Why Jimmy Kimmel is a Dishonest Provocateur, Not a Free Speech Martyr › American Greatness
John D. O'Connor
As execrable as Jimmy Kimmel’s September 15 monologue on the Charlie Kirk assassination was, perhaps even sicker is his current dishonest defense of his original falsities. Wrapping himself in the First Amendment does not erase the harm he continues to cause willfully and deceptively.
A few preliminary points are in order. The First Amendment protects American citizens from any law abridging their free speech rights. It does not protect any citizen from rebuke—including private employment discipline—for undesirable speech. And there is nothing wrong with the government encouraging certain speech content. We all have the “right,” for instance, to make racist or homophobic remarks. But the government can legitimately campaign to discourage such in the public interest. Billions in tax dollars have been spent to encourage politically correct DEI language and to discourage anti-vax communication, legitimately so even if these projects are objectionable to many.
Luckily for Kimmel, FCC chair Brendan Carr may have slipped his toe across the First Amendment line by threatening ABC with regulatory punishment, only weakly implicating the FCC’s mission of public safety and national security. Station owners Sinclair and Nexstar, without prompting, would have sanctioned Kimmel in any case, and, more likely than not, so would ABC’s majority owner, Disney. So, while Kimmel can claim governmental involvement in suppression, it was marginal at best.
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https://amgreatness.com/2025/09/28/why-jimmy-kimmel-is-a-dishonest-provocateur-not-a-free-speech-martyr/
