The political right have no principles and were actively cheering on FCC censorship when this story initially broke. Why should anyone care what they ostensibly think?
I disagree. Trump, IMO, has been a cult-like leader for the GOP since 2016. And he even called for more networks to lose their licenses over "dishonesty" after this incident[0]. Not to mention the multitude of scandals that we've seen like: law firm security clearance revocation as retribution for supporting Trump's opponents, deporting legal residents over their protest against Israel, and various lawsuits he's engaged in as President against media corporations, pollsters, etc.. who disfavour him[1].
> Many voices did not cheer it but called it for what it was
"many" is Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz? To my knowledge, they haven't called out Trump specifically for attacks on the First Amendment, only Brendan Carr. That's fine and dandy, but no one on the right seems willing to take the plunge for some reason on the huge array of issues that cropped up before this FCC threat against ABC.
I think rank and file folks are waking up a bit. Things are hard in the economy and tgey are seeing their moms, aunts, sisters, and daughters get impacted by reductions to women's healthcare.
I don't think so at all. I think some are waking up to the fact that Trump is becoming a liability and that his time is limited. They're preparing to shift to someone else who is just as bad, if not worse, such as Vance.
Nobody has any principles here my friend. There is a long list of people canceled for making content that displeased the Democrats, and now a few murders too.
But yes, apparently everyone hates Disney and wants them to go bankrupt. So finally the left and right agree on one thing.
Unfortunately for Kimmel, late night TV is irrelevant dinosaur so he better extract as much money as he can before he inevitably ends up like Colbert.
"long list of people canceled for making content that displeased the Democrats"
If we exclude the people advocating violence and discrimination against others due to their immutable characteristics, we find that its not such a "long" list after all.
Comments by government officials aren't protected free speech because government officials control policy.
There have been market panics ended by the right words at the right time. It's a different kind of speech entirely from criticism of the government by those without direct political power.
When Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr suggested Jimmy Kimmel should be suspended and said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” ABC and its local affiliates were listening.
On Wednesday afternoon, Carr tapped into preexisting MAGA media anger about a Monday night Kimmel monologue and used a right-wing podcaster’s platform to blast Kimmel and pressure ABC’s parent company Disney.
Those are the actions he took as an official at the FCC.
If they'd issued an order, it wouldn't be final until it reached SCOTUS! Most regulatory interaction happens informally. A regulator tells a regulated entity to do something, and they do it. Public statements by the FCC commissioner are significant enough to make it into court cases as evidence of the Commision's intent.
That's not "goal post reconstruction". Someone said the FCC took actions. I thought I might have missed them actually _doing_ something, so I was asking about it. The response was to highlight the statements they said.
The point is the FCC Chair making public statements threatening specific regulatory actions against a regulated entity is an action. You're trying to hold the word action to a higher standard than a judge would. The Rubicon was crossed.
> You're certainly very sure of what I was thinking, but you are again wrong
Nope. You're confusing regulatory actions, broadly, with official actions. The FCC didn't take any official action. The FCC Chair absolutely conveyed a credible threat of official action in response to specific political speech; that constitutes a regulatory action.
Like, the SEC announcing they're going to launch an investigation is a regulatory action. The Fed Chair saying they believe the job market is cooling is a regulatory action.
> The decision was guided by what was in the entertainment company's best interest, rather than external pressure from station owners or the FCC, the sources said.
From today's statement: "Last Wednesday, we [Disney] made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country" [1].
We shouldn’t need to clarify this, but Tim Allen and Roseanne Bar were not threatened by high-ranking government officials, right?
These are two completely different situations. If conservatives want to vote with their dollars and boycott Disney, that’s something I wholeheartedly support. If they want to use their power as federal officials to silence voices they disagree with, that’s unacceptable.
> The political right in this country would love for Disney to be boycotted - just saying
Don't care.
We've got two groups of people in this country: those willing to sacrifice our republic for personal enrichment and those who won't bend the knee. (The former need to be heavily investigated over the coming decade, mostly so we can write statute that makes their behaviour criminal in the future.)
The issue most people have with Disney's behavior is that they didn't even attempt to fight.
It's one thing to say "We're going to comply for now, but here are the things we'll be doing to push back..."
Attempting to can Kimmel because he said something the President doesn't like and because it's politically/economically convenient for Disney, without doing anything else?
> Disney content, financially motivated or not, is some of the most left friendly media there is.
This is kind of true, but it isn't correct to color this as Disney doing a favor to the left. The reason their content is "left" friendly is that most people are pretty aligned with the "left" when it comes to social issues.
They are offering this content because it is popular with the majority of people (and thus profitable), not as some sort of favor to their friends.
I'd be interested to know why you think that is? So far as I can tell all they've done is sprinkle characters here or there that are or might be gay. I haven't seen any shows criticize wealth inequity or champion UBI.
In The Princess and the Frog, Tiana was denied the property she wanted to purchase by the Harvey Brothers (real estate agents) due to racial and socioeconomic discrimination.
Even just the vague suggestion of bending the knee here is a massive mistake. It can’t happen.
Even failing to speak up clearly _against_ ”censorship recommendation” is bad neigh that the business should frankly be cancelled to bankruptcy - including parks, cruises and the rest of it.
Disney has been removing queer characters from shows and movies and canceling shows that have large queer audiences. They're not as left friendly as they'd like you to believe.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If Disney goes some Sinclair analog will take over that will probably call queer people mentally ill or something.
