Last week (the days prior to this being written), Jimmy Kimmel’s show was taken off the air. This is noteworthy because it was a transparent attempt by the owners of the ABC network to appease the current US government, and Trump in particular who has long held a grudge against the late-night host. Kimmel made some innocuous comments about the death of Charlie Kirk, nothing that could be, by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as making light of the far-right provocateur/gun-rights activist ‘s death. Despite that, adding to the growing unreality of an already difficult-to-believe week, the administration claimed that this was just one more “liberal” celebrating Kirk’s death and threaten to revoke ABC’s broacasting license if the network didn’t do something about Kimmel. ABC buckled as expected since it is clear that no corporation is going to stand up to Trump, and immediately the public began to mobilize. Calls for a boycott sprang up from several different corners of the internet and various celebrities also began to cry fowl. After all, this is a blatantly unconstitutional act and as clear-cut a violation of our First Amendment rights as any other thing that’s happened in the last two years since Biden’s government began cracking down on protests against the genocide in Palestine. What made it different is that this was something that couldn’t be written off. There was no way to describe this as being anti-semetic somehow, no way for people to open up a harmful “we should debate the rights/existence of this minority” discussion, no way for ANY kind of spin since Kimmel’s remarks were public record and the Trump administration has repeatedly proven that they will lash out at anyone who pisses them off for no reason at all.