WTW94: Sure Kimmel Got Censored, but Whatabout When Whatabout Whatabouted? Yeah, That’s What I Thought.
Jimmy Kimmel caused significant outrage a couple of weeks ago that you likely heard about. The "outrage" on the Right was that he dared to say Charlie Kirk's name and imply that the alleged killer was MAGA. The outrage on the Left was that after Kimmel said that single sentence, the government mafia-bossed the broadcasters to pre-empt his show, ultimately leading to Jimmy Kimmel's suspension from the air by ABC and his silence. The Right will have you believe that the Left is blowing this completely out of proportion, and since when did the Left even care about Free Speech anyway?! Lydia takes us through a piece in The Federalist: 6 Times Leftists Melting Down Over Jimmy Kimmel Were Happy To Deny Conservatives ‘Free Speech’, and we discuss how comparable the examples were that they came up with. If you enjoy our work, please consider leaving a 5-star review! You can always email questions, comments, and leads to lydia@seriouspod.com. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
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The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything.
Everything.
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Hello and welcome to where there's woke.
I'm Thomas.
That's Lydia.
How are you doing?
Wokeies rise up.
Stop trying to start a revolution on our podcast.
Do that on your own time.
Says who wokey uprising.
Yeah.
The government.
Yeah.
I'm going to censor your uprising right now.
You're not allowed to say that.
I'll see you in court.
I'm doing well.
How are you?
Excited.
Hey, patrons have already heard this.
Normies, we finally got out our Sydney Sweeney's boobs uh episode.
We finally got out Sydney Sweeney's boobs.
Yeah.
I've been trying for so long.
We did it.
But in seriousness, uh, it's what Sydney Sweeney's boobs tell us about the anti-woke outrage industrial complex is basically what it is.
And we finally got that out, and we also talked a bit about some behind-the-scenes stuff of what happened there.
So please, Patreon.com slash where there's woke, if you'd like to check that out.
In a similar vein to what we talked about there, this was another episode.
We tried to record and recorded a lot on it.
Yeah.
A week ago.
I don't know, more.
And it's just like quality control stuff, and just letting you know that sometimes when stuff doesn't come out, or most of the time when stuff doesn't come out, it's because we've put a lot of work in and not quite gotten it right, and so held it back.
So just wanted to mention that this is yet another one of that.
So I wish we had had this out earlier, but I think it's still very much relevant because I've realized that the sort of like how the atom bomb basically changed war forever and like permanently altered the landscape of the planet and of politics, geopolitics.
I feel like the whataboutism, it's always been around, I guess.
So it's not a perfect analogy, but the whataboutism as unlocked by Trump, as shamelessly as Trump has done it, I think is just fundamentally ruined us because no matter what happens, Trump could have a fucking foreign leader.
Trump could have the prime minister of Canada assassinated.
And the right would go, these forensic historians would go try to look, okay.
When's the last time?
Well, in 1978, Jimmy Carter would uh he uh had they authorized an attack on the you know, they'll just find some fucking bullshit that is like sort of loosely related to the thing Trump did, but not and then the minute they can find something that just kind of sounds like it, like has some of the same syllables as whatever nonsense fascism Trump just did, then they're fine.
They that that's it.
It's agonizing because what do you do?
What do you do?
No matter what, no matter how you try to fight that, it's an uphill battle because if it's like a decent comparison, then it's like, okay, yeah, acknowledging maybe Obama, you know, his drone strikes, yeah, Obama with the drone strikes is bad.
Okay, yeah.
Acknowledged.
But taking it 50 steps further is bad.
You know, blowing up boats full of people because you say they might be smuggling drugs or whatever is fucking worse.
That's a war crime.
Yeah, and and maybe the drones were too.
I don't know, but both of them bad.
Yeah, exactly.
But it's this 24-7, and it puts you on the back foot.
And what can we do except I guess what we do here on the show is try to actually look at these things and debunk them.
But with this particular thing, with the Jimmy Kimmel censorship, I think they were really struggling because this was just flat out categorically censorship by the government under threat of government, you know?
Yeah.
And they tried their hardest, and we wanted to look at a one article in the Federalist where they tried real hard, they tried real hard, and we'll see how they did.
Oh god.
So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
Do you want to tease anything?
Yeah, uh, lots of layers for this what about is and we're gonna get some historical clips that I think is gonna be really fun.
I can't wait to show you that.
That ties in so many layers of this together.
Uh yeah, I think it's gonna be super fun.
Um, but you're gonna have to wait until after the break.
Oh, I don't want to wait till I oh them.
Okay.
Yeah.
You know who doesn't have to wait until after the break?
Who?
The patrons.
Oh, those geniuses.
I know they're so smart.
How did they fucking think of that?
Premier wokies is what I call them.
So good looking too.
Like I know.
Geez.
Men want them, women want to be them and men want to be them and women want them.
Yeah.
Men and women and non-binary folks want to be them and want them is what I heard.
Yeah.
Patreon.com slash where there's woke.
And they don't you know, you know why they're so great.
That productivity gain from not listening to the ads.
Yeah.
You know, they're just like, I'm gonna take that two minutes or whatever and I'm gonna lift weights or something.
No, it compounds though, you know, over the course.
Yeah, exactly.
Smart.
Just like interesting.
Very smart.
Economic geniuses.
Yeah.
So if you want your retirement to perform well, oh no.
Uh don't make promises.com slash where there's woke.
Guaranteed millions of dollars.
Guaranteed.
Hold me to it.
All right, where are we gonna start?
Well we're gonna start just very very brief background in case anyone was living under a rock.
I would find this very hard to believe.
Make it short.
I'm gonna make it super short.
So Charlie Kirk was murdered on September 6th.
Yes.
Oh my God.
I didn't hear about that.
Holy shit.
I know I know tell me everything.
Well I'm not gonna tell you about his murder but I am going to talk about when Jimmy Kimmel briefly spoke about it on his show on September 15th, which was a Monday.
And also a tiny little bit on September 16th, a Tuesday the indictment for who allegedly killed Charlie Kirk came out on that same day Tuesday.
And based off of what he said apparently we're thinking from the Monday primarily bit, he said we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
And then he also had a little bit on Tuesday and the following day Brendan Carr, the chairman of the S FCC went on Benny Johnson's podcast and said that what Kimmel said, what I just read you was some of the sickest conduct possible.
That's quotes.
Sick I agree.
That was fucking sick Jimmy Kimmel.
And he basically mafia bossed in the interview and said we could do this the easy way or the hard way.
I love how in any other era and any other time ever, people would hear what you just said and be certain that you were doing hyperbole.
Oh he did the like we can do it the easy way or the hard way and be like okay yeah so that's you characterizing what he said.
