I try to restrict this blog to elections - but so many important issues were raised by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the Jimmy Kimmel aftermath, that I couldn't help myself.
Democracy is kinda the opposite of rule by terror. It doesn’t work if people are afraid to run for office, so assassination is never an option … no matter how despicable a candidate or agenda may be.
For the record -- I despise the entire right wing echo chamber news/entertainment business. It's not honest civic participation ….it's a business plan for profiting from a certain kind of blind outrage and alienation. It’s a disgusting occupation, and it's become ever more successful over the last 30 years. BTW, here’s a link to one of Kirk’s hateful, racist podcasts. Like Tucker Carlson, he normalizes divisive depravity as wholesome, Christian., and American as apple pie.
Yet still we must note that it filled a gap left when legacy media lost its even-handed credibility - for which both Kimmel’s “joke” and the media response to his firing are typical examples.
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1. The is zero evidence that puts Tyler in MAGA - and yes, even one of my best friends was fooled into believing otherwise.
2. For whatever reason, the socialists of today are often quite proud to be called just that —-while today’s fascists are ashamed of what they are. Only leftists denounce anyone as fascist. That’s what Tyler wrote on his deadly bullets — so yes, at that moment he might be identified as a leftist terrorist - though no other evidence may ever exist.
3, The apparent intention of this misinformation was to denigrate political opponents.
4. So we may call it a malicious lie.
How this tragic story can be turned into comedy baffles me. Indeed, making any humorous political commentary on a nightly basis before a large national audience is probably impossible at this time. With more time and thought, Kimmel might have said something like:
“ Isn’t it crazy how hard MAGA is trying to make this white, binary, Mormon, rural, gun-toting sheriff’s son into a radical leftist? Maybe he just finally understood what was beneath the sugar coating of Kirk's popular brand of hateful white racism and responded in the only way he knew”
Not really funny - and probably he still would have been fired - but at least he would have been telling the truth. And that is most important than anything else.
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Meanwhile, several NYT columnists jump on Kimmel's sinking ship to bemoan his suspension from the network - and none of them call out his malicious lie. This is not responsible journalism —-and they should be fired as well as Kimmel.
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A week later - Kimmel returns -- proclaims a victory for freedom of speech - and offers this one sentence by way of contrition:
Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what was obviously a deeply disturbed individual
If we accept free speech and the totally open marketplace of ideas, we must accept that eventually what can be sold will be sold without even the thinnest thread of remorse.
And an unrestricted marketplace is one that eventually will be owned by fewer and fewer people. (hello, Larry Ellison)
It may be neither possible nor preferable to legally stop the proliferation of malicious lies.
But wouldn't it be a good idea not to celebrate and encourage those who make them?
