporate courage, and public commitment to an open culture.
Second, demand transparent standards from regulators: if the FCC believes a broadcast has crossed a legal line, show the charge, explain the process, and let a court or independent review weigh it.
Third, pressure corporate boards to protect editorial space; the calculus of short-term risk cannot be permitted to calcify into permanent suppression.
One Last Thought…
Democracies survive not because power is always benevolent, but because culture stubbornly tolerates dissent.
Whoever thought the late-night joke would one day merit a regulatory threat probably misread the public’s appetite for frank speech.
We should take this moment as a call to reclaim that appetite — loudly, insistently, and in the open. Because if late-night humor is too dangerous to air, it won’t be long before criticism of any kind follows it into silence.
Grace and grit to you! — LK
This is SO good, I've gotta share it!
Related