We've sure come a long way from The Man Show.
One of the defining characteristics of the right is not placing any value on logical consistency. Being a hypocrite will not lose you any support with them.
You can go a lot further back than that. McCarthyism was a powerful cancel culture and vestiges of that still manifest today. Linguistically, the weird and inexplicable way anything to the left of fascism in America can be described as "communism" if someone is in the mood to be pejorative is a vestige of McCarthy, or something even further back from the First Red Scare, I think.
There have been a number of studies around the world, plus some real world examples (Utah gubernatorial 2020) where showing your opponents in a sympathetic light can make a big difference in reductions in political polarization.
It’s especially effective when signaled by the “elite”: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00323217241300...
Edit: I hear plenty of stories of people abandoning family members over a difference of political opinion. My MIL won’t talk to a niece of hers after the niece made the same decision. I won’t go so far as to say that’s never warranted, but it seems these days that it’s happening a lot more.
To me, this implies we’re losing acceptability of political “others”.
Turn on the largest mainstream media "news" channel, and you'll hear nothing but mindless hate for 20 hours a day, without consideration for what actual news is occurring.
I think this is being seriously accelerated by Trump. Why should I treat those I disagree with with dignity and respect when the President (who theoretically is a leader for all Americans, not just the people who voted for him) says things like this?
"And when you look at the agitator, you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place, that’s the left. That’s not the right."
When Trump and Vance start setting a positive example for others to follow, maybe I'll rethink my position, but leadership and accountability start at the top.
Have you been in a coma for that decade?
He’s definitely right with that sentence. Do you not think it’s generally true that the right has been on the defensive with regards to cancel culture, and thus is constantly preaching about how cancelling is wrong?
The few times they’ve gotten to go on the offensive, they play the same game, cancelling whoever it is they’re upset about. It’s horseshoe theory all over again.
Ezra Klein, who I generally respect, said he got more crap over
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assa...
than anything else he’s written but I think it was unfortunate that he chose the words because Kirk, among other things, promoted Trump’s lies about the 2000 election, bussed people to the Jan 6 riot, and had a hit list of professors he wanted to punish just like David Horowitz, dad of the Andressen-Horowitz Horowitz. That bit about “prove me wrong” was always disingenuous, it would fool the pearl clutching parents who read The Atlantic and the likes of Ezra Klein. Probably the most harmful thing about illiberal campus leftists is that they allowed illiberal rightists to appear to take the high ground.
we have a right wing and then a righter wing. bernie sanders is an anomaly, elizabeth warren is just left of center, and i can't think of too many other current politicians at the national level who actually lean left. i guess nominally "the squad" but they mostly present fairly centrist platforms by worldwide standards. no current politicians at the national stage are talking about meaningful economic reform (as in, away from capitalism), police abolition, nationalized health care, or any other typical leftist ideas - not that i'm trying to argue any of these points in this thread - just providing examples of what i mean by "leftist".
whether or not "the left" weaponizes commitment to free expression, "the right" is the only side of that binary who has ever wielded serious political power, and they use it to extremely destructive ends at all times.
maybe someday if we ever have a political party that actually represents leftwing politics we can judge them as harshly. i'll wait.
And that's my cue to take yet another hit to my HN karma by asking, incredulously, "WTF are they teaching kids in school these days?"
> During World War II, the United States forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in ten concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), mostly in the western interior of the country.
> During World War II, the camps were referred to both as relocation centers and concentration camps by government officials and in the press. Roosevelt himself referred to the camps as concentration camps on different occasions, including at a press conference held on October 20, 1942.
> In a 1961 interview, Harry S. Truman stated "They were concentration camps. They called it relocation but they put them in concentration camps, and I was against it. We were in a period of emergency, but it was still the wrong thing to do."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp
> Not to be confused with Extermination camp. A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitation or punishment.
People are more contradictory than pure theory. FDR was progressive in some aspects, regressive in others. A leftie, he wasn’t, and there’s more to politics than mere left/right, or we wouldn’t have trans Trump supporters.
They - and Hitler - are notable for their totalitarianism. I bear no illusions that folks like Stalin wanted anything more than power.
FDR’s era, the furthest left the U.S. has been, true to form had this element... showing how concentrated state power, left or right, risks curtailing freedom.
In modern times, we've seen Guantánamo survive multiple admins on both sides.
During Jim Crow, at the State level in the south, it would be applicable, but that doesn't mean much in today's terms.
These are not even close to the same.
