As a free speech absolutist, this news very much made my day.
We all heard the fake news story: Trump and the FCC had pressured ABC to dump Jimmy Kimmel because of an idiotic thing he said about Charlie Kirk's alleged killer -- mainly that he was a MAGA kid -- and then they canceled him.
Rolling Stone got the whole internet with this one:
This was at the least missing context. More on that below.
I'll send it over to The Hollywood Reporter, which picks up the story the day after Kimmel's comments:
Inside of ABC, 'multiple conversations' with Kimmel were had at the 'executive level,' the first person says, though the talks had not yet reached Bob Iger or TV head Dana Walden. The execs wanted to know: How was Kimmel going to address the situation on Wednesday night's show?
The answer was not satisfactory to management, sources say.
They wanted Kimmel to apologize for what he said, which would've been 100% appropriate, especially given the context that what he said was based on a lie being spread on the internet by lefties. But that wasn't in the cards for Jimmy.
Disney wanted Kimmel to address the situation in a way that 'would take down the temperature,' but what he had planned was 'going to fan the flames with the MAGA fan base,' the source says.
A source at Jimmy Kimmel Live! counters to THR that Kimmel's planned on-air address was not 'making it worse,' but that he simply 'wasn't kowtowing' to the outrage.
Kimmel was 'defending what he said [as] being grossly mischaracterized by a certain group of people,' the show source says.
THR reported on Wednesday that Kimmel did not plan to apologize for his comments, but did plan to address the situation on-air.
So the guy who co-hosted The Man Show for four years refused to be a man and apologize? Instead, he was going to defend what he said and say it was mischaracterized by the Right.
Other important context here from The Hollywood Reporter:
By this point [about an hour before taping], 66 of the roughly 200 affiliate stations had said they would not carry the episode — that's when ABC announced it was suspending the program — a Bob Iger and Dana Walden joint decision that was a 'last resort,' the first person says. Walden delivered the news to Kimmel but did not ask him to apologize, says the source.
Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Wednesday. Kimmel essentially mocked him with this tongue-in-cheek comment on Monday, and apparently refused to apologize for it (which would've been the right thing to do no matter who you are). Advertisers and affiliates didn't want to be associated with that kind of person, so they applied pressure to get him canned.
So as for the fake news we heard for the past three days, well, it looks like that's been debunked.
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