Hey um what do you actually say what were the words he actually said frankly when you see stuff like this I mean we can do this the easy way or the hard way oh okay yeah so exactly that and I think this is old news we had a lot I had a lot of funny and insightful and interesting things to say about this in the one we didn't use but I think it's kind of old news by now but but like let it suffice to say first off number one I don't even want to engage the conversation of what Jimmy Kimmel said because it's invalid to even go down that road.
There's no reason to even go down it you should stop at and this is what we need to do this is what we've been advocating on the show somehow rhetorically somehow as a nation as a people we need to stop before we even do that.
Well but okay he didn't really say no doesn't matter his comedy show doesn't fucking matter what he said at all.
No it would matter if we're just talking about people complaining because people complain about what people say.
No problem.
That's normal course of business I have plenty of complaints about what people say from a woke perspective.
No problem having complaints when we talk about the FCC chairman threatening and saying we can do this the easy way the hard way we don't even need to look at what the content is you shouldn't be doing that that's government censorship.
Yeah yeah absolutely short of like he led a coup against the government on national TV or something maybe I could think of like a couple things but we're nowhere near that.
So absent that level of of extreme we don't need to be parsing out the wording of Jimmy Kimmel's jokes to see whether or not this was okay.
It's not even close.
Having said that it's also I I will grant yes this contained probably a false premise because at the time this was before the charging documents came out it seemed pretty clear I've talked all about this on SIO so people listen to that but it seemed pretty clear that he was either like far right or maybe nihilist and so I think that's where Jimmy was coming from.
And then when we got the charging document with the text I mean it seems like maybe maybe not quite that you know and so sure Jimmy Kimmel's thing might add a bit of a false premise but even with that said the focus of what he was saying was about the conduct of the president.
Yeah exactly he went on to criticize how Trump responded to questions about Charlie Kirk's murder And how Trump just was like, the ballroom construction's going great.
That's his response.
Fucking funny.
To someone like that that he claimed was, you know, a friend, someone who helped him get elected.
Someone who like changed a lot of folks in Gen Z, their political change.
Can we play that one just in case people haven't heard it?
Because it's not funny.
And I just want to hear it again.
I've heard it 20 times.
I'll never I will never get tired of a narcissist, a literal narcissist, sociopath failing to be a human.
And then later, I think because of this, he tried to be a human on one of the Fox Talk shows and go through the like what happened when he found out Charlie Kirk died, and it's just nonsense.
Like he starts to do an impression.
He's like, Well, and when they told me, I said, What?
What?
What?
He does that.
That's it.
He just said that a bunch of times.
You're like, that's it.
That's all you got.
Like any human would be like, yeah, I I couldn't.
I was in disbelief.
I couldn't fucking believe it.
Oh, here's another thing I want to say.
As we start to play this clip, I realize I I said this in the and sucks that we're gonna have to say that a lot.
There was stuff we said in the in the false start episode that wasn't exactly a start.
It was like a while.
But it was like an episode and then more than an episode.
Sorry.
Yeah, we we just needed a little more time to finish it.
And then everything changed in the course of like a day and a half.
But point is uh one point I made that is I was surprised to find out I don't like any of these nighttime talk shows.
I think they're lowest common denominator and they're boring, and they make people, even geniuses like Stephen Colbert turn pretty unfunny, honestly, in this format, because the jokes have to be very boring and plain and what and this, you know, it's better and worse.
Don't at me.
I love Stephen Colbert, and I think he's very talented.
But I when I watch the clips, I'm like, yeah, okay.
It turns out, and I swear to God, this is not just because I'm a fucking wokist trying to celebrate whoever's anti-Trump.
I watching Jimmy Kimmel, I realized like, oh, this is actually kind of funny.
Yeah.
Like I laughed at like quite a bit of this.
I still don't think I would go so far as to watch it, but but in reviewing these clips, he's got some good jokes in this.
I almost would go through more of it.
So you know, hats off to Jimmy Kimmel.
It's pretty funny.
We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
In between the finger pointing, there was uh grieving on Friday, the White House flew the flags and have staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.
My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk.
May I ask her personally?
How are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir?
I think very good.
And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks.
They've just started construction of the new bowl for the White House.
I'll never get that.
Which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years.
And it's gonna be a beauty.
Yeah, it's so good.
He's at the fourth stage of grief, construction.
Demolition.
It's a good line.
Yeah.
That's great.
So the reason why Brennan Carr, you know, was doing this, we could do this the easy way or the hard way, is because broadcasters had a pending merger in front of the Trump administration, right?
They had some leverage there that they could play with because they didn't like what Jimmy Kimmel said.
So what ended up happening was shortly after that podcast interview with Brennan Carr on Benny Johnson.
By the way, take a moment to say the FCC fucking chairman is going on a Russian propaganda paid guys podcast.
Yep.
What the fuck?
What are we doing here?
Yeah.
So um Next Star and Sinclair own a lot of, you know, ABC affiliate stations.
They're the broadcasters here.
Nextar has a pending merger in front of the Trump admin.
Um, Sinclair and Nextstar both have regulatory changes they want to see happen.
And then Disney also announced that they were pulling the show indefinitely.
And uh Disney has a deal that they're working on where they own ESPN, ESPN's trying to buy the NFL network.
It's so distressing.
The fact that we have done nothing about Monopoly on both sides.
This is one of those places where we can say this is a both sides problem.
I mean, the right's still worse, don't get me wrong, but it is a both sides problem.
We have done nothing on Monopolies for so long that it's like, okay, now these two fucking companies are gonna literally censor Jimmy Kimmel for nothing, for absolutely nothing, because they're like, well, we need our deal to go through and we let the fascists in, and the fascists are willing to be mob bosses and fucking blackmail us.
So, all right, well, if I have to choose between the fucking the bottom line and all of our democracy, I'll go with the bottom line on that.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Profit fucking short-sighted, too.
gross.
It's honestly very gross conduct at a human level, you know.
So thankfully, after this happened and Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off the air, people were pissed.
And I mean like a lot of people.
People, even like Ben Shapiro.
He was like, what is happening?
Give him an ounce of credit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
An ounce of credit.
Ted Cruz also called this out.
So, you know, credit where credit's due.
Thank you guys for standing up in the back.
He's like, hey, if they come for this, they're gonna come for this too.
Yeah.
Stepsister porn.
I don't know, something weird.
Something weird on 9-11.
Just saying that's what Ted Cruz's motivation was.
Yeah, but like incredible backlash.
And some folks on the right were really trying to like diminish the role of the FCC in those things.
And we're gonna talk about that with the article.