The right has consistently tried to cancel people, has tried to censor people, has complained/played the refs about moderation saying their rights to say racist stuff was being infringed even when it was a moderation decision by a private company not the government
And then under Trump it's only gotten worse/more divorced from any principles
If you are going to morally judge the actions behind cancellation attempts, "I don't find Dave Chappelle's jokes funny" is not morally equivalent to "I don't think people should celebrate the murder of those they disagree with."
It's a nonsensical argument that the attack was random. It's farfetched that it was for some unrelated-to-politics reason given that these men as far as we know had no connection to each other, and it's nonsensical to believe that someone beloved by most people in the right wing would be targeted by a fellow right-winger.
If someone like AOC or Bernie Sanders was viciously attacked at an event, you can't tell me that you would accept an unsourced assertion that "it was actually a marxist that harmed them."
Look up groypers and Nick Fuentes - he's a right winger who was NOT a fan of Charlie Kirk and amassed a following about it. There is _some_ very mild evidence to believe that it's possible (I personally don't think that's the case FWIW)
While searching for more information on this I found an interesting link to something Grok wrote, answering the question of whether the shooter followed Loomer. It was quite interesting. No idea if any of it is true but given Musk's well known efforts to get Grok to favor the right it is sure amusing it would say this:
> Yes, based on reports and social media discussions following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, the shooter, identified as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson from a "good Christian gun-loving MAGA family," followed Laura Loomer on X (formerly Twitter). Robinson was a vocal supporter of Donald Trump and appeared to have been influenced by far-right online rhetoric, including potential inspiration from Loomer's recent criticisms of Kirk as a "traitor" and "charlatan" who betrayed Trump. This detail emerged as investigators reviewed Robinson's social media activity after his capture on September 12, 2025. Loomer, a prominent far-right influencer, had posted multiple times in July 2025 attacking Kirk for hosting guests critical of Trump and engaging in "dialog with Democrats," which some speculate may have radicalized followers like Robinson. While the exact motive remains under investigation, the follow relationship aligns with broader patterns of intra-conservative online feuds escalating into real-world violence.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/12/laura-loomer...
[2] > I don’t ever want to hear @charliekirk11 claim he is pro-Trump ever again. After this weekend, I’d say he has revealed himself as political opportunist and I have had a front row seat to witness the mental gymnastics these last 10 years.
> Lately, Charlie has decided to behave like a charlatan, claiming to be pro-Trump one day while he stabs Trump in the back the next.
> TPUSA was only able to thrive thanks to the generosity of President Trump.
> On the one year anniversary of the assassination attempt on Trump’s life, Charlie hosted @ComicDaveSmith at @TPUSA ’s SAS conference where Dave Smith was able to speak to a bunch of conservative youth at an organization that claims to be Pro-Trump.
> 3 weeks ago, Dave Smith called for President Trump to be IMPEACHED and REMOVED from office over his decision to blow up Iran’s nuclear facilities.
> Charlie played both sides of the Iran issue on his show as we all saw, because he wants to play to both sides of the aisle.
> The honorable thing to do is to have a position and actually defend it to the death instead of flip flopping.
> Smith said all of MAGA “should turn on Trump” and abandon him. He said this 3 weeks ago.
> See the clip below.
> TPUSA is definitely not pro-Trump. If they were, they certainly aren’t anymore.
> Out of all of the incredible pro-Trump voices out there who support the President, Charlie decided to host Dave Smith?
> It really is shameful. And I am honestly just disgusted by the nonstop flip flopping on the right.
Mr. Kimmel does not assert Mr. Robinson was "MAGA". Simply that the, "MAGA gang" is trying to distance themselves from Mr. Robinson.
So, first, both of those two (AOC in particular) have been the subject of extreme criticism from the tankie/accelerationist bits of the leftophere. It's 100% not out of the realm of possibility to imagine them being the target of an individual loon motivated by the right combinations of freakouts.
But also, it's not "unsourced" to say that Robinson comes from a conservative background, that he was a church-going-enough Mormon to be recognizable to his pastor, that he's informed by and involved in right-leaning edgelord/groyperist meme culture (that halloween costume was a pretty smoky gun), that he executed the murder with a family weapon to which he had easy access and apparently solid familiarity, etc...
I mean, his background looks extremely Trumpy. He's also apparently a closeted gay man with a hatred of Kirk in particular. And that doesn't make a lot of sense in total. But then that's the way it is with murderers. It's not a philosophy for the consistently rational.
What I've come to realise is that few are prepared to bell the cat and prosecute unconstitutional behaviour.
Did anyone ask the FCC chair to do this? Is it on record? Do you imagine the FCC chair to be cat that needs to be belled?
The FCC chair isn't the cat that needs to be belled.
