having been forced to stop gloating over Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension due to his reinstatement, the Media Research Center quickly moved to whining that non-right-wing media didn’t believe, like it did, that Kimmel deserved more punishment. Jorge Bonilla grumbled:
The legacy newscasts decided that Disney/ABC’s restoration of Jimmy Kimmel Live! would sit at the top of the A-block- top story on ABC and NBC, and second story on CBS. In many ways, this editorial decision exemplifies both the media’s disconnect from the public they claim to serve, and the insular circling of the wagons for one of their own under duress.
[…]Beyond this little oasis of reporting from NBC, the legacy newscasts did what they do best: anti-inform their viewers, sow left-wing narratives, and take care of their own. Disney might be Kimmel’s corporate parent, but everyone was interested in “helping out” with comms.
You mean like how Bonilla’s employer helped with comms for Rush Limbaugh after he felt the consequences of spending three days denigrating Sandra Fluke?
Alex Christy similarly huffed:
Three of the four late night comedy shows used their Monday episodes to celebrate ABC and Disney folding to liberal demands to bring back Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday, although nobody seemed to want to discuss his actual comments about MAGA “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”
NBC’s host of Late Night, Seth Meyers, asked CNN anchor Jake Tapper, “All right. Jimmy Kimmel. He’s a friend of both of ours. You know him. I know him. We know he’s a good person. Obviously, this news is very exciting. But what was your original take on how this all went down starting last week?”
Tapper huffed that, “I mean, I thought it was pretty much the most direct infringement by the government on free speech that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
He also claimed, “This was the FCC chairman saying, ‘Local affiliates, it’s time for you to say you’re not going to air Kimmel anymore.’ And then Nexstar, the largest owner of local affiliates, needs approval from Brendan Carr himself to let this merger go through. ‘Yes, sir? How high do you want me to jump, sir?’ They do it. And it’s just insane. It was just insane.
As of the publishing of this story, Sinclair has said it is not ready to allow Kimmel to return. That would suggest that, whatever one thinks of Carr’s remarks, he did not have the impact on the original situation that Tapper thinks he does.
Christy continued to whine that Carr got caught trying to intimidate broadcasters into censoring Kimmel upon threat of their broadcast licenses:
Late night outrage at Carr has allowed them to avoid reckoning with why everyone got mad at Kimmel in the first place. It has allowed them to ignore the fact that their conspiracy theorists do not dress up with Viking helmets but are instead called “professor” and considered to be intellectuals.
Even though Christy was obsessed with demanding that Kimmel’s “actual comments” about Charlie Kirk be endlessly repeated, he won’t repeat what Carr said — “we can do this the easy way, or the hard way” — that is drawing so much criticism, let alone acknowledge that such bully tactics are offensive to those who actually care about free speech.
MRC nepo-baby leader David Bozell ran to yet another right-wing radio safe space — in this case Rich Valdés — to “to share his thoughts on Jimmy Kimmel returning to late night.” Christy returned to whine that Kimmel was defended:
Before ABC announced it was lifting Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension on Monday, HBO’s John Oliver used Sunday’s Last Week Tonight to express not only his confusion about why people got so mad at Kimmel in the first place but also to claim Kimmel’s point about MAGA being “desperate to weaponize Kirk’s death” has “aged pretty well” given the suspension.
Unlike some people on the left, Oliver actually got the root cause for Kimmel’s suspension correct, “But the pretext that’s been used to indefinitely suspend Kimmel’s show is just laughably weak. Because while you may have seen headlines saying he got in trouble for remarks about Charlie Kirk himself, or even remarks about his death, that’s not strictly accurate. The comments that got him in trouble weren’t about Kirk. In fact, Kimmel’s first comments after his murder were a post reading, ‘Can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents, and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.’”
Oliver then teed up a clip of Kimmel’s remarks by adding, “What got Kimmel in trouble was a passing reference on Monday night. Now, at the time, there were still rumors flying around regarding the killer’s motivations, including that he was on the far-right, something Kimmel alluded to like this.”
[…]What Oliver calls “rumors” were actually just conspiracy theories. It was clear from reports on what the family had told investigators and interviews by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox that the shooter was on the left. The only “evidence” to support the right-winger thesis was that the family was MAGA, as if 22-year olds always agree with their conservative parents on politics.
As it was, Oliver didn’t see what the big deal was either then or now, “Yeah. That was it. Weirdly, I was actually a guest on his show that night, and I didn’t even register that comment, and that’s only partly because I wasn’t really paying attention.”
And, yes, he whined about about Brendan Carr being discussed:
Before moving onto FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s role in the story, Oliver concluded, “The point is, Kimmel didn’t denigrate Charlie Kirk or make light of his killing. The worst thing you could say is that he appears to have been wrong about the shooter’s ideology, which—okay! But he was also pointing out that many on the right seemed desperate to weaponize Kirk’s death, an argument that’s aged pretty well, given, y’know, everything that’s happened to Kimmel since.”
No, if anyone is weaponizing Kirk’s death, it is the people who are trying to say the assassin was right-wing despite there being exactly zero evidence for this. The fact that Kimmel made that Bluesky post that Oliver quoted above somehow manages to make Kimmel’s remarks even worse because he should have known better.
You mean Christy’s employer has not been weaponizing Kirk’s death by obsessing over it and cheering that critics of Kirk are losing their jobs? Weird how that works.
Craig Bannister checked in from the propaganda ghetto that was one the MRC’s “news” division CNSNews.com:
Liberal talk show host Jimmy Kimmel returns Tuesday after being suspended on September 17 for false and malicious comments regarding the assassination of conservative Charlie Kirk – but, three-fourths of adults weren’t watching “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” before he was pulled.
Results of an Economist/YouGov poll, conducted September 19-22, released Tuesday finds that 75% of U.S. adult citizens either never watch (58%) Kimmel’s show or do so less than once a month (17%).
Given that the majority of Americans do not watch any single TV show, it’s unclear what the relevance of Bannister’s article is.
Bonilla grumbled some more that non-right-wing media don’t hate Kimmel as much as he does:
The legacy media are content to further self-debase by reducing themselves to heralds of the triumphant return of Free Speech Martyr Jimmy Kimmel to late-night television. In so doing, they are turning their focus on the holdout affiliate groups still refusing to air Kimmel unless he can show proof of human decency.
ABC World News Tonight once again straddled that line between corporate synergy and leftwing sycophancy. Like a Colossus.
We don’t recall the MRC demanding that Limbaugh show proof of human decency before spewing his vicious hate at Fluke — to the contrary, it built an “I Stand With Rush” website for him. Maybe Bonilla should seek proof of human decency from his own co-workers before he demands it from Kimmel.