But thank you to everybody who participated in pushing back on this because this was like a horrible, horrible stain on democracy when this happened.
It is not going to be the only time this ever happened.
Um, but Disney announced shortly after they they pulled him off.
It was a few days later on September 22nd that he would be back the following day, September 23rd.
Um, and then Next Star and Sinclair tried to hold the line and said they would not broadcast it.
His return his return show drew more than six million viewers, which is incredible because over a quarter of US households didn't even have it available to them across the country because Nextar and Sinclair blocked it.
Yeah.
So I think that's remarkable.
Um after that happened, Sinclair announced on September 26th that he'd be back.
And then three hours later, three hours later, Nextar said the same thing.
So Jimmy Kimmel's back and the broadcasters have backed off for now.
And not out of the kindness of their hearts, they lost a bunch of ad I think companies were pissed that they would want to advertise, but then they were advertising on a fucking, you know, whatever, whatever Sinclair and Sinclair tried to do Charlie Kirk Memorial Space.
Yeah, yeah, they're then with something else, I think.
And it's like those advertisers are like, hey, we don't want advertising space on whatever the fuck yeah, re-runs of three's company.
I don't know, whatever.
What's on TV anymore?
Name a thing on TV.
I'm realizing I was trying to do a joke.
I don't know what anyone would watch TV for Young Shell then.
Oh, fuck, you're right.
Yeah, young shut.
I don't know if that's ABC.
Something like that.
Now that we have kind of the basics and the background out of the way, let's talk about how one of these right wing entities tried to respond to all of this.
Yeah.
So this is out of the Federalist.
And this is titled Six Times Leftists Melting Down Over Jimmy Kimmel were happy to deny conservatives free speech.
Which seems tough because it's like, how are those two groups even doing those same things?
You know what I mean?
Like pretty much a wide swath of the country was upset about the Jimmy Kimmel thing.
I don't imagine they were in a position to deny conservatives their free speech.
So I'm already um a tad skeptical, shall we say?
Yeah.
And so the author's through line here, which she puts up front, this is Brianna Lyman.
She says the left doesn't really care about Kimmel or free speech.
It's just about exploiting a convenient storyline to keep their narrative of Trump is authoritarian alive.
So I think that's how she can parse it.
Boy, that sure is a lot more complicated than, you know, actually just Trump's an authoritarian and he's doing authoritarian shit and people don't like that.
I think that's the simpler...
Occam's razor would say, I think that.
I think if you ask Brianna Lyman, she'd be like, oh no, well, Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz, they're consistent because they care about free speech.
So they're upset about Kimmel because of free speech.
Whereas the left, the entire left, is not upset about Kimmel and free speech.
I think what's really important here is not the fascist takeover of our country, but like, are the people complaining about it always consistent in every little thing?
That's what's really I think in Hitler times, they were like, Yeah, Hitler's bad, but like, were you complaining when they first they came for the whatever?
In the first part of the poem, were you complaining?
No.
Well, then shut up.
Yeah.
I'm gonna skip through the very beginning of this because it's basically rehashing what I just discussed, the background of what happened here.
But I am going to read a a little bit that she wrote before we get into the six items from this list.
Nonetheless, the professional censorship class on the left has suddenly discovered the first amendment.
Harry Sisson took to X to claim professional censorship.
What does that mean?
I yeah.
Stupid.
Took to X to claim, quote, we are witnessing the most brazen attack on free speech in modern American history.
Elon Trump and MAGA said they were free speech warriors.
It's the exact opposite.
Okay, who is that?
Harry Sisson is a like left-wing young podcaster, I think.
All right.
Influencer.
Never heard of him.
You've heard of this person, Matt Iglacius.
God.
Oh, so also fucking right wing shows.
Yeah.
Wrote an entire article about quote MAGA's scary clampdown on free speech.
Wow.
If even that fucking asshole is doing it.
David French called Kimmel's removal a quote direct attack on free speech.
Why are you doing David French?
Here's my question to this author, Federalist person.
I'm sure there were good examples of people who are actually leftists, right?
This is what she came up with.
Are they almost trying to go after more like center right people in case and kind of like calling them out a little bit?
Maybe I guess to try to get them to realize that phrase trim the, you know, no, never mind.
I got what is you don't know.
It's an idiot.
Never mind.
Yeah, anyway, not important, but it just seemed it seems like too weird for that to be coincidentally who she picked as her example, you know?
Yeah, the other example that she gives is from Vox, Zach Bosham that Kimmel's removal is the quote most brazen attack on free speech yet.
And then, okay, so now we're gonna get into the six examples of where was the left when these things happened.
But where was where was Gondor?
Yeah.
Exactly.
But where was this passion for free speech when ABC canceled the hits it come Roseanne in 2018?
Well, it was Gondor when it canceled Roseanne.
Where it was gone.
After Roseanne Barr referred to former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett as the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes.
Jesus fucking Christ.
What?
Yeah.
So I do remember that.
Do you remember?
Okay.
I do.
But like my what is where was so I have so many levels of what?
Yeah.
Step one of this debunk is gonna be, yeah.
Did the chairman of the FCC do this?
Oh, probably not, because for one thing, it was 2018.
Yeah.
So we already, you would just be blaming the same people who did this for censorship.
For two, what do you expect the left to have done when someone was a super fucking racist?
Like that is cool.
Awful.
Yeah, I know.
Why would we defend that?
Why would anyone ever defend that?
Yeah.
When people start criticizing that tweet as being racist, because it clearly is a racist.
Barr apparently was initially defensive and then later posted an apology, quote, for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks.
Yeah.
And then she pretended to not know the person was black.
Yeah, yeah.
She said that she believed Jarrett was Saudi, Jewish, and Persian.
Does that make it better?
I don't know.
And then later released a video.
Some locus tell me if that makes it better.
I don't even know.
And then later released a video where she claimed she thought the quote bitch was white.
Okay.
Yeah.
The other element of her defense for this tweet was that she was taking Ambient and she was Ambient tweeting.
I do remember that.
2 A.M. And the manufacturer of Ambient actually tweeted and said, That's right.
Racism is not a known side effect of any Sanafi medication.
Oh man.
That's a good one.
Yeah, that is good.
And that but it's also true.
Like, I look, I have some amount of sympathy for addicts and whatever, if whatever, if there's like, but like it, like I made a point recently on whatever.
It does you don't invent this kind of behavior out of nothing.
Yeah.
You know, like that's it exists within you somewhere.
Crazy.
Yeah.
And you know, like when you look at kind of the overview of what happened here, it usually just says like ABC, you know, canceled Roseanne and removed the show's content from the network website.
But what it's missing in kind of this back and forth situation is Wanda Sykes was a producer for it.