Is US free speech absolute? In Canada and most of Europe, false speech especially when it can be interpreted as defamatory isn't protected...
There's been an absolute ton of that going around. Who else has been pulled from the air?
What Kimmel said was
> “The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”[1]
If that's "misinformation", and I'd love to hear how any part of that beside being "one of them" could even be considered so; regardless, it's pretty mild compared to some of the crazy shit we've been hearing lately.
[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/abc-yanks-jimmy-kimmels...
I mean, saying a murderer is "one of them" is a pretty big charge and is 100% the reason.
And speculation before facts are known is one thing, but all evidence points to the murderer not being "one of them" and that evidence was public before Kimmel made his monologue.
As for spreading misinformation if that was illegal the whole Trump administration and fox would be in deep trouble
COVID is still fresh enough that people should remember. If you were pro or anti anything 5 years ago it probably hurt you since sentiment swung both ways and both positions look silly in hindsight.
I think it's too easy to sort of anthropomorphize these kinds of conflicts --- Kimmel's show has a large staff, and he's responsible for their livelihoods --- but it wouldn't be totally out of the question that Kimmel steered right into this.
There's nothing new about this, though: ABC also took Bill Maher off the air, 20 years ago, almost identical circumstances. Maher wound up at HBO. Kimmel will wind up on a podcast, and, like Conan, probably gain in relevance.
Moments later
I think some people here might be too young to immediately get the Maher reference, but the point there was: he was forced off the air for political reasons as well.
We are likely to hear more about the shooters position on firearms at a more granular scale at trial as prosecutors build a profile of Robinson that will be presented to the jury.
Violent crimes are generally impulsive - the accessibility of the firearm absolutely lent itself to the murder occurring but being in possession of a rifle, in general, doesn't offer much genuine insight beyond speculation.
If you like I can link to an ULR shooter targeting 24 inch plates at 5,000 yards and yet missing soda cans at 150 through 450 yards.
Practice and experience are evident in a single shot at 200 yards.
Source:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
(The quote they created is also nowhere close to what I was saying or what I believe, but I'm not interested in litigating that.)
Edit: Funnily enough, I can't actually find this policy in the guideline. I see now that dang said it's actually not a guideline but telling people not to do it anyway is apparently a thing, which I find really fucking weird. Also funny that the same 'quote as framing' device (which I'm now avoiding) is used to paraphrase a position in the guidelines!
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
Threats from the head of the FCC bandied about on a far-right podcast? Hello?
I get why this is all activating and like I guess I agree, it's obviously bad, but it's also really stupid. These are programs written for middle-aged suburban professionals that air primarily to elderly customers who still watch linear television. Kimmel would have drastically more reach on an indie show online (who would you rather be, just in terms of reach, Kimmel or Hinchcliffe?).
The fact is it's not Kimmel's air, it's corporate air. Late-night hosts getting fucked over for crossing the interests of their corporate owners is a very old story; one of the great sitcoms of all time is based entirely off the premise (in fact, two of the great sitcoms of all time are).
Kimmel's got a good writing team. He's talented. He should have gotten off this dead time slot a long time ago.
Who cares about Kimmel.
You think they will stop at television? They'll deplatform people on the alternate media next, YouTube, Twitch, Kick, etc. They've already started to look at Twitch this very week.
Will you even notice when your train has arrived at the Gulag?
You acknowledged it was bad (sorta, kinda), but the rest is IMO completely irrelevant. "Galactic-scale complaints" or not (we don't know), the head of the FCC appearing on Benny Johnson's podcast threatening to pull their broadcast licence (he probably could not) is unprecedented. And one can wonder how many of the aforementioned complaints his comments incited.
Now they'll lose subscribers anyway.
Sure, but shouldn't we continue to call out the fact that this administration is wielding power to censor? I do agree with you that late-night talk shows are a dying format, and maybe Kimmel would have been out (for whatever reasons, perhaps his own) in the next year or so, but to me, that's besides the point.
How is this relevant ? Are the Presidency and FCC now giving career advice?
> The fact is it's not Kimmel's air, it's corporate air.
not even corporate air - it’s government air obviously
His comments were not a fireable offence. He can’t steer into something if there’s nothing to steer into.
Maher, like the Dixie Chicks and Garofalo, criticized a deeply popular war (regardless of what you think of it) and were ostensibly cancelled pre-cancellation era. The government didn't issue a statement through a right-wing podcast stating that the network better toe the line or get it's affiliate license revoked.
You are right, this has happened before. This is far more like the purges of the red scare. People were just (perhaps naively) hoping society had progressed from where we were ~70 years ago.
