The futility of right-wing cancel culture

You won’t get a much clearer free speech issue than a president demanding that a TV network fire a comedian. “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” President Trump posted. “It better be soon,” he warned afterwards.

Trump isn’t just coming for Kimmel — he’s coming for his bosses. Trump has previously said that networks that give him “bad publicity” should have their licenses removed. It may or may not be coincidental, now, that the US Federal Communications Commission is ordering a review of Disney’s broadcast licences.

But wait! Everyone believes in some limits to free speech. Did Kimmel say something truly and inarguably heinous?

Well, no. The longtime host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! joked at an event that Melania Trump had the glow of an “expectant widow”. Mean? Sure. Unfortunate timing, two days before an attempt on the life of President Trump? Perhaps. But Kimmel can’t see into the future. The joke was very obviously not a “call to violence”, as Trump has claimed. It was very clearly about a younger wife often seeming cold towards her wealthy husband. 

If that seems too harsh for you then, well, we can have a debate about the limits of comedy. But by comedic standards it isn’t very harsh — and it certainly isn’t harsh by the standards of a man, President Trump, who repeatedly makes light of the deaths of his opponents. That is far more offensive than anything Kimmel said — and it doesn’t even come in the form of jokes!

Still, I can sense some right-wing readers grinding their teeth and cracking their knuckles now. They don’t really think that Kimmel’s jokes crossed the line. They just think that karma is a bitch. They have seen left-wingers “cancel” people for spurious reasons and now they think that it is our turn, Baby. Stop trying to ruin the fun, Sixsmith!

Well, I’m naive enough to think that beyond marginal cases like a gunman demanding the location of a fleeing child, it is always wrong to be dishonest. I also believe that being shrill and censorious is inherently degrading. 

But there is some substance to the argument that if your foe is making use of a weapon, it is self-defeating not to do the same. A chivalrous swordsman taking on a sniper might be honourable but he would also be dead.

Here is the thing, though — Trump’s form of “right-wing cancel culture” is not just wrong, it is ineffective. Left-wing political correctness is not just about banning the word “retarded” — it is about making it taboo to question egalitarian premises. At the height of wokeness, and to some extent today, as I wrote elsewhere:

You risked being fired, if not assaulted, if not arrested for saying that there were differences between men and women, or between ethnic groups, or between religions, or between women and trans women et cetera. 

If we cannot challenge the idea of people being inherently equal, it is difficult to be right-wing at all. If left-wingers could not make edgy jokes about the hypothetical death of President Trump, meanwhile, they would be … just fine. Are we meant to believe that if ABC fires Jimmy Kimmel, the pillars of leftism will fall? No — President Trump will just look like a somewhat bigger jerk than he already does.

Trying to get people censured or fired on limp or spurious grounds is wrong, and hypocritical, and just downright degrading

Frankly, it’s infuriating for Trump and his supporters to make artistically and spiritually deflated late night TV hosts look edgy. Jimmy Kimmel, whose entire career seems like an elaborate apology for having co-hosted The Man Show, should not be able to have a transgressive reputation.

But I can’t deny that he has one. When your jokes inspire a president to speculate that a TV network should be denied a broadcasting license, that’s transgressive. Trump, who built his political career on being outrageous, has blessed Kimmel with that status. One of the most tired comedians in the most tired form of comedy has become provocative again. That is a kind of perverse accomplishment for Trump. But the rest of us should not follow his lead. Trying to get people censured or fired on limp or spurious grounds is wrong, and hypocritical, and just downright degrading.