Subject: Re: ABC Axes Jimmy Kimmel
That, of course, is not what happened but all the facts of this case have been massively distorted.

On the contrary, it is exactly what happened. Andrew Egger explains:

Eight months into this administration, Donald Trump and his goons have launched so many attacks on our government and civil society that it’s hard to keep them all straight—the law firms, the colleges, the independent agencies, the media companies (and the telecom giants that own them), and on and on and on. Increasingly, though, they’re all part of one meta-story of how the institutions under threat have responded: Did they curl up and give in, or did they fight back?

On the curl-up-and-give-up front, the deck is getting stacked pretty high. JVL wrote last night about the latest example. MAGA didn’t love how late-night host Jimmy Kimmel treated the Charlie Kirk story in one line of his show’s opening monologue the other day,¹ so Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr decided it was time for the government to get involved. “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel,” he said, “or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Within hours, Kimmel’s corporate owners had bent the knee, announcing the host was suspended indefinitely.

One thing to keep in mind about these capitulations is how they snowball. They have tended to come in bunches—when one law firm, one college, one media company rolls over for Trump, it compels others to do the same. Meanwhile, with every new capitulation, Trump grows bolder. There’s no organizing principle to any of this other than his own private desire to see how much he can get away with; at times, even he has seemed faintly mystified by the boundaries he’s been able to blow through. “Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump?” he said at an event back in April. “They give you $100 million and then they announce that ‘but we have done nothing wrong.’ And I agree, they’ve done nothing wrong. But what the hell, they give me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong.”

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/y...