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Sinclair’s ABC stations will air a special in remembrance of Charlie Kirk this Friday, during Jimmy Kimmel Live’s timeslot. The special will also air across all Sinclair stations this weekend.
What the actual fuck...
I dont even need to click and I know what this is:
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”
THIS IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TO OUR DEMOCRACY
Pretty much over now. Good luck.
Video of monologue. Kimmel's comments are at about 2 minutes.
I'd like these dipshits to explain to the American people just what is so offensive to them. Free speech?
Yes. They've always wanted to be able to tell you you're not allowed to say things they don't like, and now they think they can get away with making it happen. They can't, in the long run, but they might be able to make some people suffer in the short run before they get consigned to the historical ash-bin.
What's weird is that they want to ruin the entertainment that others enjoy.
We don't send people to SisterFuck, Arkansas or wherever the fuck and try to end their pastimes. They can still go to the tractor pull or listen to bad country music or go hunting and fishing, watch NASCAR, etc....
They’re mad because we wouldn’t support them when they punched down. When they shit on LGBTQA+ people, or women, or PoC and we said “you’re gross” and “freeze peach!”
So now they’re trying to pretend this is “retribution” even though Charlie Kirk was an asshole who deserves to be mocked and cancelled for the bullshit downpunching he spewed, and in this specific instance Trump is mad he got called out for being heartless and the right got called out for foaming at the mouth for genocide of those who don’t agree with them.
Those two things are not equivalent. They just want an excuse to kill and exclaim “look what you made me do!”
We believe broadcasters have a responsibility to educate and elevate respectful, constructive dialogue
This coming from Sinclair is the fucking height of hypocrisy and just plain lying.
need for the FCC to take immediate regulatory action to address control held over local broadcasters by the big national networks."
Says the conglomerate de jure owning 39% of all local tv stations in the country and de facto controlling at least double that by exploiting a loophole in antitrust regulations.
Sinclair also calls upon Mr. Kimmel to issue a direct apology to the Kirk family. Furthermore, we ask Mr. Kimmel to make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA.
Trying to bully and blackmail him into lying for and paying money to their fascist overlords. Sinclair is a fucking cancer.
How DARE Jimmy Kimmel ~~ADVOCATE for the Murdering of Poor People!~~ Play clips of Trump talking!
Sinclair also calls upon Mr. Kimmel to issue a direct apology to the Kirk family. Furthermore, we ask Mr. Kimmel to make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA.
Man go fuck yourself
Here's the broadcast, if anyone wants to put these "inappropriate and deeply insensitive" remarks in the context of what he actually said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j3YdxNSzTk
That little shitbag's family doesn't need a single penny.
Kirks family got well over 5 million already from a gofundme. As if Kirks family was poor. Kirk was worth over 12 million, as a 32 year old. They dont need to go begging.
Grifters gonna grift
Dingdingding winner.
I heard he suggested to give Kimmel a 'involuntary lethal injection' or 'just kill him'.
Colbert down. Kimmel down.
I can’t wait until they all get replaced with Comrade Noem’s Ultra Funny Late Night Ha Ha Joke Show where you will laugh or go to gulag.
Prep yourself for the late show with Greg Gutfeld and the late late show with Joe Rogan.
Oh I forgot about Rogan… that.. that might actually happen ☹️
They're going to take down a major broadcast network, and make another fascist mouthpiece from the ashes.
Newspapers, networks, Twitter, TikTok. Old media and new media alike. YouTube and Facebook are already doing their work for them. What's left? Seriously, what's left? NBC? The Atlantic? Rolling Stone? It's only been 8 months. It won't be long before they're made to fall in line too.
Once the fascists finish capturing all major media, they'll begin turning the screws even tighter while they attempt to capture or bankrupt minor media. Guess what, NBC is owned by Comcast, which is ran by a billionaire. The Atlantic is owned by a multi-billionaire. Rolling Stone's owner is worth a quarter billion dollars. Ultimately they'll play ball just like all the other lords and ladies have thus far.
You can't give these traitors a single inch or they'll be back for more.
The best gift a fascist propagandist could possibly give the world is dying young.
This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.
We no longer have a Democracy.
Who is buying time on Sinclair networks? They need to be losing business for supporting fascism.
