They say laughter is the best medicine, unless it’s aimed at the wrong target.
Jimmy Kimmel learned that lesson on Sept. 15, when, in a monologue, he suggested Republicans were doing everything in their power to make it known that Charlie Kirk’s killer was left-leaning to gain political points, questioning how much President Trump was really grieving Kirk’s death.
Two days later, ABC removed his show from the airwaves amid pressure from the FCC. Kimmel’s silencing painted a clear message: say the ‘wrong’ thing about the wrong person too loudly, and someone will try to find a mute button.
Even when Jimmy Kimmel returned six days later, some of the nation’s biggest broadcasters refused to air his show.
Millions of viewers across the country could not tune in to the comedian, whose job is to add the feeling of satire to events that are larger than the show itself.
Upon his return, Kimmel had a message for the higher-ups of American media.
“Our [president] celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke. He was somehow able to squeeze Colbert out of CBS. Then he turned his sights on me. And now he’s openly rooting for NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, and the hundreds of Americans who work for their shows, who don’t make millions of dollars,” Kimmel said on his late-night return.
Kimmel also directed a message to those with power and the audience that supported him.
“I hope that if that happens, or if there’s even any hint of that happening, you will be ten times as loud as you were this week.”
This wasn’t the first time this has happened. Two years ago, a Chinese comedian named Li Haoshi joked about his dogs “fighting like the People’s Liberation Army.”
The joke’s fallout was permanent—Haoshi was banned from performing, entered a financial pit and even disappeared from social media.
“We will never allow any company or individual to wantonly slander the glorious image of the People’s Liberation Army on a stage in the [Chinese] capital, never allow the people’s deep feelings for the soldiers to be hurt, and never allow serious subjects to be turned into an entertainment,” the culture authority said via CNN.
Haoshi’s case wasn’t just about him or his jokes. It was a warning and a message to other comedians.
At first glance, these two cases are vastly different. One is a household name in late-night television, whereas the other is a small-town comedian working in Beijing. However, from a broader perspective, both cases unravel the dangers of the world today: free speech is being attacked daily, often in ways we don’t notice until it’s too late.
Every day, political forces decide who gets heard and who doesn’t. Sometimes, the silencing is unnoticeable; other times, it’s blunt and abrupt, similar to Kimmel and Haoshi.
Voices are often silenced, and the problem has only started to erupt due to a big headline name like Jimmy Kimmel entering the fray. Around the world, journalists are detained or censored for reporting on social protests or political justice.
Kimmel was able to come back and pull his show back on air.
Haoshi didn’t.
Both situations remind us of the power scale between modern-day entertainment and free speech. The world around us could be in critical danger if we treat these instances like one-time incidents; we risk missing the largest problem.
Free speech doesn’t disappear overnight. It crumbles piece by piece until the First Amendment goes along with it.
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