And she said, I'm not coming back.
I will not be working on the show anymore.
Please remove my name.
Additionally, some of the cast responded and said that they were going to leave the show.
Yeah.
So no, in order to be consistent, we have to uh re recast them and make somebody else do a show with Roseanne so that she doesn't get cancelled free speech.
Yeah.
So uh the actress who was playing Darlene's daughter, so I guess Roseanne's granddaughter, Emma Kenny, she tweeted, as I called my manager to quit working on Roseanne, I was told it was canceled.
I I feel so empowered by Wanda Sykes, Channing Dungey, who's you know, uh the ABC, the first African American, by the way, African American leader of ABC.
And anyone at ABC standing up for morals and abuse of power, bullies will never win.
So they were seeing that kind of fall out.
Yeah.
Um asterisk for at least another six years.
One of the writers for the original Roseanne series in 1988, Danny Zucker said, hard to believe a woman who supports a man who calls Nazis very fine people would turn out to be a miserable racist bag of shit.
I'm definitely Team Wanda Sykes.
Now Roseanne Barr is coming out now that Kimmel was potentially canceled and then brought back.
As he was coming back, she has been calling this a double standard.
And she is taking this opportunity to speak out, I guess.
And that she had her whole life ruined over this single tweet.
Over the super racist thing.
Super racist, horrible, just completely horrible.
So dumb.
Yeah.
So that doesn't seem at all the same to me at all.
No, no.
This is the normal course of business where if an audience doesn't want something, they don't want something.
Yeah.
Here the Jimmy Kimmel thing is he didn't do anything wrong at all.
And the audience wanted him.
Yeah.
And the FCC commissioner chairman, whatever, threatened people to take him down.
Yeah.
Like it's so not even close.
Oh, here's a here's a good little uh snippet before we move on, though.
So John Goodman, you know, uh Roseanne's co-star for this show, love him, has consistently said since the Jarrett incident that he does not believe Barr is racist.
But former presidential advisor Susan Rice is quoted here too, and she is also black.
She retweeted something that Roseanne Barr had said about her back in 2013.
And it was Susan Rice, a man with big swinging eight balls.
What?
Ape A P E. Oh my God.
So yeah, sorry, John Goodman.
Love you so much.
Roseanne's a racist.
Yeah.
Deeply, deeply racist.
That's someone who has a blind spot for their friend, probably.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
If they're still friends, I don't know.
Okay.
So what else?
What else do we have here, Brianna?
One down.
I think we we got that one.
I'm gonna just go ahead and say declare we won that one.
Yeah.
Where were the hysterics?
Where was God when President Donald Trump was deplatformed in 2021?
Okay.
Uh let's see.
It says the left celebrated.
Iglesias reportedly had no problem with the silencing of free speech, posting quote, it's kind of weird that deplatforming Trump just like completely worked with no visible downside whatsoever.
Okay, so now does this answer my question actually?
She picked these specific people because she found like good double standard quotes in her mind that's a good one.
Probably, yeah.
I don't know.
I still feel like you'd have better examples.
These aren't leftists.
What are you talking about?
Anyway, keep going.
So I want to talk a little bit about what that deep platforming was.
Oh, that time when Trump tried to do a coup, and we're like and the amoral fucking people, even at Facebook, were like, maybe a coup is too far, maybe or two.
Well, I think it was Twitter.
It took a while for Facebook to get on the book.
So back then, before, you know, Elon, there's like some semblance of like maybe might be a good idea to take down the fucking insurrectionist.
And that lasted a little while.
Let me read a little bit from Twitter's statement on this.
Permanent suspension of at real Donald Trump.
This was posted January 8th, so two days after the attempted insurrection.
After close review of recent tweets from the real Donald Trump account and the context around them, specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter.
We have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.
Yeah.
In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter rules would potentially result in this very course of action.
Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials.
Yada yada yada.
However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things.
We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.
And then they share their analysis of um their policy enforcement with regard to this case, particularly.
So they basically warned Trump and Trump continued to violate this policy.
And on January 8th, he tweeted the 75 million great American patriots who voted for me, America first and make America great again, will have a giant voice long into the future.
They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape, or form.
Shortly thereafter, the president tweeted to all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the inauguration on January 20th.
And then they wrote, Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, these two tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the president's statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence.
They basically said that we have determined that these tweets are in violation of their glorification of violence policy, and he needed to be immediately permanently suspended from the service.
Yeah.
What date was that again?
January 8th.
Okay, so not immediately after Jan 6.
And mind you, I'm glad they did this, although you know, didn't last a lot of good that did.
But this was long overdue.
He should have been taken down long ago.
For one, this is again, I do get there's some nuance here, but it is a private company and they have their user agreement, whatever.
So to some extent, like I I do think that's not always like a blanket excuse.
I think there can be unfair uses of that.
But when it comes to something like incitement to violence, can this author agree in a vacuum, like just without anything that incitement to violence would be one of those exceptions to, you know, unlimited free speech.
Like if someone's actually telling people to do violence, wouldn't that be an exception?
Yeah.
And then your problem is just with do you disagree with their analysis?
Because this is not censorship for a political statement or a view or a blah blah blah blah.
This is they're like after two days, they took two days after January after a fucking insurrection when he made more inflammatory statements.
Oh, calling from Mike Pence's head, basically.
Well, no, sorry, I mean after Gen 6.
Like they made more inflammatory when when like it it's possible that if Trump had shut up right after January 6th, that he wouldn't have even gotten kicked off for January 6th.
I agree with that.
But because Trump makes them money, these are fucking heartless corporations and Trump had a huge following and tons of engagement.
It makes them money.
They wanted to keep Trump if they possibly could, but finally it was too far.
So when he made more statements that further encourage possible violence after an attempted armed insurrection in which people died.
Yeah.
They're like, okay, fucking finally, I guess we can't we do have a line.
Yeah.
Well, and I think what's interesting too is like you get to have this luxury of like you don't just have to take his tweet in a vacuum, right?
They got to analyze how is this, how are these tweets being interpreted by his audience?
By the folks who follow him.
Like, what are their words?
How what what's the common interpretation as a result?
And you know, they really just landed on him not attending the inauguration as being received by a number of his supporters as confirmation that the election was not legitimate.
And potentially like encouragement to people who might be considering violent acts that he's not going to be there, so it's safe.
He's not going to accidentally get hurt if they engage in violence on that day.
It's just kind of like these elements and stuff about how people were talking about these tweets from his camp.
And they also when they banned him or permanently suspended him, they said that they would be on the lookout for ban evasion as well, because he's still, you know, they still have the POTUS account.
They still have the White House account.
And wouldn't you know it, Trump or someone acting on his behalf tweeted from the POTUS account.
