The Firing of Jimmy Kimmel: The Latest Step on the Road to Fascism

The firing of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC -- which is exactly what his "suspension" is -- is the latest step in the road to fascism being paved by the current President of the United States and his allies.  It began with the hounding out of their jobs of  FBI and other people who lawfully investigated Trump's instigation of the January 2021 attack on the Capitol, the pressure on universities to end DEI and other policies distasteful to MAGA Americans and their theorists, and of course the firing of another late-night host, Stephen Colbert, by another cowardly media operation, CBS.  (William Paley must still be turning over in his grave.)

In the case of Kimmel, rumblings were being made about the FCC doing something about him.  I've thought the FCC was blatantly unconstitutional as soon as I was old enough to think.  It violated the First Amendment's clear proscription on the government "abridging the freedom of speech or of the press" -- what else would any honest person say a late-night comedian, ridiculing Trump and his policies, was doing?  The only crime in that would be how easy it was to make those jokes, because the threat to our democratic way of life was so obviously no joke indeed.

FDR, certainly one of our greatest Presidents, jeopardized our democracy when he signed the Communications Act of 1934 into law.  So did Felix Frankfurter in the 1943 Supreme Court decision "NBC v the US," which he wrote, which ratified the FCC's power to regulate broadcasting.  Ironically, that was in the middle of our war with Nazi Germany which FDR was so instrumental in winning, not to mention that Frankfurter was a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920.

I started teaching at universities in the 1970s, and the danger of the FCC has always been a part of my courses about the media and their impact.  My main point has always been: imagine the FCC under the control of a President bent on his will, superseding our democracy and its protections from dictatorship.  I'm sad and concerned indeed to see that worry now so vividly realized by this President and the many people who support him.

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