That is a stretch, "similar" is a better characterization. The Wikipedia article says he made the comments days after 9/11, and advertisers withdrew and the show suffered as a result, but the show wasn't cancelled until the following June.
Keep in mind also that Trump threatened getting Kimmel of the air a couple of months ago
Additionally, the FCC chief also threatened affiliates today
Is it all a coincidence ? Could be.
But absent a statement from Kimmel we can conclude that pressure was applied to ABC or it’s affiliates to censor speech
Kindly, your post reads like a variation of the “Broken window fallacy”
Hey, who needs late night comedy shows any more
You have way too much karma for this
Is it against the public good to question the motives of the president of the United States?
Is it misuse of public airwaves to point out the lack of evidence on hand to divine the political affiliations of this school shooter?
For example in the granting of permits for marches.
But I do keep thinking about the fact that the move to the right among young men, will probably pretty quickly reverse itself, if they keep going after media/video games/porn, etc.
Probably to wring a few bucks out as they circle the drain in the same fashion as every other old formerly prestigious brand name.
Realistically, how could anyone be okay with the level of power this administration is wielding? I struggle to see a peaceful transfer of this specific set of powers. Unless the assumption is just that the left will always behave "more responsibly."
Probably true, which means you're in for a full-blown dictatorship for, oh, 30 years or so before (perhaps) some violent revolution.
The reality is that outside of the actual extremists, liberals and conservatives agree on 80% of everything. We can, and need to, start there. We are all Americans and have to realize that just because we may disagree about things (particularly a small percentage of things) doesn't have to mean we're enemies.
But, if history offers any lessons, then our path is likely set and we're going to have to push through some nightmarish times before we find a way to be better.
All of this stuff should be a slam dunk to implement with broad coalitions no matter who holds which branches, and yet it's all been basically gridlocked for decades, and instead it's never-ending turmoil over meaningless nonsense like who uses what bathrooms.
Post Nixon the government really just got captured and paralyzed and so a generation has grown up not understanding that this is a deliberately broken government, not how a government can operate. Instead people have been raised to think that all government is just ineffective and naturally broken. The only people who actually get it are the subset of Americans who have traveled or lived overseas for some time. As of 2023 only about half of Americans have a passport so there is a large chunk that haven't seen anything else.
Like, literally, your ability to understand the world around you.
If that's not "tech," then I think folks need to broaden their perspective.
My explanation was a little bit narrow by mentioning tech though, that just happens to be the general thing shared most of the time.
Since everything is connected to everything else, by your logic, every discussion forum must discuss everything.
If you prefer more open-ended discussions about everything, I would suggest trying Twitter or Bluesky .
All those concerns are valid but we've turned off the flags now.
They also have a $6.2 billion bid for even more local stations by acquiring Tegna, a deal which will have to be approved by the guy at the FCC who yesterday was telling local affiliates to threaten to pull Kimmel's show!
https://apnews.com/article/nexstar-tegna-newsnation-cw-trump...
This is a 1st amendment issue.
> Appearing on Benny Johnson’s podcast on Wednesday, Carr suggested that the FCC has “remedies we can look at.”
> “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
An absolutely unmistakable direct threat from the chairman of the FCC.
News just today--
Republican DoJ censored longitudinal study previously published by DoJ which revealed that far and away the most U.S. political violence is perpetrated by... Republicans! Both internally and internationally.
Utah Republicans put a suicide watch on Kirk-shooting suspect because they want the pleasure of killing him themselves.
Noem is bragging that she shot the family hunting dog because he was "worthless"; all he would do is "massacre chickens" at her hunting lodge, and tried to bite her. She also put down a "disgusting, musky billy goat" that lived around her compound. She said wanted to come clean and show how she can "responsibility". She bragged that the story of shooting her dog got her the top slot at ICE.
Republicans:
- Bullying - Bigotry - Censorship - Election interference - Gerrymandering - Blackballing - Targeting for death - Persecuting - Trafficking - Inciting & agitating - Grifting
The beat goes on.
As W used to say "You're either with us..."
this is so chillingly reminiscent of a serial killers autobiography.
Putting useless or malicious animals down is merciful and common place and definitely not the making of serial killers.
rate limited when i replied to you so my response below:
>We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”
Where is the lie?
As much as I can tell, they're mad because Kimmel pointed out a couple of instances where Trump seemed to care more about his new ballroom at the WH than about the recent murder of Kirk.
I've been reluctant to toss around the f-word, but it doesn't feel like an exaggeration to call this fascism. Kimmel said nothing that should have warranted a suspension.
https://people.com/donald-trump-misses-charlie-kirk-vigil-11...