Oh, wow.
Right, like basically right after.
As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech.
And tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the radical left in removing my account from their platform to silence me.
And then Twitter took that down like as quickly as they could.
Wow.
I forgot about that detail.
Yeah.
They had to ban the POTUS account.
Yep.
Yep.
What a what an age.
Obviously, he wasn't happy.
And so now we have Truth Social, right?
Uh his uh media company started Truth Social.
He was the first post on February 16th, 2022.
And I just want to call out like when we're talking about social media censorship, there's plenty of allegations of censorship over on Truth Social as well.
The platform has been widely accused of it.
Oh, yeah.
Several accounts were banned after posting about investigations into the the 2021 insurrection, like the actual attack on the Capitol.
There was a report from Public Citizen, which is a consumer rights advocacy group, a alliance progressively in August 2022.
And True Social was found to shadow ban liberal and progressive users that disagree with the site's narrative.
And they've banned content mentioning abortion.
Um, just like a variety of things in line with what they want.
Yeah.
They literally create an echo chamber.
Yeah.
And number one, here's the thing.
We're gonna get to, I'm sure.
I haven't read the article because Lydia is steering.
She's in control.
Feminism.
Yes.
Anyway, we're gonna get to, I'm sure, the like probably Hunter Biden's penis and the maybe some COVID stuff where you could at least consider that the government in the Biden administration might have been involved in some way.
And fair enough, we can like look at that.
This there's there's no even allegation that this involves the government, this one.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it doesn't.
Twitter, who finally was like, fucking uh, we want to keep you, but we can't.
You violated our policy, right?
Like, I mean, and and it's very clear and very obvious.
And if we don't do this, then uh our stocks gonna start hurting.
Yep.
And there was no and you know how I know it wasn't the Biden administration.
They weren't fucking inaugurated yet.
No, no, they weren't.
Yeah, exactly.
If if the government was pressuring Twitter to cancel Donald Trump, it was Donald Trump's administration.
So that's it.
The only thing I can think of is I don't know this and it's not important, but I could almost imagine that you like maybe law enforcement agencies at that time would be like, uh, can you please?
We don't want to get more people killed in insurrection.
I don't know if that happened, but even still, that wouldn't be censorship.
And tell you what, when law enforcement agencies tell a platform to take down, I don't know, child exploitation material.
Are you gonna cry censorship at that?
Like sometimes there's good safety reasons that the government or at least government agencies, law enforcement agencies would be I think entirely correct to ask a private company to take something down.
Yep, yep, agree.
No one would disagree with that in the case of child exploitation.
All right, you ready to see what we're gonna be talking about after that?
Well, I think I'm undefeated.
I think I'm two and oh on this.
I'm just totally.
I won't take credit for it.
We can we are too.
Let's see what story number three is.
When Megan Kelly was fired by NBC in 2018, after Oh, during the Trump administration.
So it's not already don't even need to go.
Don't even need to continue.
Next.
After Kelly questioned whether blackface Halloween costumes were always racist, the New Yorkers Doreen St. Felix mocked her, writing, but Kelly is shrewd in plenty of other ways.
In the next phase of her career, perhaps she will use her firing to fashion herself into a martyr for the so-called suppression of free speech.
Wow.
Pressure.
Yeah.
That's exactly what she did.
So somebody New Yorker mocked her, but that doesn't that doesn't mean that that person caused the censorship that you're alleging.
No, but I think it's that they're they're excusing it and saying, like, oh, it's not a big deal.
You know, she she'll be just fine.
So from the federalist point of view, if this is the government canceling Megan Kelly or like the her free speech, you know, rights are being taken away or whatever, they're like, instead of being in an uproar, the New Yorker just like made fun of her and said, Oh, she'll be a, you know, that she's a martyr for free speech, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So they use their free speech to say some stuff.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying.
No defenders of free expression, no cries about censorship, just applause.
Yeah.
So now I wanna do I want to do some videos because like this is a kind of a fun one.
We haven't touched on this one before.
Oh, we already knocking that one out.
We done with Megan Kelly, or these are.
No, no, no.
This is about Megan Kelly.
We're gonna spend some time on Megan Kelly, because Megan Kelly, I mean, yeah, she's she has turned herself into a martyr for a suppression of free speech.
So let's let her have her time.
Hey, sorry, everybody.
We're a bit into uh BDSM, and this is Lydia's way.
Yeah.
Punishing me, because I fucking hate this person so much.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah.
So I have two clips that we're gonna do from the Megan Kelly show that she had on NBC.
And this is them talking about, you know, political correctness.
This is them talking about political correctness with regard to Halloween costumes.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Okay, here we go.
Classic WTF.
Hold on, do we agree on a safe word ahead of time?
You don't get one, sorry.
Because truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on black faces or a black person who puts on white face for Halloween.
Like I okay, back when I was a kid, that was okay as long as you were dressing up as like a character.
If somebody feels like something is offensive to them, then you should say it, and that's fair game.
And you should be able to take it.
If you're gonna dress up like that, yeah, you gotta be able to take it.
One of the things they mentioned is people dressing up like Nazis and this.
If you think it's offensive, it probably is.
Yep.
And one of my big complaints just about society right now is whatever happened, and I know how you were raised.
I don't know how you were raised, but that's questionable.
Yeah.
Um whatever happened to just manners and polite society.
All right, we can stop that.
You've got guys running around with no feet.
Megan Kelly's like, yeah, you have guys running around with an axe hanging out of their head, like polite society, what does that mean?
So then she continues, if you want to skip to like 522, we'll hear another comment.
There was a controversy on the Real Housewives of New York with Luann, as she dresses Diana Ross, and she made her skin look darker than it really is.
And people said that that was racist.
And I don't know, I thought like, who doesn't love Diana Ross?
She wants to look like Diana Ross for one day.
I I don't know.
It's not like she's walking around.
I have not seen it, but it's not a good thing.
I haven't seen the other, but if she really wanted to look like Diana Ross, she should have dressed as Michael Jackson.
And I don't get it.
That's a joke trying to Yeah.
Um, so everyone around this table is white, by the way.
Yeah.
Or no one's black anyway.
I guess I don't know exactly everybody's heritage, but this was considered problematic by a whole lot of people.
That was October 23rd.
More you know.
The following day, um, Megan Kelly came on to the show, and she had done it enough.
She had done an apology internally to folks at NBC.
And then um, when she came on the show, she did a public apology.
And so I just sent that to you so we can hear what she has to say there.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the show.
I'm Megan Kelly, and I want to begin with two words.
I'm sorry.
You may have heard that yesterday we had a discussion here about political correctness and Halloween costumes.
