What Happened to Charlie Kirk Was Tragic, but the Real Victims in This National Crisis Are the Media

Ten years ago, two Islamic extremists stormed into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper "Charlie Hebdo." The lunatics attacked and killed journalists over a satirical depiction of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, which is considered blasphemous. In the wake of that, journalists in France and around the world began using the phrase "Je suis Charlie," a phrase meaning "I am Charlie" or "We are Charlie." It was a statement of solidarity with those slain by a senseless act of violence—violence meant to intimidate journalists into silence.

Fast forward ten years, and people in the media are uttering their solidarity with Jimmy Kimmel after his late-night show, "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" was pulled by ABC indefinitely. New York Magazine's "Intelligencer" outright says "Je suis Jimmy" in a piece out on Saturday. The subhead reads "In media, even at the highest of perches, there’s a new sense of vulnerability." The media are, after all, the real victims here.

There was no act of violence that happened to Kimmel. There was no intimidation against him. There was no death threat meant to make him shut up. What we know, a few days out, confirms what most of us suspected was coming the moment Kimmel made his abhorrent comments about the real act of violence, the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

During his Monday night program, Kimmel made the following comments about Kirk: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it."

The full context does not make it any better. He went on to play a clip of Trump answering a question about how he's handling Kirk's death before moving on to talk about construction happening at the White House.

“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend," Kimmel said after playing the clip. "This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish. Okay?”

The media has rushed to defend Kimmel, with several outlets saying "No, Jimmy Kimmel did not say what you think he said." What we think he said was that Tyler Robinson, the man accused of shooting and killing Charlie Kirk, was a MAGA conservative. We think this based on Kimmel's own words, where he accused the "MAGA gang" of "trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them."

Sure, you can say "He didn't say Tyler Robinson was MAGA," but how else would you interpret that specific phrasing? Clearly, everyone else thought that's what he was doing, because ABC and Disney immediately recognized it was a problem. They approached him the next day to see how he would handle the controversy, and we now have multiple reports indicating he was preparing to double and triple down and essentially push back against the conservative backlash.

As CNN reported, "According to one of the individuals familiar with the situation, Kimmel’s planned Wednesday monologue as 'very hot,' taking aim at the MAGA base." Disney and ABC were then hit with complaints from advertisers and affiliates. Whether or not FCC Chairman Brendan Carr had said anything, and it looked like the outcome was always going to be a suspension while Disney attempted to work its way through this crisis.

Now, outlets like New York Magazine, The Atlantic, the New York Times, and more may not understand what really happened because they don't have to worry about things like affiliates, but in television, these smaller local markets tend to be more conservative, and what Kimmel did was attack them while trashing both the president they voted for (Trump) and the man who represented their values (Kirk) while claiming the man who killed Kirk was "one of them."

When the distribution of your content, which is part of how that content's value is determined, threatens to shrink considerably, you make changes. That's what ABC and Disney did. Keep in mind that Kimmel is not a journalist. He is a comedian with a late-night show—a television genre that used to value across-the-board appeal and humor rather than derisive preachiness—and has been struggling to recapture the magic that made late-night so valuable for decades.

But these national outlets have declared "Je suis Jimmy," that they will show solidarity with a man who was verifiably wrong in a major factual assertion he made, isn't actually a journalist, and is suffering from declining ratings as he maintains his holier-than-thou progressive attitude toward conservatives.

...actually, in that case, they really are Jimmy, aren't they?

They have decided that Charlie Kirk's death was a tragedy, sure, but Jimmy Kimmel getting taken off the air is actually the real national crisis. Carr didn't need to say anything, but he did, and the left has latched onto that rather than the fact that Kimmel made a comment that was both factually incorrect and intentionally inflammatory. They see the fact that the FCC Chairman said anything as a sign that America truly is a fascist state and that they are all under threat.

Keep in mind, a judge just ruled that Trump's $15 billion lawsuit doesn't fly and Trump is term-limited, that there are free and fair elections coming up next year that Democrats can use to take power back in the legislative branch to stop Trump's agenda. Also, keep in mind that these news outlets are able to call Trump a fascist tyrant and authoritarian b-hole without the Feds kicking in their doors and arresting them.

I'd wager they aren't really victims of anything but their own hubris and vanity.