The anthems can be heard echoing across the channels because Jimmy Kimmel has returned as if Donald Trump’s attempt to attack the Constitution has been thwarted. The big orange monster has been stopped in its tracks. But the innocent victims should have held their encore because headlines have now broken that Google admitted the Biden administration pressured YouTube into banning conservative voices, and will now begin to reinstate those accounts.
What a wonderful web we weave. Social media feeds are full of celebratory clips of Jimmy Kimmel explaining his intentions in a tearful monologue. It was tear-jerking. To imagine that he was so misunderstood in what he was saying that he was turned into a monster by the opposition. That’s just not right when the mob does that as if they’re being told what to say and what to think about a person they don’t know.
Look at the way things played out. The FCC chair fired off a warning about broadcast standards. Almost right after, Disney pulled the plug on Kimmel’s show. A few days later, the suspension was lifted, but not on every station. Nexstar and Sinclair are still keeping him off the air. That “indefinite” break barely lasted a week, yet the signal was obvious. Political pressure and corporate nerves can shut down a voice, even if only for a short while.
Toward the end of his monologue, Jimmy Kimmel talked about speaking out against the president trying to silence freedom of speech. What a hero he has become! What a position he is in to champion freedom of speech and fight to protect our rights, even when we don’t agree with what someone is saying. I’m totally with him. I just hope he keeps that energy when he hears the news.
That same type of political pressure was working behind the scenes with YouTube. This time it came from the Biden White House. Google has admitted it was pushed to cut off conservative voices, silencing opinions that clashed with the administration’s storyline. That’s not late-night humor. It’s not satire. It’s censorship of political speech. That’s the same thing that raised such an uproar when it was done to Jimmy Kimmel.
How could it be any different? And the excuses start flying. But Kimmel returned with higher ratings, and Disney got a burst of attention. The suspension looked more like a corporate maneuver under government pressure than a permanent silencing. YouTube’s ban under Biden directly resulted in many conservative voices losing access to audiences and income during that time. The reinstatements are easily seen as an admission that the bans were politically driven.
That leads us to another story at play here. Kimmel’s ratings were sliding before any of this blew up. By August, he was barely pulling in a little over a million viewers a night. Earlier in the year, the show was over 1.9 million, but even that wasn’t much to brag about. By the end of summer, he looked less like a late-night fixture and more like a show fading into the background.
The suspension changed that. When he came back on September 23, more than 6.2 million people tuned in. That’s the biggest audience for a regular episode in over ten years, even with Nexstar and Sinclair cutting him off in nearly a quarter of U.S. homes. His return speech spread even further online, where clips pulled millions of extra views. And that’s when the dancing started…
It doesn’t read like punishment. It looks like a promotion. The uproar created buzz, the break made people curious, and the comeback turned into an event. Call it luck or call it strategy, it was a good hustle for the host. Disney knows it, too. And they’ll squeeze every drop of attention they can get.
The real question is whether it lasts. Spikes fade. Viewers drift back to old habits. For now, the show has heat, but suspending it might have been the only thing keeping it relevant. We’ll see how long the love sticks. If anyone were to be inclined to recognize conspiracies, this turn of events can easily be mapped out as if they were planned to get a failing show better ratings.
Just in case you were wondering where I am in all this, I’ll say it clearly so there are no misunderstandings. Political censorship is wrong. Most censorship is wrong for that matter. Freedom of Speech is a precious freedom that we all must fight for and be ready to die for if need be. But the hypocrisy is what I’m pointing out. Only a fool dances when the song hides their own lies. Only a fool celebrates when the cheers hide their own disgrace. Whatever way you want to say it, it’s all hypocrisy.
Always remember, in the word “whatever” is the word “hate.” That means absolutely nothing. Just something I happened to notice.
Nobody comes out clean. If you’re clinging to the hope that one side is so much better than the other and all the wrongs lie with them, you have a rude awakening coming. They both have committed atrocities far worse than these. So believe what you want to believe and back who you want to back, but the time for pointing fingers is over. When you throw dirt, you only lose ground. And sometimes the dirt you throw today might uncover something tomorrow that you wish had stayed buried, the kind of thing that stops all the dancing and singing right in its tracks.
It’s always a good thing to remember, The Future Will Judge Our Permanent Record of History…
