People keep treating this like "Trump vs comedians" culture war drama, but the interesting part is the FCC chair casually wandering into it like a party whip.
Once a regulator starts signaling, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," every media company hears the real message: your license, your merger, your regulatory friction all depend on how much you annoy the people holding the pen. You don't even need explicit orders. A few public threats, a few well-timed approvals or delays, and suddenly "purely financial decisions" just happen to line up with political preferences.
This is soft censorship as a service: you outsource the actual silencing to risk-averse corporations who are already wired to overreact to anything that might jeopardize a multibillion dollar deal. The scary part isn't that a president wants a comedian fired, that's boringly normal. The scary part is when independent agencies stop pretending they're independent and start acting like they report to the comments section on Truth Social.
We literally just did this with a different talkshow host, and he was back at work after, what, a week? Now that the networks have learned how their audiences respond to politically-motivated talkshow host firings... I don't see this going anywhere
I guess it's mostly for the chilling effect... Kimmel and Seth are big enough names, but what about less known people, would they feel free about joking about the sexual-assaulter-in-chief in public, or would they censor themselves?
That's the old and broke GOP. The new GOP understands that the Constitution has been fatally corrupted by woke and liberalism, and our only hope is to crown a King who speaks the Truth of all things for all of time. When nobody can say we are losing, we must be winning.
I wish. Until the Republican Congress stands up and asserts their constitutional authority instead of taking marching orders, this is not that far off from what we have now.
Actually better idea - I'll call it Schrödinger's Sarcasm. Whether or not it's sarcasm depends on whether or not my political reliability is being investigated by the secret police.
Goodbye first amendment. What's next? Revoking citizenship?
The Brits already started doing that one a while back. It'll arrive here eventually
Don't give them any more bad ideas.
It depends. Are you a 30-something Indian American who recently got elected as the Mayor of New York? /s
That has already been discussed early this summer.
People keep treating this like "Trump vs comedians" culture war drama, but the interesting part is the FCC chair casually wandering into it like a party whip.
Once a regulator starts signaling, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," every media company hears the real message: your license, your merger, your regulatory friction all depend on how much you annoy the people holding the pen. You don't even need explicit orders. A few public threats, a few well-timed approvals or delays, and suddenly "purely financial decisions" just happen to line up with political preferences.
This is soft censorship as a service: you outsource the actual silencing to risk-averse corporations who are already wired to overreact to anything that might jeopardize a multibillion dollar deal. The scary part isn't that a president wants a comedian fired, that's boringly normal. The scary part is when independent agencies stop pretending they're independent and start acting like they report to the comments section on Truth Social.
Americans thought that Russians would eventually adopt American culture, but instead Americans adopted Russian culture. Hehe.
We literally just did this with a different talkshow host, and he was back at work after, what, a week? Now that the networks have learned how their audiences respond to politically-motivated talkshow host firings... I don't see this going anywhere
I guess it's mostly for the chilling effect... Kimmel and Seth are big enough names, but what about less known people, would they feel free about joking about the sexual-assaulter-in-chief in public, or would they censor themselves?
It's the grind.
Each successive cancellation wears down the public.
Eventually people start being cancelled and there is no fight back.
It's in the authoritarian playbook. Forgot the page to provide citation.
To misquote animal farm:
All speach is equal but some speech is more equal than other speech.
What in the Heinrich Luitpold Himmler is this nonsense?
And there we go again, the Republican party - self-proclaimed paragon of the first Amendment - showing its true colors once again.
Free speech for me, not for thee.
For a bunch of weenies who love playing at being tough they sure whine a lot.
That's the old and broke GOP. The new GOP understands that the Constitution has been fatally corrupted by woke and liberalism, and our only hope is to crown a King who speaks the Truth of all things for all of time. When nobody can say we are losing, we must be winning.
Based and Yarvin pilled.
Sarcasm?
I wish. Until the Republican Congress stands up and asserts their constitutional authority instead of taking marching orders, this is not that far off from what we have now.
God I hope.
(Edit: I thought of a better answer.)
Actually better idea - I'll call it Schrödinger's Sarcasm. Whether or not it's sarcasm depends on whether or not my political reliability is being investigated by the secret police.
Let's call it Catch-23.
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