A New Definition of Freedom of Speech: An Unsackable Late Night Host

As someone who studies politics, I am always interested to consider a new hypothesis. And now we have one. All over the world, everyone is arguing about the meaning of freedom of speech, but, yes, we need a crisis to clarify our thinking, and it seems as if a lot of thinking has been clarified by the most recent crisis. The most recent crisis is not UK recognising a Palestinian state, Israel’s campaign in Gaza, Russian incursions into NATO airspace: the most recent crisis is the embarrassing sacking and unsacking of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC/Disney.

Who is Jimmy Kimmel?

A television presenter. Specifically, of a late night television show. In the USA. Now as an Unamerican I do not really understand late night television. But it seems to be traditional on every channel to have a whimsical figure doing a bit of stand-up daily-diary comedy in front of a whooping crowd, in the form of a monologue in which standard liberal opinions are presupposed, so that satire is always satire against what is not in accordance with those opinions. Some of the shows are only monologues: others, the big ones, are magazines. But in both we have the presenter looking left and right, appealing to the audience in the room, to reassure the sad progressives at home that the world is filled with hundreds of other progressives, whooping ones. In the bigger shows, we have also a softball set of interviews with celebrities who have something to sell: a film, a book, a television programme. Smiles. Perching bare legs from actresses, Slumping cat-got-cream or cat-recovering-from-cream from actors. A music band. A million dollar salary. Twenty staff writers. Let me make a list:

• Jimmy Kimmel (b. 1967), Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC (since 2003)
• Stephen Colbert (b. 1964), The Late Show on CBS (since 2015)
• Jimmy Fallon (b. 1974), The Tonight Show on NBC (since 2014)
• Seth Meyers (b. 1973), Late Night on NBC (since 2014)
• John Oliver (b. 1977), Last Week Tonight for HBO (since 2014)

There are others: The Daily Show on Comedy Central, which was presented by Jon Stewart (b. 1962) for a long time, then Trevor Noah (b. 1984), then Jon Stewart and others again. In fact, Oliver and Colbert worked on The Daily Show, while Meyers and Fallon were of Saturday Night Live vintage, also of NBC. There is also:

• Greg Gutfeld (b. 1964), Gutfeld! for Fox (since 2015)

But he doesn’t count, as he is not a liberal, progressive, socialist, what you will.

Let’s look at their politics, not Gutfeld’s. Noah is progressive, Stewart is progressive. Meyers is progressive. Fallon is progressive. Kimmel is progressive. Colbert is progressive. They are all the shiny surface of the Anti-MAGA fraction of the Old Deep State in the United States of America.

Notice how they all started around the same time, except Kimmel. We could call the decade 2015 to 2025 the era of the Late Night Consensus. Colbert is going to be booted out, though if he can jump on the Kimmel bandwagon he might well be booted back in again. You see, the difference is that Colbert was booted out, officially, for financial reasons, though controversy may have come into it, whereas Kimmel was booted out for controversial reasons, even though finance probably also came into it. But everything in America is what it says on the tin. Thus, Colbert, strategically, should now save his job by posing as yet another emblem and example of free speech. For that has worked very well for Kimmel.

Kimmel is a rich and extremely successful man. He started a decade earlier than all his contemporaries, and, in longevity, is second only to Johnny Carson, who presented The Tonight Show for 30 years. He is said to be worth $75 million. They do very well, these fellows, don’t they? It is estimated that Jay Leno, who used to present The Tonight Show, is worth around $450 million, while his equal and opposite, I mean, equal and similar, David Letterman, who used to present The Late Show, is worth around $400 million. Kimmel, Fallon, Conan O’Brien, Bill Maher etc. etc., are all doing very well: it looks as if Seth Meyers is the poorest, but he is still a rich man.

Back to freedom of speech. None of these freespeakers likes Trump. To a man they all came out to speak out against Kimmel’s sacking. Listen to this, from a few days ago:

• Stephen Colbert went for a straight comment: “People across the country are shocked by this blatant assault on the freedom of speech.”
• Jon Stewart went for satire and pretended to be a “politically-obedient host”, complete with red tie and nervous hands.
• Seth Meyers tried something in between: “[Trump’s] administration is pursuing a crackdown on free speech… completely unrelated, I just want to say before we get started here that I’ve always admired and respected Mr Trump.”
• Jimmy Fallon went for the bedhead approach: “I don’t know what is going on. And no one does.”
• David Letterman was a bit more austere: “It’s managed media. And it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office.”
• John Oliver went for metaphoric heights: “Kimmel is by no means the first casualty in Trump’s attacks on free speech, he’s just the latest canary in the coalmine, a mine that at this point now seems more dead canary than coal.”