And that conversation turned to whether it is ever okay for a person of one race to dress up as another, a black person making their face lighter or a white person making theirs darker to make a costume complete.
I defended the idea, saying as long as it as it was respectful and part of a Halloween costume, it seemed okay.
Well, I was wrong, and I am sorry.
One of the great parts of sitting in this chair each day is getting to discuss different points of view.
Sometimes I talk and sometimes I listen.
And yesterday I learned.
I learned that given the history of blackface being used in awful ways by racists in this country.
It is not okay for that to be part of any costume, Halloween or otherwise.
I have never been a PC kind of person.
But I do understand the value in being sensitive to our history, particularly on race and ethnicity.
This past year has been so painful for many people of color.
The country feels so divided.
And I have no wish to add to that pain and offense.
I believe this is a time for more understanding, more love, more sensitivity, and honor.
And I want to be part of that.
Thank you for listening and for helping me listen, too.
Thank you.
All right.
Wow.
Very moving apology, I thought.
And they went on to do the show, which was a discussion with black journalists Amy Holmes and Roland Martin talking about the controversy surrounding blackface.
And then I saw that same day the Hollywood reporter reported that Megan Kelly had left the her agency, Creative Artist Agency, and had hired an attorney the same day that she did that apology.
That's interesting.
And that attorney is Brian Friedman.
So anyone who listens over at Gabble Gavel knows freaking Brian Friedman.
She did not come back to the show after this.
So that day.
Yes.
She did that public apology, sat down to talk with black folks about the controversy surrounding blackface, and then never came back.
Yeah, which I think would have been, I would think it would have been perceived okay.
I mean, I don't know if I'm remembering this or not, but I would there's something about me that that says people would have criticized, like, I'm sorry, it took until yesterday for you to hear about blackface.
Like I don't really think that's possible.
So I could imagine that being a criticism.
But as far as apologies goes, like, I mean, as far as public apologies for stuff like this goes, the bar is low because people are very bad at it.
That was like one of the better ones.
I I thought it was moving, like it seemed like it was expressed with emotion.
Yeah, she seemed authentic.
I think I think she, I mean, she came across as like pretty emotional about it.
I mean, some of that is like she's upset at having been criticized.
But yeah, or whatever.
But like I would have thought that would I don't know.
If I was had been watching in real time, I'd have been like, yeah, she's probably gonna keep her job, seemed fine.
I don't know, unless there's another incident.
Pretty weird that she got canned that day.
So I don't I don't know exactly what happened there.
Yeah, exactly.
So I don't know.
I've been trying to like figure this out.
Like we don't have time to get into all of that.
Exactly.
Exactly, a hundred percent.
But I do just want to highlight a couple things here.
From what I was piecing together, it sounded like she didn't really want to do this show anymore.
She really wanted to do NBC news correspondence, and she still had time on her contract, but I think they were going to be like trying to negotiate what that would look like.
And this seemed like it could harm those negotiations.
So I guess she decided that she instead would just leave and sue.
And it was effective.
Yeah, what exactly suing for, though?
Because if she wasn't fired, I don't, I guess I don't know exactly.
I I would need to look into like primary documents.
It was settled.
Yeah.
So we don't really know exactly.
I mean, we we should know what the suit was for.
Yeah.
I don't know if it's worth looking up now.
But so it it says that the the show was canceled, but her contract goes through 2020.
She left.
The Megan Kelly show.
Oh, is that called the Megan Kelly show?
I think uh Megan Kelly today.
Oh.
I think I thought that was a different show.
Maybe that's my problem with it.
Uh yeah, could be.
But I think what's interesting is like I don't know like exactly how the lawsuit began, but I do know the way that it settled and the how it got through there a little bit.
She ended up getting her entire contract.
Brian Friedman was able to get her 69 million her full 69 million dollar payout, even though she was no longer going to be on the show for the next two years.
Um, or I guess a year and a half or so.
That's a pretty big win, I would say.
Yeah, yeah.
But now listen to some of these paragraphs from a piece talking about the negotiations and the settlement talks and what was going on there.
In an unusual move, Kelly's lawyer, Brian Friedman is talking about it publicly.
Okay, first of all, hilarious.
Yeah, not unusual anymore.
I don't even think it was unusual then.
And he says Andy Lack, who's over NBC, needs to stop Freedman said Tuesday, accusing the NBC news chair of leaking information about the negotiations.
Uh-huh.
Despite my efforts to handle this process confidentially, NBC News is allowing the media to run with completely false and irresponsible reports that disparage Megan by erroneously claiming she has ever asked for more money than her contract requires.
If NBC News is not the source, then they have a responsibility as a news division to correct these false claims.
Or are they somehow attempting to use these fabrications for some fictitious advantage in the discussions we're having?
If Andy Lack has lost control, my hope would be that Steve Burke, who is uh NBC Universal CEO, can step in and not permit blatant lies about our discussions to remain uncorrected.
It's a weird specific thing.
Yeah.
NBC responded.
They said, Wow, unlike Mr. Friedman, it says a few minutes a few minutes later, unlike Mr. Friedman, who has repeatedly commented to the media throughout the negotiations.
We respect the confidentiality of the process and we'll have no comment until it reaches its conclusion.
Wait, and what is that the settlement process or the con okay?
Settlement process.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It it's just so funny to me because it's like it's the same tactics we see lively Baldoni.
Sorry, there's a little inside, but if you've listened to Gavel Gavel, this is very relevant.
But if you haven't, sorry.
But Friedman is a fucking dirt bag who does this exact thing every time.
He's like the most take the law dispute to the media guy in the world.
So it's just pretty rich to be like NBC's leaking, you know.
It's like I know.
Which is more likely.
Them doing that, the bajillion dollar company, you know, who's negotiating this like one thing, or you whose whole shtick is this.
Yeah.
And so knowing how Megan Kelly responded the day after and then went and sued NBC and um, you know, just fought for her contract amount and also to not have to sign an NDA.
I think I wanted to play this clip of where she talks about this about a year ago.
Sure.
Okay, yes.
But where's the cancellation?
Yeah, I know.
Because like she she did an apology.
It seems like some people would have accepted it.
I'm sure some people wouldn't.
I think there's good reasons to not be super in love with it, but also it wasn't like terrible.
I think if I was grading on a curve of media apologies, I'd be like, yeah, okay, fucking whatever, fine.
But it sounds like she left.
Yeah.
What where's the cancellation?
What did what did I do?
What did fucking uh Matt Iglacius do?
Yeah.
What did it so it's so interesting?
Like I would love to know more details.
And maybe there is something out there and I just didn't find it in my research.