Regardless of what Kimmel said and if you think it was appropriate or not, we are seeing this administration use this as an opportunity to trample on the free speech rights of everyone they disagree with. If everyone's rights are not protected, then nobody's are.
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/brendan-carr-abc-fcc-jimmy-...
If Nexstar was acting in reaction to what Carr said there’s a First Amendment argument to be made. They also require FCC approval for a merger right now, it’s not difficult to see the quid pro quo potential.
The argument would at least be heard by a judge.
Yeah. How about this direct quote from Carr?
> I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.
Last I checked, the FCC is part of the government.
What, in the clip, could reasonably be referred to as "the sickest conduct possible?" No one with a healthy, functioning mind could possibly use that language to talk about Kimmel's comments in that clip.
Next point, from NYTimes article covering this: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/business/media/abc-jimmy-...
"The abrupt decision by the network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, assailed Mr. Kimmel’s remarks and suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC because of them."
So yes, ABC/Nexstar are within their editorial rights to make this decision, but that decision came at an awfully conspicuous time. So what, nothing to see here?
Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46
Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of New York State Crime Victims Board, 502 U.S. 105
The New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L.Ed.2d. 686 (1964)
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 94 S.Ct. 2997, 41 L.Ed.2d. 789 (1974)
10 years ago I'm fairly certain these moves would have been met with a strong reaction from the public, but now nobody cares...
This thread is certainly active with those critical of the administration.
Note, the public at large did not know what Kimmel said until now. The Streisand effect is coming into play, because it was so uncontroversial.
The podcast part, I agree, although it's sad in someways, as it demolishes the national conversation, and makes easier to appeal to "your group" rather than "all groups".
It just baffles me that people think they can say things that "turn up the heat" or "endorse the furtherance of current trends" and not expect some part of system (including big companies that more or less operate at the pleasure of regulators/government) to turn right back around and attack them.
I'm not saying I expect everyone to be as jaded as me, but know where your pay comes from.
Edit: Looks like Kimmel didn't say anything specific endorsing it and my last sentence was accurate more than I wanted it to be.
Update: "things like this" is meant to refer to the act of suspending Kimmel's show in response to the specific, rather innocuous, comments he made in his monologue
All of them are bad but the ones on the left end of the sentence are more bad than the ones on the right.
Edit: The endorsements and firings broadly speaking, not regards to anything specific to Kimmel or ABC
The reality is very simple: Nexstar wants federal approval for a merger. They know engaging in this censorship increases the likelihood of their merger being approved. So you’re exactly as jaded as you should be, just with the wrong target.
It’s not about “Jimmy”, it’s about his audience.
Out of the two, “company wants to win favor with Trump for a merger” is actually the simpler theory.
I don't think that's an accurate characterization of his statements, even if what he did say was factually inaccurate.
That paired with comments criticizing the Dear Leader were enough. This is a new low in corporate cowardice toward Trump bullying.
And in any case, a significant majority of political violence is caused by right-wing extremists. Of course the DOJ just deleted that report because it was inconvenient to their narrative.
https://people.com/department-of-justice-quietly-deletes-stu...
Hating Kirk is nothing unusual. Maybe something in his conservative upbringing led him to believe violence was an acceptable action based on his hate.
That's not a belief shared by the Democratic Party.
South Park can go on because they make money. Talk-shows are already dying and cutting them is easy choice even under mild pressure.
The value talk they use is PR aimed at stakeholders (customers, employees, government). No company has taken a stance where they willingly accept net negative returns if they have other choice.
Not just corporations, every institution from the church to every silo in your government to big nonprofits. The latter ones just have less measurable goals than profit, but they sociopathically seek their goals all the same. Beyond a certain scale organizations staffed by humans no longer act human.
Looks like Lèse-majesté is making a comeback
> ABC said it was pulling the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show off the air “indefinitely” after controversial comments by its host about the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
but the article says the following, which is entirely different:
> “The MAGA Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said.
>
> “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving,” he added.
CNN doesn't show a clip, but explains what was said & the events that caused this.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/17/business/video/abc-jimmy-kimm...
Never believe those who claim to be in favor of free speech, but then use threats of legal intervention against those who practice it.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/16/us/text-message-tyler-robinso...
Off topic, but has there been convincing evidence that the suspect is right wing/MAGA, as Kimmel implied? I've seen some posts on reddit to this effect, but they're far from convincing.
It's certainly not conclusive.
But I do think, after decades of reflection, that comedians are correct when they point out that stereotypical humor shouldn't be off limits to any performer (of any background/color), but is... e.g. Owen Benjamin, Chappelle, Seinfeld.
An assassination is a murder if someone notable, often for political reasons.
