An Aug. 29 Newsmax column by Michael Dorstewitz cheered the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show, huffing: “This isn’t surprising to many viewers, especially conservatives, who say that the state of late night television is deplorable.” He went on to offer his list of “the best in late night talk shows, from their inception to the current day” — presented as representative of Newsmax as a whole; the only current offering on the list is the Fox News show by Greg Gutfeld, admitting it’s there because “most of the humor is biting satire, which is one-sided — directed against Democrats and the left.” We thought Dorstewitz didn’t like political bias in his jokes.
When ABC late-nighter Jimmy Kimmel got suspended for remarks about Charlie Kirk, Dorstewitz rushed to defend the decision in his Sept. 19 column:
From the moment ABC announced that it was severing ties with alleged comedian Jimmy Kimmel, the wailing coming from the left could be heard from coast to coast.
ABC indefinitely suspended Kimmel’s late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” beginning Wednesday following remarks he’d made earlier about the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
On Thursday, one day after Kimmel was let go, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr told CNBC Jimmy Kimmel appeared to “directly mislead” viewers about facts regarding Kirk’s assassination.
When is it the government’s responsibility to fact-check a comedian? Dorstewitz didn’t explain. Instead, he played damage control for Carr:
Despite remarks made by the FCC chairman, no one in the Trump administration ordered that the show be cancelled. That was a decision ABC made entirely on its own, possibly to avoid legal exposure.
And the First Amendment protects freedom of expression from government interference. ABC executives were free to either keep Kimmel on or de-platform him as they wished, and in many instances the wailing over Kimmel’s departure only revealed their own hypocrisy.
One could say that demanding a TV personality be fired because he displeased the government, under threat of suspending or canceling a broadcast license, is very much an example of government interference. But Dorstewitz continued to play the hypodcrite, whining that Chuck Schumer “called upon Fox News to fire Carlson ‘for how he has perverted and slimed the truth, and for letting him go on again, and again, and again.'”:
As far as that goes, Kimmel himself celebrated Carlson’s departure.
“What a shock, what an absolutely delightful shock this is,” he said, and called him “one of the most despicable mother-Tuckers ever to appear on American television.”
But where were all these free speech advocates when the previous administration openly infringed upon Americans’ constitutional rights?
Dorstewitz offered no evidence that Schumer or any other politician used the government to force Fox News to fire Carlson, nor did he dispute the accuracy of Schumer’s description of Carlson’s work.
Dorstewitz concluded with some whataboutism:
Newsmax TV’s “Liberty-Loving Latino” Chris Salcedo observed in his preamble Thursday that we should be more concerned over the murder of Charlie Kirk than of ABC firing a bad comic.
I have to agree. Also the previous administration’s actual constitutional violations far surpass the imagined ones of the current White House.
He offered no evidence that right-wing lies about COVID and election fraud constitute “censorship.” he did grouse about “parents expressing concern at school board meetings” but censored the fact that those parents were targeted because they threatened school board members — not for merely “expressing concern.”