A distant friend of mine, whom I’ve quoted here before, put up an Instagram post (which unfortunately disappeared when I went to go fetch it) that stated “the left’s” (I’m assuming they meant all of us) attitude towards the speaker who was gunned down is best summed up in the tune from the musical “Chicago” entitled “He Had It Coming,” while at the same time we screamed about Jimmy Kimmel being temporarily suspended from ABC—which, I’ll note, is the broadcast company that needed merger approval from recently appointed FCC chairman Brendan Carr, the author of a chapter in Project 2025 on dealing with media, which includes a section on “investigating broadcast licenses and potentially weaponizing the FCC against broadcasters for perceived anti-conservative bias.” (Their exact wording, not mine).
My friend made a grand assumption here, based upon the faulty premise that everybody on the left feels this way. As much as they felt they could speak for those on “the right,” let me assume to speak for some of us on the left. We do not feel that anybody deserves to be gunned down in cold blood, in front of hundreds of people and their family. We didn’t cheer the assassinations of Kennedy, King or Malcolm X, nor the attempts on the lives of either Ronald Reagan nor our current president. We wept when John Lennon was senselessly murdered and still wonder aghast at the more than 2,000 school children whom have been the victims of gun violence between 1970 and 2022. That number never seems to go down, nor reverse itself.
But it does seem odd that a party so horrified by gun violence has done nothing to stop it. The blame falls on both sides here. Why do our representatives on both sides refuse to pass meaningful and sensible gun legislation to stem the flow of innocent blood in our country? Fifty-six percent of Americans want that, and yet nothing has happened, despite the epidemic of shootings in America.
In the same way, anybody who has read the Bible or seen a Western-based movie or read an Elmore Leonard or a Stephen King novel or listened to “With A Gun” by Steely Dan knows that no good comes from constantly calling down evil upon others. Quotes from the rally (I’m sorry…that wasn’t a memorial service, or it quickly devolved from one the minute the Deputy Chief of Staff began a Gish Gallop litany of insults aimed at his perceived “enemies of the government”) time and again seemed to dwell on hatred for “the other side.” Constantly vilifying an entire group of people based on what you assume to be a body of general beliefs is wrong.
And then I thought, have “we” done that? Well, yes, we have. Neil Young left Spotify because they carried broadcasts by Joe Rogan (who recently claimed actions by the current President, whom he supports, are “[expletive] nuts”). Alex Jones was banned from social platforms for stating that the young people murdered at Parkland were “crisis actors” (whatever that is). David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shootings, went after Jones recently when Jones complained that folks were celebrating the recent shooting. Hogg said his classmates had received death threats based on Jones’ assertions and told him exactly what he could do in his spare time.
“We” have also tried to ban J.K. Rowling who has been accused of transphobic remarks, and Dave Chappelle because…well, just for being Dave, a comedian doing his job. So, really, nobody has the high ground here. But, again, it’s interesting how “the right,” who railed against “cancel culture,” are now practicing the same methods towards people who are critical of them.
Take the recent firing of Stephen Colbert and the temporary suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. Both comedians/satirists, both doing their jobs. But, apparently, their parent companies, each seeking a lucrative merger that needed FCC approval, caved in to pressure from the current administration to let these two gentlemen go, with the president ominously warning “Seth and Jimmy are next.” I guess he figures he’s the King Of Late Night television now, a title that will fail to have any meaning if you remove all of the late night hosts.
I’d like to circle back now to the previous quote from Project 2025 that states that the government will investigate broadcast licenses and potentially weaponize the FCC against broadcasters for perceived anti-conservative bias.
And here, the lexophile in me says…”Whoa!” What exactly is meant by “perceived anti-conservative bias”? That seems a highly subjective and non-rubric based way of deciding whom you keep on the air and whom you let go. Not even stated bias, not even recorded bias, just “perceived.” Perceived by whom and under what situations and conditions? Many actions may be perceived as threats if the person supposedly being threatened thinks that everybody is out to get them. And, seriously, if you’re the chairman of the FCC, working under the protection of the president, whom are you threatened by? Some late night talk show hosts making a few jokes at your expense? Johnny Carson, Steve Allen and David Letterman did that for years. President Johnson accepted it as part of the job. But this administration is “threatened” by a joke?
Seems a little snowflakey to me.
My friend made a faulty analogy between a controversial speaker and a television talk show host. The stakes were not the same. One temporarily lost his job. The other lost his life. And that should be duly noted and grieved, but why more so than the thousands of people we’ve lost to gun violence in this country? The problem isn’t with who is and who is not grieving this heinous action. The problem is not which side of the aisle the shooter was on. The problem is guns. The problem is violence. And, until we address those situations and issues related to both, I’m afraid that aforementioned list will only get longer and more heartbreaking every year.
Pray G-d we find answer. And soon.
Hold those magnificent grey heads high. Peace.
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