In this particular assassination, there's currently nothing more than official allegations & captured footage.
Who fired the magic bullet? Anyways, the boss was (most likely), James Jesus Angleton.
(ducks)
My original argument, above, is that comedians ought to be allowed to "joke" about anything, as long as it generates community discussion. Any discussion will generate better outcomes than 2-party's design of PureHate™.
This seems confusing to me. The default "neutral" position on any murder, most of all when you don't know much about the victim, is that murder is a horrible thing, is it not? Is that what you mean, or do you mean you aren't sure if this was good or bad?
Any human with their head screwed on straight innately assigns a very negative value weight to murder. To get yourself into a situation where you aren't sure about a murder would require you to have pretty strong beliefs about the victim or circumstance, which you claim to not have.
Murderers walk freely among you, and we're not all bad people. A few good people earn their legal deaths.
A healthy society would encourage any speech which could reduce divisiveness (e.g. comments on Mr. Kirk, without retribution) — yet ours thrives on division, getting people to hate better with bigger hearts.
¢¢
"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society..."
Terrible precedent aside, how could Disney think that capitulating here will result in anything other than more attempts to control their programming in the short term?
It was counter to what was reported by federal investigators the day before the show. He was deliberately spreading misinformation.
Kimmel did not assert Mr. Robinson was anything he wasn't. Kimmel noted how some people are doing everything possible to distance themselves from Mr. Robinson.
In any case, if you think such a statement is objectionable, then you would conclude many statements made by the current president would prevent any network from putting him on air, correct?
Under your view, the networks, as they stand, should never have allowed him on the airwaves to begin with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox...
This collaboration between corporations and the government to silence political dissent is something else entirely so can we please not “both sides” this ?
This type of both-sides-ism is dumb, especially here when one side is using the power of the federal government to get dissenting voices taken off the air.
I fully disagree with cancelling Kimmel due to any governmental pressure (if that's what happened) and I'm absolutely horrified with the firings that are being gloated about at the moment but let's not pretend here. The left was very much out of bounds on the cancelling. Which doesn't make it any better when the right does it.
I really think this needs to stop. It's not the society we want to live in. People need to be able to express controversial or disagreeable opinions and I don't care what ideology they are.
The people you are holding up are monsters.
Do you get my point yet? I don't personally care about any of these people they are all clowns near as I can tell (including Kimmel).
But going after your political opponents with lawfare and cancellation is dangerous. And wrong. There was a time in the US when this was a widely held belief. ACLU defended literal Nazis.
No, you are not "absolutely 100% right" in your political views. No, the spin of great imagined harms in order to shut someone up isn't true. But denying this has been happening over the past 4 years (or more) is just fabrication. It needs to stop. We need to uphold values before ideology or we are headed towards a dark place it doesn't matter what political ideology is at the helm.
No, no, it's everyone else that is wrong =)
I feel like this is the sort of thing a prediction market might be able sort out.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/ty...
It seems he was "raised right", with easy access to firearms and ammunition. Items not nearly as common in left voting urban areas.
However, Mr. Kimmel's comments centered on the fact that his political leanings, and reasoning for the school shooting are not entirely clear.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26098852-tyler-robin...
What in his upbringing led him to believe the way to handle the situation was with violence is unclear.
Kimmel did not repeat rumors, he asserted that the political affiliations were unknown.
edit: He asserted the "MAGA gang" trying to distance themselves from Mr. Robinson, which is true. It does not mean Kimmel views Robinson as "MAGA".
MAGA is trying to distance themselves from the killer, and so is the left. No one wants to be associated with that guy, and for good reason.
I added an edit after re-reading the comments.
To be fair, that doesn't necessarily say anything about his politics. I know plenty of liberals with MAGA parents. I don't think we can draw any conclusions as to his politics at this time.
Most leftists despise their parents politics. None of this suggests a rightward leaning of the culprit himself.
And do you have a source on that? Anecdotally, most "leftists" I know have left leaning parents. But it's up to the person to define if they are or are not "leftist", because it's a rather narrow, small minded world view that has to define things in those terms.
> None of this suggests a rightward leaning of the culprit himself.
Nor does it suggest his leftward leaning. Maybe it suggests why he used violence as a means to enact social change on the world.
edit:spelling
The government has no such right. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.