You seriously dont know who Sinclair media is? In 2025? You've definitely seen this.
I know exactly who they are, I want a list of their clients.
Sinclair owns a huge chunk of the stations in the US. And control others through shell corpos to get around the rules for limits in some cases.
If he manages to get back on air he should just change the format and constantly give sarcastic praise to dear leader like the old Colbert show from the Comedy Central days.
By 2026 network TV will just be the new Hee Haw.
Hey so I just wanna make one point about this that a lot of people aren't going to like
Whenever I said that Substack should be willing to host Nazi blogs, and it's kind of a shame IMO that the whole internet made them partially-stop-but-not-really, one of the things that the crowd of people that always formed to shout at me would be shouting is "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE FIRST AMENDMENT IT'S A PRIVATE BUSINESS THEY CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT IT'S NOT THE GOVERNMENT"
And so what I would say is, free speech is a principle. Everyone gets to talk, no one gets shut out of the marketplace. It doesn't mean anyone has to host speech they don't want to host, but especially in our money-controls-the-means-of-informational-production society, you do have to worry in some sense about the slippery slope of deciding that some people need to be fully or mostly locked away by private business from the machinery of speaking their mind.
It happens that the text of the first amendment applies only to the government (and, in this case, Sinclair is working so hand-in-glove with the actual fascist government that it hardly matters anyway). But it doesn't mean that the principle of free speech stops outside Washington, DC. It applies on Substack, it applies on Lemmy, it applies on cable TV, in general there's a virtue in respecting people's ability to say their stuff (within certain baseline limits) without deciding for them whether the opinion they want to say is acceptable to you.
I don't think the situations are equivalent of course, or even close to. Substack banning Nazis might arguably be within the parameters of just safeguarding us all from the paradox of tolerance and fine. Sinclair banning Kimmel is much worse than that, and it's a quasi-governmental decision they're upholding anyway, it's not just a private business decision. The point I'm trying to make though is "it's a private business so they can censor whoever they want" isn't really the rhetorical slam-dunk that some people seem to feel like it should be, and this is a good situation to point to for why that's sometimes an important principle.
Bring on the shouting now, I guess
You probably got shouted at in the past because you were wrong then, just as you are now.
Free speech applies only to the government not interfering with your speech for good reason: the government should not stifle speech (with limits regarding shouting fire, or compelling violence 'kill that guy!'). If a person hosting a forum or (via owning a business) talk show or tiny Lemmy instance decides they don't want statements against their beliefs on the platform, its their free speech being exercised by removing it or placing rules stating "no nazi talk" on their service.
If free speech applies to private businesses and they are forced by the government to host all opinions then it becomes compelled speech. "You must host Nazis rhetoric on your message board, by order of the government, you cannot infringe on an individual's free speech". It becomes a paradox, free speech of the individual overrules free speech of the hosting individual or group.
The example you're using here is particularly backwards - because the FCC (the government) is pushing to have pro-Alt-right (pro Charlie Kirk) messaging pushed on all privately owned platforms, and punishing any platforms or individuals who disagree. They are compelling speech. That is the antithesis of free speech, yet you somehow see it as, "look, Sinclair banning Kimmel is the same as Nazis being banned from Substack," and they are actually not the same at all when you look at context.
In addition, if your platform hosts hate speech (Nazis, alt-right fascists, etc) then congrats - your platform is not a 'free speech haven', it's just a fascist platform. Look at 4chan, 8chan, 8kun, even Twitter - once the site runners decide it's ok to keep fascist content up, they become fascist / white supremacist platforms. If site owners don't want that to happen to their site, they moderate and ban and post rules - their free speech but your argument is that this is a bad thing and they should instead host all opinions?
If free speech applies to private businesses and they are forced by the government to host all opinions then it becomes compelled speech.
Completely agree, that would be terrible. That's not what I am talking about.
That is the antithesis of free speech, yet you somehow see it as, “look, Sinclair banning Kimmel is the same as Nazis being banned from Substack,” and they are actually not the same at all
I actually went further than saying they're "not the same," I said they're not even equivalent.
Glad to hear we agree on so many things. Including among other things the horror of the FCC going around and ordering people to remove speech on this topic. If only I'd mentioned that in some way.