But like if she just wanted to leave, she still went on the air that day to do the public apology and and do a show and then didn't come back after that.
If she just wanted to leave, she could have said, I'm not doing a public apology.
No, so I think I'm not gonna say that she was genuinely contrite, but I think she had enough blowback that I think she would have wanted to be able to apologize on that platform.
Because like she to repair her.
And then not to stay with that platform necessarily.
We we know her now is full fucking ghoul mega right wing conspiracy theorist on her fucking YouTube channel.
She's just truly scary now.
Like She's a scary person.
Back then, I think she probably at the very least, if not genuinely feeling contrite, at the very least, probably recognized like ah I fucked up and need to fix this.
And being able to fix it on the that big platform would have made sense, you know.
Yeah.
So that's how I would imagine it went.
All right, let's see what she has to say about this more recently.
I'm just telling anyone here again.
You said it was a year after.
Uh no, this is just a year ago.
She's still talking about it.
So maybe uh Doreen St. Felix had had a point.
And uh who the fuck was that?
The New Yorker where she said she's gonna turn herself into a martyr.
Totally for the so-called suppression of free speech.
Here we go.
Let's see.
I was on every newspaper and every television program in the country as a racist.
That is what they did to me as a result of my one comment, truly.
And then they drudged up old media matters nonsense about like me calling these guys in a gang thugs.
See, that's racist and try to do that.
Using the N word, blah blah blah.
And thank God they didn't keep me out.
But yeah, that look, I wasn't the only one.
They've done it to so many people and smeared them, people who haven't been able to come back, who maybe were didn't have as you know great a foothold in their career as I did when they tried to take me down, who really struggle to get back out there.
And so fuck these people.
I mean, that's really where I went.
Like they can just fuck off.
Like they're terrible people, and you can see it.
I was on every newspaper.
Celebrities.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if you bothered to look into this.
Was she on every paper as a racist?
No.
I mean, people probably would have covered the comments.
Exactly, because that's what the news is.
Newspapers do not fucking ever call anyone racist.
Like ever they there's a whole journalism thing where they have to say like racially uh tense or racial.
Yeah, possibly racially insensitive.
That lynching was maybe a little racially questionable.
Thugs was one of one of the things that was brought up, but also her comments about like Santa's obviously white, Jesus is white, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
So just kind of like these little things over time.
And then the blackface people were like, okay, enough.
We've got the picture.
And then this I just think is is so funny.
So after she was, quote, canceled from NBC, Ben Shapiro commented on this and compared it to compared Megan Kelly.
Martin Luther King Jimmy Kimmel.
Jim McClellan.
Oh, oh, okay, gotcha.
Yeah.
So I was in the wrong.
I thought we were still in the past.
No, we're in like a like this is a whole parfait sort of thing.
We're dealing with all these layers.
Yeah.
So there's no comparison there.
Why would why would it, what is why would you like to do it?
Well, so that this is back in 2018.
So what he's calling out is Megan Kelly's comment about blackface.
Versus saying you said, oh, about Jimmy Kimmel.
So I assumed you were saying you're saying that now about Jimmy Kimmel's cancellation.
No, so now I'm re-correct in that I was interpreting that as at the time.
He said it was like Jimmy Kimmel, but what?
This is so confusing.
He's saying if you're mad about Megan Kelly, where's the outrage about Jimmy Kimmel?
Because of some things.
Because of blackface he did.
Yeah, and also Well, I mean, there's a lot of comedians who did blackface things as a bit pretty recently because it it wasn't societally quite looked at as disqualifying yet.
And then there's an awkward time where I think we got there, which is good that's looked at as disqualifying.
Yep.
But it's like shockingly recently.
So there's gonna be examples of people doing it.
It was always wrong and they shouldn't have done it.
I'm not saying they should that it was okay that they did it, but it is a little bit slightly different when they did it with the knowledge that it was a like a joke, like some of it is actually a joke, and they're like the joke is that it's racist, like in a way where they're trying to communicate the racist.
Like entropic thunder.
Yeah, that's one that's a tough one.
I don't really, I guess I'm not entirely sure about the intent of that one.
I'm not like super familiar with it.
But I think there's distinctions you can make between like there are blackface skits or jokes people did where the punchline is against racism, like it's actually against racism.
There might be others where it's like they were caught doing blackface and it's actually mocking black people, which is fucking horrible.
Like even there's no one within our lifetime who shouldn't have known that that was bad.
But then there's also a sense where it's like maybe someone did it for a little bit for a show.
Like there's a lot of those where it's like someone did oh they dressed as a black person as a punchline within like a SNL or within a skit show or something.
There's little ones like that where it's like, I'm gonna go ahead and say if they should apologize.
This is my opinion, by the way.
Everyone can decide for themselves, as Always like it.
But in my opinion, as just a white guy, I would think that if they apologized, it would be different because they're acknowledging like that was done in the media environment it was back at the time, and like that was wrong and they shouldn't have done it.
But like it was a bit of a different paradigm, just in terms of like editorially what you thought was okay to put in your clip show or whatever.
So I feel like there's some nuance there, but I'm no nuance around blackface being wrong.
That's wrong.
But like nuance around like the timing of when these people who we actually there's a lot of beloved celebrities who did blackface 15 years ago, yeah, or something, where it was like it wasn't quite at the level of disqualification that we eventually got to now.
So just to kind of let you know, like what we're gonna be setting up here is Megan Kelly's blackface comment in 2018 comparing it to Jimmy Kimmel's skit, including actual blackface, which is pretty bad from the early 2000s on Comedy Central.
And let's point out the media's hypocrisy when it comes to these sorts of issues.
When it comes to these sorts of issues, every democratic male is considered a non-sexist in reality.
What?
When it comes to when it comes to the media, sorry, what the fuck I don't know.
When it comes to hold on, I gotta I I just want to parse that.
What are you saying, dude?
What was your little rat voice saying I can't even see when it comes to these sorts of issues?
Yeah, when it comes to these sorts of issues, every democratic male is considered a non-sexist in reality.
No.
When it comes to not true, when it comes to the media, Meghan Kelly happens to be a person right of center.
Hey, Jimmy Kimmel is a person left of center.
Has anyone brought up the fact that if we're gonna talk about blackface, Jimmy Kimmel in 2000 did an actual blackface routine on national television on Comedy Central?
This is Jimmy Kimmel in in Blackface, not only mocking black people, he's mocking Carl Malone specifically, mocking Carl Malone for not being able to speak English properly.
Oof.
This is a lot closer to insulting black people than Megan Kelly saying, I don't mind if someone dresses up and darkens their skin as Diana Ross to honor Diana Ross.
Hey, Jimmy Kimmel somehow is a show on ABC, no problem.