If you're nodding along in agreement, then you should also know my long-term commitment to consistency in tolerating factually wrong, distasteful, divisive and even hateful speech has also left me in the uncomfortable position of defending (at least in part) the right of Charlie Kirk, JK Rowling and many others I don't agree with to be heard without anyone calling for silencing them. I'm 100% supportive of disagreeing, debating, peacefully protesting, ignoring and even mocking ideas we don't agree with but I draw a hard line at shouting down, deplatforming or canceling them. If you just stopped nodding along, and instead started coming up with reasons why Kimmel should be heard but Charlie Kirk shouldn't, then you might be part of the problem. IMHO, the only truly defensible ethical high-ground on this requires consistency regardless of the person, politics or offense their speech might cause.
What First Amendment is trying to protect is the government disallowing speech.
In this case, it is the FCC, an arm of the government, that is pressuring ABC to do this rather than other private citizens.
Oma has had the 1000 yard stare for the last 10 years.
None of this is unclear.
The FCC chairmen threatened ABC: https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/brendan-carr-abc-fcc-jimmy-...
In lending, there’s a legal concept of disparate impact, which means even if your policy didn’t explicitly intend to harm this group of people, you implicitly / indirectly impacted them, and that also counts as a bad thing just like explicit impact.
Basically, you don’t have to prove intent, you only have to prove outcome.
…It was a roundabout analogy, but I think the same thing applies here. I don’t need the administration to say, “we did that because we don’t like him.” There is enough impact for me to conclude culpability, regardless of whether I can prove intent.
(Edit: maybe a better concept here is circumstantial evidence)
Actually it was a couple of big ABC affiliate owners that started the avalanche, and ABC followed…not any government pressure.
You can certainly speculate that the these affiliates had an ulterior motive in their actions to curry favor with the Trump administration, but it’s not unreasonable nor unheard of for station affiliates to make decisions about content and programming to avoid alienating or offending a large portion of the markets they serve or the advertisers that pay their bills.
In the end this is about eyeballs and advertising dollars and it’s no more nefarious than that.
Brah.
Brendan Carr, the current head of the FCC publicly threatened to go after ABC for his speech, then ABC pulled the show.[1] Walks, talks, and acts likes government pressure being used for censorship against views they don’t agree with
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fcc-chair-threatens-jimm...
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/fcc-jimmy-kimme...
So yes, seems there was a middle step between Brendan Carr on a podcast, and top level ABC decision making.
https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/nexstar-tegna-fcc...
Yes or no?
You don’t need to answer as that’s rhetorical. It’s obvious the answer is yes. Democratic governments try to avoid making public statements like that because the general public cannot tell if it was because of the government or a happy coincidence that the party being pressured just happened to comply. Because it can’t be discerned even the appearance of using government power like that degrades the rule of law
> “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
> Carr suggested that the FCC could pursue news distortion allegations against local licensees.
> “Frankly I think it’s past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney, and say ’We are going to preempt — we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out,’” he said. “It’s time for them to step up and say this garbage — to the extent that that’s what comes down the pipe in the future — isn’t something that serves the needs of our local communities.”
(for those that don't know, ABC doesn't have an FCC license, broadcasting stations (affiliates) do, so that's exactly who he's using his unconstitutional leverage over)
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/brendan-carr-abc-fcc-jimmy-...
I don't know what "ulterior motive" would mean. Businesses have no choice but to deal with real threats. That isn't voluntary "currying", it is damage control under duress.
This is now a business reality: a US administration that loudly broadcasts its successful use of corrupted leverage against law firms, media companies, universities, tech companies, and others it wishes to bow the knee.
Even if we conjecture the same decisions might have been made in healthier times, for whatever reasons, the unlawful pressure still shades the decisions made in this reality.
That is absolutely government pressure.
Is your position that no one can ever infer the intent behind someone’s actions unless you can read their mind?
This is highly misleading: those affiliates were responding to government pressure. The FCC is currently making key decisions for at least one of them[1], following recent decisions by the same government to attack other media organizations, install government political officers at other companies, or forced other companies to provide money or ownership. There’s absolutely no way those decisions were not made without factoring the current environment in.
1. https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/nexstar-tegna-fcc...
ABC may have feared retaliation from Trump, but I guarantee they fear retaliation from their viewers and advertisers even more. This was a good excuse to get rid of a loose cannon whose useful shelf life was already up and try to gain some goodwill among a large group of people who are ready to write you off.
https://latenighter.com/news/ratings/here-are-final-late-nig...
1. FCC Chairman Carr threatens licensed broadcasters (i.e. affiliates that have a license with the FCC) telling them they should stop running Kimmel and tell Disney they're doing it because the FCC may pull their license[1]
2. Nexstar, an affiliate broadcaster, issues a statement in response to Carr’s comments saying they're not going to broadcast Kimmel
3. ABC yanks Kimmel
I said
> I'm 100% supportive of disagreeing, debating, peacefully protesting, ignoring and even mocking ideas we don't agree with but I draw a hard line at shouting down, deplatforming or canceling them.