Hey so I just wanna make one point about this that a lot of people aren't going to like
Whenever I said that Substack should be willing to host Nazi blogs, "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE FIRST AMENDMENT IT'S A PRIVATE BUSINESS THEY CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT IT'S NOT THE GOVERNMENT"
The point I'm trying to make though is "it's a private business so they can censor whoever they want" isn't really the rhetorical slam-dunk that some people seem to feel like it should be, and this is a good situation to point to for why that's sometimes an important principle.
You're wrong in the above statements. It is a slam dunk. The situation with Kimmel and the FCC and Sinclair is a counterpoint to your argument, not backing. You don't wanna see if that way. Thats fine 🤷🏻
Let me ask you a question: The behavior of Sinclair before this happened, when they were just buying up local TV stations and corrupting them with propaganda ("this is extremely dangerous to our democracy"), was that fine? Because they're a private company, and free speech? The government wasn't involved in that.
Was Apple TV cancelling Jon Stewart's podcast because he criticized China fine? I don't think the government told them to do that, that was just a private business doing private business things.
I'm not asking if those things were legal, I'm asking if you think there was nothing of concern about them.
You're acknowledgeing and simultaneously ignoring the main point, in that the Federal Communications Commission threatened ABC's license over this. This is quite literally a 1st amendment/gov't censorship issue - not a platform simply enforcing their often shitty ToS.
And the main idea about pressuring these large platforms in the past about moderating and/or removing certain speech, was that the types of speech that folks were advocating to have removed was speech that quite often led to real-world violence when it was able to propagate en masse.
You can also see the same ideas here on Lemmy. Several of the servers that are most prolific in their spread of hate speech have been de-federated from most of the rest of the servers.
There are plenty of authors, journalists and anti-fascist researchers over these last ten years who've had the unfortunate job of wading neck-deep into the online platforms that DO allow that kind of speech so that they can document and track how those fascist ideals spread, and who is spreading them. THEY are typically the ones screaming the loudest about the need for some form of community based moderation and/or censorship of certain ideas.
ignoring the main point, in that the Federal Communications Commission threatened ABC’s license over this
Search for "hand-in-glove".
was that the types of speech that folks were advocating to have removed was speech that quite often led to real-world violence when it was able to propagate en masse.
Okay, so reddit was right to frenetically remove everyone talking about Luigi, right? Lemmy.world too? Just bring up a connection to real-world violence (which connection is also applied to pro-Palestinian activists, BLM protestors, all sorts of people) and then it becomes okay to pull their hosting / delete their comment?
I mean there are cases where I agree with you. Everyone can make their decision about where the lines are, that's the wonder of being a private company or whatever, and this is part of what I was quickly glossing over when I said "within certain baseline limits." Generally though, the principle is that whoever has the money and is in charge of the government is going to be the one deciding what is "violence" and what is "a counter-terrorism operation" or whatever distinction, so it's usually a lot safer to say that people can just talk even if someone who's in charge of pulling the plug or not feels like it's unsafe and dangerous what they are saying.
THEY are typically the ones screaming the loudest about the need for some form of community based moderation and/or censorship of certain ideas.
Citation? I'd be interested to read about it.
(I mean certainly that's not true now. They are not screaming louder than the government is screaming about needing to fire or deplatform anyone who talked about Charlie Kirk the wrong way. I do get what you meant though.)
There needs to be consequences for these stains on humanity
Wait, so us Kimmel not cancelled, Sinclaire is just, not ajring it?
Both. Sinclair won't air it, so ABC has suspended production. In theory, ABC could've had it keep airing on non-Sinclair affiliates, but they'd be biting the hand that feeds to do so.
ABC should have pulled Sinclair's license to its content for not complying with the contract.
From ABC's perspective, that is not any better. If their programming isn't on air, they're not making advertising dollars. Whether it's because Sinclair chose not to show their programming or ABC chose not to let Sinclair show their programming, the end result is the same: no advertising dollars, and Kimmel still isn't on TV.
True, but they could also give the rights to another station in the market. Probably plenty of CW stations that would love that ABC money.
Damn, I miss the Fairness Doctrine.
Well how's that going for them now? Millions of views and none of them for their shitty network.
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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