On Sept. 17, Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was pulled off air following remarks he made regarding right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Kimmel said that the “MAGA gang” were “desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them” and trying to “score political points from it.” Coming just days after the assassination, Kimmel’s comments were seen as severely ill-timed and insensitive.
Politicizing an assassination is bound to cause backlash, and it did. However, once the show was pulled off air, the situation became a matter of free speech.
After Kimmel’s comments, Trump publicly called for the show to be cancelled and for the host to be fired. In other words, because Kimmel expressed his views, the president made it his goal to shut down his platform.
Following his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that said the First Amendment “enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without government interference,” and added that “government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.”
Ultimately, Jimmy Kimmel is a comedian. On his own show, he should be allowed to make jokes or statements about his political views without the fear of being silenced. Not only was Kimmel threatened, but so were other left-leaning television hosts including Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers. Despite being a self-proclaimed supporter of free speech, Donald Trump appears to be extremely hypocritical and petulant for his outcry against opinions that do not align with his own.
According to the Cambridge dictionary, the definition of dictator is “a leader who has complete power in a country and has not been elected by the people.” While Trump is an elected leader, he has also pushed his powers as president to the limit. If the president has the power to decide whose voices may ring the loudest in a free country, then it is no longer free. Further, not allowing for criticism to be heard suggests that they are formed on solid ground. If the criticisms were baseless, they would have no reason to be quieted and would quickly be disregarded.
In the end, the removal and then reinstatement of a television show is not the problem. The problem is that a show can be pulled off air due to the expression of political views that do not align with one side or the other. This should not be forgotten. It is imperative to acknowledge injustices within our society in order to remain a free union. Complacency and the turning of heads can never fix what is broken.
