Having lost the battle to keep Jimmy Kimmel off the air for the offense of failing to be a good little Trump-bot, the Media Research Center continued to whine that non-right-wingers came to his defense. Jorge Bonilla huffed in a Sept. 24 post:
The legacy media have cast themselves as staunch defenders of the First Amendment as they circle the wagons for Regime comic Jimmy Kimmel. However, they are nowhere to be seen as Google admits to censorship of conservatives under pressure from the Biden White House.
[…]A media that devotes 15 minutes to the restoration of a regime comic while ignoring actual censorship subsequent to actual jawboning is not a media that is actually in protecting free speech. This contrast proves it.
How can Kimmel be a “Regime comic” when the regime he is supposedly serving does not hold power? The only “Regime comic” we see here is Bonilla, who is quite desperate to parrot the narratives of his Trumpian masters, whose regime is the one in power (in case Bonilla is not actually aware of that fact).
Comedy cop Alex Christy grumbled again that Kimmel was allowed to speak about his attempted censorship:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel welcomed actor Ethan Hawke to his Wednesday show to promote his new TV show, The Lowdown. However, before that, Hawke compared Kimmel’s recent suspension to being sent to a Russian gulag. Kimmel agreed with the sentiment, claiming it is “hard to tell the difference” between the gulag and the United States.
After some joking about how Kimmel is taking the show to Brooklyn next week and the Brooklyn-based Hawke flew out to Los Angeles for this interview, Hawke recalled he was supposed to do it earlier, “Then there was, like, some weird delay. I didn’t get to go on when I was supposed to go on… I don’t watch the news much. I don’t know what that was about.”
Kimmel replied, “Yeah, you were a victim of the preemption. Well, I’m glad to have you out here.”
That’s when Hawke made his analogy, “Well, I’m glad to have you back in the United States of America… I was told you were sent to a Russian gulag, but luckily, you’re back.”
[…]Kimmel was suspended for his remarks that MAGA was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”
That is a conspiracy theory that Kimmel still hasn’t addressed, and no serious discussion about President Trump or FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s role in this story can occur until that point is made. Ultimately, Kimmel was suspended because of his actions and returned a week later. He’s not exactly Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Curtis Houck joined the whine-fest, complaining that Kimmel’s return got huge ratings:
While they certainly had other things to do (such as comparing President Trump to Richard Nixon for wanting to prosecute James Comey), ABC’s Good Morning America waved goodbye Thursday to the liberal media’s gross canonizing of far-left late-night Jimmy Kimmel for his six-day timeout for his conspiratorial and vile comments about the Charlie Kirk assassination. CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today, however, were still (mostly) on-board.
“Doubling down. Jimmy Kimmel’s new message overnight after President Trump’s threat to sue ABC for putting the late-night host back on the air…The latest on their war of words and the historic ratings just in for Kimmel’s return to TV,” Today co-host Craig Melvin declared in a tease.
In a second tease, correspondent Liz Kreutz hailed Kimmel for “not hold[ing] back going after President Trump.”
We have yet to see Houck or any other MRC employee reference Rush Limbaugh’s genuinely vile and vicious smearing of Sandra Fluke as a “slut” and a “prostitute” as a parallel to the Kimmel controversy — then again, the MRC actually defended Limbaugh’s disgusting misogyny.
Tim Graham similarly played Google whataboutism in his Sept. 26 podcast:
Google admitted the Biden administration pressured them to suppress “misinformation” from their opponents, and they shut down YouTube accounts from Dan Bongino, Steve Bannon, and Sebastian Gorka. But the networks ignore all that as they make Jimmy Kimmel into their free-speech hero, despite his non-stop lying on national TV. MRC President David Bozell and NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck joined the conversation.
If news comes from Republicans, it’s somehow not news. Congressman Jim Jordan announced on Tuesday that “Google commits to offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform.” Google admitted the Biden administration pressured them to censor, even speech that did not violate their own standards. MRC vice president for Free Speech America Dan Schneider summarized: “Google has finally entered a 12-step program to address its TDS.”
Deep in his Status media newsletter, former CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy ranted this was “Google’s GOP gift” to “replatform toxic actors” like Dan Bongino, Steve Bannon, and Sebastian Gorka — although two of them are now in the Trump administration.
This is the left’s actual belief on the First Amendment. Allowing conservative speech is platforming “toxic actors.” They don’t really believe in free speech. They think Jimmy Kimmel is a hero, not “toxic.” It all depends on whether you’re siding with them.
Graham failed to explain what Bongino, Bannon and Gorka did that caused YouTube to suspend them:
- Bongino was suspended for spreading for spreading COVID misinformation, then was banned permanently for breaking rules by posting content on a different channel.
- Bannon was banned for demanding the beheading of Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
- Gorka was banned for spreading lies about election fraud.
Is Graham endorsing the spread of lies and violence by right-wing influencers? It appears so. Does he think that right-wing lies and violence are somehow not “toxic”? Looks that way.
Christy returned for more comedy-cop action against Kimmel:
It is quickly becoming a tradition that celebrity guests that appear on ABC’sJimmy Kimmel Live!have to sing the praises of the eponymous host. On Wednesday, it was actor Ethan Hawke, and on Thursday, it was actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her dog’s turn to gush over the supposedly “brave and powerful” Kimmel.
[…]Louis-Dreyfus then gushed, “I really do. And I think what you have done in this last week has been brave and powerful.”
What has Kimmel done that was so brave? He got himself in trouble for peddling conspiratorial garbage, and for a week, he had to live with the consequences of his own actions. It appears none of the celebrities who have rushed to his side have any interest in what he actually said.
Again: Christy’s employer defended Limbaugh for saying much more disgusting things.
Meanwhile, the MRC’s nepo-baby leader ran to another right-wing safe space to peddle his narrative knowing his host would not challenge him:
On today’s edition of The Derek Hunter Show on WMAL, David Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, offered a candid critique of late-night television, broadcast obligations, and the hypocrisy of the liberal media.
Bozell opened by addressing the misinformation surrounding Jimmy Kimmel’s brief “cancellation.” Contrary to viral reports, he emphasized, “The government had nothing to do with this. The affiliates flexed a little bit of their muscle. They were responding to their customers, their constituents… This wasn’t just conservatives complaining—these were major blue markets that had enough.”
Bozell made sure not to mention the threats to licensing that Trump FCC chief Brendan Carr issued to ABC and its affiliates — and he knew Hunter was a sufficiently compliant host that he would never call out the error.