Judging by the title, you obviously know where this rant is going.

Kimmel.

For those who have been living under a rock, here’s a quick summary of events:

• Right-wing hatemonger Charlie Kirk was brutally assassinated
• The MAGA cultists scrambled to paint the gunman as some fringe leftist lunatic
• The left pushed back, pointing out MANY markers indicating this wasn’t true, and he may indeed be one of their own
• Late-night “comedy” show host Jimmy Kimmel pointed this out in a pretty tame way that lasted all of about 4 fucking seconds
• FCC Chair Brendan Carr seized on the statement to further the Tangerine Fuckwhit’s fascist agenda by threatening ABC, Disney, and Kimmel
• Nextstar, Sinclair, and Tegna- owners of a large chunk of local ABC affiliates, bent the knee to Carr and forced Disney to pull Kimmel off the air for a few days
• Disney caved to streaming customers canceling in drives and brought him back

And that’s about where we are now. This is a GROSS oversimplification of events, but you get the gist- someone made a joke, one that frankly was neither grotesque or celebratory of someone’s murder, a rising authoritarian regime took advantage to spin it as something more than it was, and those with less thinkmeat to work with took the bait and started screaming about decency.

First, I have to ask, where the fuck was your sense of deceny when congressmen and women were being gunned down in Minnesota last month?

Second, I have listened to nonstop railing by your Dear Leader for the past decade about the importance of freedom of speech, how it’s the cornerstone of keeping our democracy functioning, blah blah blah. And now, now you want to backslide towards “well you’re only free to say good things about the people I blindly follow”? Are you fucking kidding me right now?

Just to highlight how stupid this has become- you have trolls like Roseanne Barr coming back out from under her bridge, sobbing about how “her life was ruined for far less” and “even now this is incredibly hypocritical of Disney”. Rosie, let’s clear the air here: what you said wasn’t “far less”. Kimmel pointing out the inconsistencies not only of the gunman’s qualifiers to try to fit him into a category, but MAGA’s inconsistencies on the matter, is NOT the same as comparing the former First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, to looking like she was from “The Planet of the Apes”. What you said was disgustingly racist, showed absolutely zero talent or creativity in your ability to provide humor that required any intellectual capability. Don’t you DARE sit there and compare the two “jokes”.

It has become PAINFULLY clear just how incredibly moronic Americans have become about their own civics. We have the Declaration of Independence. We have Amendments to it. The entirety of this body is our Constitution. The first ten Amendments are called The Bill of Rights. Do you know what this means? It means they carry some pretty heavy significance. And the First of those Amendments explicitly highlights freedom of speech. This right, was so important, it was listed ABOVE ALL OTHERS, even your precious Second Amendment that you spend more time fighting to distort than any others.

This crowd not only doesn’t understand any of the last paragraph, their lack of understanding is resulting in them willingly surrendering these rights at a record clip, taking the rest of us down with them.

“But what about Cancel Culture!” seems to be the common pushback, as though they’re quite literally allowed to say racists shit like Roseanne did. “Cancel Culture” has risen as a check against saying horrific shit that contradicts things in the Constitution like “we are all equal”. It isn’t some vast conspiracy, it’s a shared idea amongst a large swath of the population to fucking show you that while you do have the ABILITY to say these things, if your lack of class and civility leads you to saying them you will be met with disapproval. It doesn’t mean you can’t say them. MAGA tried to flip the script and leverage the Kimmel situation to start their own “cancel Culture” movement, and it failed. Miserably. Not because one side or the other has some “Jewish Space Laser” mind control over the elites controlling the media, but because it was never about what he said. It was about seizing control of a narrative, self-victimizing when the only victim here was Kirk (I’d also argue his wife and kids, as much as I disagree with the racist homophobic fuck this was NEVER the solution and I feel horrible for his young kids having to grapple with something so traumatic). I’ll give some credulity that yes, Charlie Kurt died for exercising his First Amendment right. But for you to then turn around and say “welp First Amendment is gonna die with him” is shameful, and denigrates the ideas of the very person you have turned into a martyr for your cause. It seems MAGA can’t even bring awareness to the hate and senseless gun violence that lead to someone’s murder without contorting it into a way to “own some libs”.

It is now, more important than ever, to protect the sanctity of the rights enshrined in our founding documents. One side is failing to do so while the other is allowing them to be taken away without even realizing it.

For the record, I don’t find Kimmel to be that funny. He lands maybe 3 out of 10 jokes with me on a good day. So you know what I don’t do? I don’t watch. Sorry dude. But that doesn’t mean this needed to turn into yet another cold war between two factions of this country who’s head is so far up it’s own ass it doesn’t see what’s happening. Pause and take a beat people. Think through things logically and make the best judgement you can for yourself and society as a whole. And that last part is key. You think it’s all about you. It’s not.