Not too bad, I suppose. But two out of the five explicitly said, and the other doubtless wanted to imply, that the sacking of Kimmel was 1) arranged by the Government and 2) indicated an assault on freedom of speech. Oliver’s show was quite interesting, in that he alleged that whole thing was a corporate-regulatory-political conspiracy. Fair enough: but that’s American politics, isn’t it? Do not tell me that Democrats have not been politically motivated when sanctioning this or that merger, appointment, contract. Have the progressives never played backhanded tennis? I am sure someone else could make a list of the conservatives edged out of this or that post, or never considered for ‘em, over the past 20 years.

I suppose that these late night shows, with their charming mockery, are a good thing in principle. You know: Lear, Fool, etc. But, let’s face it, these fools are all on the monoglot Left. They only speak one language, that of rightonitude and Leftattitude. Oliver quoted Trump as commenting that the shows are 97% against him. But Oliver then went on to liken Trump to Orban and Putin in order to say, “It starts like this…” where this = Trump, and, by implication, “It ends in that” where that = Orban or Putin, i.e., tyranny. Possibly. But let’s have a sense of proportion. If we have a sense of proportion, then we might say that there is good reason to suppose that the current media environment is heavily, sweatily, drunkenly Left and liberal and that there should be no surprise when those who are broadly conservative or Right complain about it and even, God forbid, act politically, by fair means or foul, to rectify matters. 97%, Oliver? Let’s not exaggerate and say it might be 90%. Still. Why are the television corporations except Murdoch’s so locked into Leftism?

Anyhow, let’s listen to some more of the aggrieved voices that came out in support of Kimmel:

• Anjelina Jolie: “Anything anywhere that divides or limits personal expressions and freedoms from anyone, I think, is very dangerous.”
• Mark Ruffalo: “It is the US Government that is now suppressing the freedom of speech. It is the US government, not your neighbours, not someone on social media. It is the government doing it now. … Think of yourselves living under the Taliban, because that’s where we’re headed.”
• Barack Obama: “This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent.”
• Wanda Sykes: “[Trump] didn’t end the Ukraine War or solve Gaza within his first week. But he did end freedom of speech within his first year.”
• Pedro Pascal: “Defend #FreeSpeech Defend #DEMOCRACY.”

Thanks, rich and famous.

In fact, this was not enough. Next, the entire Hollywood establishment came through with a letter to say that Kimmel’s removal was against Free Speech. Yes, their argument was mine. It was that freedom of speech = unsackable hosts. Who signed this astounding argument? Why, only Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Jason Bateman, Jane Fonda, Selena Gomez, Olivia Rodrigo, Natalie Portman, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Ben Stiller, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Keaton, Regina King, Diego Luna, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Claire Danes, Cyndi Lauper, Molly Ringwald, Sheryl Crow, Sharon Stone, Jason Alexander (no relation), Kirsten Dunst and Al Yankovic, and many others. They said:

We share the belief that our voices should never be silenced by those in power – because if it happens to one of us, it happens to all of us.

Whose voices? Ah, the voices of rich and famous people who are also of a particular political stripe. I see. Who are, as far as we can see, in no danger of being cancelled or exiled or prohibited – unlike, for a start, say, all the Covid and climate contrarians…

Anyhow, we have to set aside justice in this situation, and just focus on what happened. A man lost his job, and then he won it back again. Kimmel was a tennis ball, pinged about by ABC, Nexstar, Sinclair, consumers threatening to cancel subscriptions and corporations threatening to do this or that. Perhaps things will not be smooth for Kimmel, since at least some of the television stations do not want to take Jimmy Kimmel Live! But the good news is not only that we have had a great new definition of freedom of speech – the unsackability of late night hosts – but that this new definition was immediately vindicated. Theory became practice. I drafted a first version of this piece when “the unsackability of late night hosts” was just a theory, since at the time Kimmel was still sacked. Well! The theory was proved more briskly than Eddington proved Einstein’s theory of relativity. Kimmel was unsacked. And then I had to rewrite this piece.

So the story in full. ABC tried to sack Kimmel; the rich and famous screamed about freedom of speech; perhaps a few people did cancel a subscription to Disney+, who knows; and Kimmel was rehired. He is the first martyr for free speech who was resurrected almost immediately, though, unlike Jesus, it took five days for Kimmel to come back from the dead.

The truth is, of course, as one of the commentators said on Gutfeld!, that no one took Kimmel’s freedom of speech away. If he had remained fired for longer than those five days, he could have gone on to do what Trevor Noah did and start his own podcast. But he didn’t need to. The remaining Anti-Trump Deep State pulled ranks, and, lo!, we will continue to hear some genial satire from Kimmel for another year, perhaps, until the financial reasons finish off what controversial reasons could not.

Anyhow, I like the idea that Freedom of Speech was suddenly ruined, and the First Amendment was in its final death throes, when a Late Night Television host happened – to – lose – his – job. And that, hurrah, Freedom of Speech was vindicated and the First Amendment restored, when that host got his job back again.

James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.