Here's Jimmy Kimmel, circa 2000.
Oof.
Let's play it because I don't know if I'm gonna comment.
I don't I remember vaguely this, but that wow.
It's not great.
It's one of those things I haven't thought of since the time.
So it's like content note.
This is probably racist as fuck, but I kind of want to know what we're talking about.
Circa 2000.
Sometime at night, call a little look up in sky and say, what the hell going on up there?
The UFO live on other planet, phone and home like E.T. Calm alone read on TV about white people getting deducted by aliens, sticking all kind of hell up they butt.
And that's a damn thing.
Listen up, E.T., you better stay the hell back.
Um is that a problem?
Yeah, apparently that wasn't a problem for Jimmy Kimmel, but it's a serious problem for Megan Kelly to suggest that dressing up as a black person to honor a black person uh is not that bad.
She actually has to lose her job over it.
Right?
They they're gonna pay her out, but she has to lose her job over it.
Again, the polarizing environment predated President Trump, it will it will go far beyond President Trump because that so again, did she lose her job?
What actually what actually happened?
Okay.
I mean, what actually happened with why can't it doesn't seem like you have a solid answer, and I'm kind of I don't get it.
It's complicated.
So we're trying to just because it becomes relevant, we're trying to take a second to figure out what really happened.
It's just unknown what happened.
I guess I will say I don't fault Ben Shapiro in that moment for thinking that she got canceled by NBC to be honest, because it is confusing.
But the reporting seems to be, as you've already said, that she was gonna end it anyway.
It wasn't working.
She had already been talking about ending the show and focusing on a different part of NBC, like going to a more of a correspondent thing.
And so it sounds like it's a culmination of that.
But then we're not sure why she she eventually had to end her employment that to negotiate like maybe they didn't want her anymore.
And so you could argue that I mean, I guess that's a fair argument if you're like, well, she was under contract, she made these comments, and maybe they were gonna cancel the show anyway.
And and Megan Kelly actually wanted to stop doing that show anyway.
And so they're like, well, might as well stop that.
And then she probably wanted to do something else, like be a correspondent or do whatever, and they were like, eh.
Not willing to do that.
Maybe.
Yeah, this is all me speculating, but you could certainly look at that as that network canceling her over this, but it also looks like there was other stuff because she had people around NBC were not fans of her.
Like she apparently kind of was uh allegedly pretty shitty to people.
And she also talked shit on the network a lot, and she criticized How they handled like the Weinstein reporting when it came to like the Southern I don't know.
So like it sounds like she just did not make friends at the network and enough was enough combined with this.
They're like, we will make a business decision.
And by the way, if they're gonna make a business decision that they would rather just pay someone 69 million dollars and not get any labor from them.
Mm-hmm.
Then like at a certain point, you gotta be like, well, it sounds like they are making a business decision.
There's no way that was them just making this decision on like the bottom line alone because of the cancellation.
Like because she made the apology, it seemed like it was pretty well received.
It sounds like there's just a culmination of reasons, and they were just like, look, fuck this.
It's not worth it, you know?
It's not worth having you working here, and that's their right to do so.
But I I guess I will retract and say I I it is a confusing situation.
So I understand why Ben Shapiro would have looked it that way.
And I guess you can look at it as them no longer wanting her to work there, I suppose, but it's just it is I see what you mean.
That's like there's not really great info on that.
Yeah.
Either way.
Yeah, it's it's tricky to to track down exactly.
And you know, and and again, to the the basic fundamental here though, the government did not intervene and say NBC get rid of Megan Keller.
Of course, yeah.
Right.
They had no role at all in that.
Now, I I do want to call it Jimmy Kimmel a little bit because he did not apologize for this for a very long time.
And that's pretty shitty.
Okay, clarify it.
Does that mean like he didn't make comments about it, or were there times where he would still defend it, you know, because those are kind of two different things.
No, I don't think he defended it.
I think he he just wasn't addressing it.
Yeah, like kind of make it go away sort of thing.
Yeah, and which is not great, but I'm just saying it's different.
It's slightly better than if you had been like, no, fuck off.
It was funny, you know, forever.
Yeah, so it was June 2020 is when he finally apologized for this.
Oh, okay.
Um, which is not not great.
I mean, Ben Shapiro's explicitly calling him out here in 2018.
Yeah, that's pretty bad.
I mean, that that's that's you know, he's a little disappointing.
It is, but it's also like he was on the man show.
He was like, I don't know what his apology was.
I don't know if we're gonna go over it, but he was a different guy, you know, and so there's a there's a an extent to which, and and maybe again, this is me as someone who grew up in a Fox News household and and came a complete 360, no, just kidding, complete 180 away from that.
Like, I have some sympathy for like he just wasn't the same person, like he was he was kind of a kind of shitty dude back then.
And like, I don't know what his apology was, but I also wouldn't blame people who are like, holy shit, that was fucking racist.
I don't like him.
You know, I wouldn't blame people at all.
It's gonna be kind of, you know, and so like I I don't know what the hypocrisy is that you think you're calling out.
For one, that was in 2000, and again, not saying blackface was like ever okay, but Megan Kelly pretending she didn't know what blackface was in 2018, yeah, versus in a completely different like fucking era of the country in 20 or in 2000 doing this skit, like those are different things.
Yeah, very, very different.
But Kimmel one is still terrible and probably still, I mean, I guess worse because he actually did the blackface, then it's hard to compare than Megan Kelly defending it in 2018, like way after she should have known better.
But like, I don't know.
I feel like you should have known better by 2018.
And I don't know, all in all, if anyone out there, especially people of color want to be like, no, fuck Jimmy Kimmel forever for this.
I that's I'm not gonna criticize him for that.
Like you do you, like that's valid.
Totally valid.
I think it would be a question of does his employer, whoever it is, find that there's more people who want him than don't, and they're gonna make the business decision there.
Yeah, Disney and everyone else can use their free speech to say whether they think he should be on the air or not.
That's always how it was.
This always was allowed.
We always can do that.
It's fundamentally different than the government canceling you.
Yep.
Agreed.
End of part one.
All right.
Well, we really thought that we were gonna get all that done in one episode, but we're exactly halfway through the article and we're at more than one episode.
So we'll uh we'll come back and do the the last.
Maybe she saved her good stuff, this author for the final three for the back nine, you know.
She did we'll see.
Maybe she has some good examples of times where Obama's FCC chairman killed a bunch of people.
We'll see, you know.
Find out, we'll find out.
Stay tuned.
Uh baited breath.
I don't know.
Thanks for listening, everyone.
And uh really excited to uh tackle the next one.
Patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Get that Sydney Sweeney's boobs bonus and uh other stuff.