So we agree. What's there to be "Sorry" about?
> What First Amendment is trying to protect
My post doesn't mention the First Amendment or the troubling matter of the FCC chair comments about individual speech. I chose not to post about those because I wanted to focus on the other kind of free speech which doesn't involve the government or the First Amendment and isn't even a matter of law. It's about the morality and ethics of how consistently we as private citizens actively support fellow citizens we disagree with in being heard - even when they're offensive, hateful and wrong. It's about whether we should support or oppose private citizens canceling other citizens.
Frankly, I can't tell if we agree or not. I suspect it depends on exactly what you mean by the word "pressure". If "pressure" is limited to "disagreeing, debating, peacefully protesting, ignoring and even mocking" then we are in total agreement. If "pressure" includes "shouting down, deplatforming or canceling" then you're a canceler and we disagree. If it includes wiggle room which might lead to silencing viewpoints you oppose, you're a closet canceler - in which case the vagueness of the term "pressure" and being "sorry" make more sense. On the other hand, if "pressure" includes opposing even those you agree with most the moment they want to silence those you disagree with (instead of debating and countering their bad, wrong ideas) - then we're soulmates.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
I saw another newer post that was probably made because the poster didn't see this post, and a comment made in there linked to this discussion.
Supposedly posts with very high comments/upvote ratio are automatically classified as toxic and downranked.
That combined with random users flagging it, presumably.
In any case, seems more algorithmic than editorial (which is not to say that the latter never occurs around here in general)
HNs is a fairly typical "lock threads that degrade to flamewars" strategy that i first encountered more than 20 years ago.
One answer might be the same cowardice seen at ABC. But that's just one of the possibilities.
they get merged to a single discussion.
This post had about 60 upvotes where the one that the comments go moved from was at something like 175. So it basically kills a posts ability to gain traction.
it is of course in the interests of billionaire-owned companies like YC to keep the community all about "hacking" and "getting VC money" and away from rightfully discussing the most alarming period in the US' history since the Civil War. because hackers need to be at their screens spinning more gold for them and not getting disillusioned by the ongoing collapse of society into an authoritarian dystopia.
That in dark times there is a tendency for all open discussion venues to descend into the same pits.
And there is value in avoiding that.
The fact that this discussion is still here strikes me as moderation in moderation. A nice balance.
The other aspect is that every user has their own list of which stories ought to clear the bar for frontpage representation, and it's impossible to include them all. Frontpage space is the scarcest resource that HN has (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). As a result, there's no HN reader who gets the frontpage they want, including us. This is baked into the fundamentals of how the site is designed.
[editing - bear with me...]
And yet, my mother, who voted for this admin, would stand by the statement that we live in the free'est country in the world.
The truly horrific thing is that it's death by a thousand cuts, rather than the huge tyrannical violation that would cause people to stream out into the streets for change.
https://help.pbs.org/support/solutions/articles/5000692392-w...
Lots of people say things like "I know I should read, but it's this whole thing..." and then you find out they've been stuck on page 3 of Wuthering Heights for forty years, because someone convinced them they ought to be reading that, and it's haunted them from their night-stand ever since.
Don't let anyone tell you what to read, pick up something that sounds fun to you, and read it. Choosing to read something is always and in every circumstance better than sitting in front of a screen and passively yielding to whatever evening the advertisers have planned out for you.
i'm saying: reading is like gambling, it's a lot of fun!
If I pick something up and it sucks, I feel bad stopping and force myself to finish it (which will take 8 months because I hate it).
And that stops any reading progress.
This isn't a drill. It's also not a real fire. Half truths are a grifter's greenbacks.
“I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, there's no reason to do this song here.”
I'm hoping that this is just the high watermark, and not the new standard.
[1] - https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/broadcasting_false_i...
How can it not be an overreach ?
That all being said, what I don't like is that even if ABC execs decided that they found what Kimmel said distasteful or offensive, this still looks an awful lot like acting out of fear of a president who famously is very spiteful to anyone who says anything bad about him.
Edit: to clarify, the CEO of Disney caved to pressure from affiliates owned by a Nexstar who are actively petitioning the FCC to relax media ownership rules so they can buy more affiliates than the law allows.
Oh I'm sure they'll figure it out.
Perhaps the morons running the US need to first look at their first amendment, before moving to the second. Extremely disappointed that even Rand Paul is for such moves.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
How many companies, media people and politicians need to bend the knee before someone stands up and says this has all gone far enough?
FollowingTheDao•4h ago