On May 5, 2021, then-President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki told the American people, with a straight face and presumably sober, that social media platforms may face “legal consequences” for not censoring “untrustworthy content… especially related to COVID-19 vaccinations and elections.”
The White House was also studying how “misinformation” fits into Section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act – which is a provision shielding platforms from liability for what third parties post.
Facebook, Twitter, and others got the hint.
They bent the knee.
They censored or suppressed anti-vaccine content, even burying jokes and memes.
Famously, vax critic Robert F. Kennedy was also censored. And he rode his righteous indignation straight to the presidential cabinet position he now occupies.
The lawsuit that followed is still limping along in a federal district court, after suffering a grand setback when the U.S. Supreme Court declared its plaintiffs originally lacked standing.
Four fraught years later, we watched a single gunshot tear into the neck of one of the most ardent drivers of public discourse in the present age.
The right says Charlie Kirk was loving. The left says he was hateful.
It’s just more proof that we all need clear language now, more desperately than ever.
Just like when you’re trying to communicate with a new English-language learner, you don’t blast them with hyperbole and rage; right now we all must extend that same level of linguistic patience across the political aisle.
Then came Jimmy Kimmel.
He torched President Donald Trump in a Sept. 15 joke routine, saying the president’s mourning cycle for his late friend mirrors a 4-year-old’s grief over a goldfish, and that it could be a distraction from the Jeffrey Epstein list.
The “MAGA gang,” Kimmel continued, has hit “new lows” by characterizing alleged shooter Tyler Robinson as “anything other than one of them.”
Maybe the political right and center would have pummeled Kimmel with the boycott and bad-PR tsunami they now call “the Bud Light treatment.”
But we’ll never know. Because the government was – ahem – here to help.
Trump’s Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr channeled the ghost of Jen Psaki. She’s not dead or anything, but she is a talking head now.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” said Carr, deploying the same sinister faux magnanimity every reporter who’s ever heard a veiled lawsuit threat can smell, even through pumpkin spice. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Hours later, ABC indefinitely suspended Kimmel’s show.
Trump himself furnished the cherry on top of the Orwellian cake, saying broadcasters in general, who “give me only bad publicity or press” should maybe have their licenses taken away.
Back it up to fourth grade civics.
“Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” says the First Amendment. A web of laws and cases since then have declared those words constrain other government structures, including the executive branch, which is supposed to enforce the will of Congress.
We have a Constitution, and amendments to it, because some principles are so timeless, we should follow them no matter who is in power. No matter whom we like. No matter who scratches our backs.
Some principles are worth dying for. And after Sept. 10, many of us who work within those principles recognize we may have to die for them.
Realizing that, my words feel heavier. But also more defined. More contoured and meaningful.
So I’m gonna say it.
If you wept over RFK getting Psaki’d but you rejoice over Kimmel getting Carred, go back to fourth grade civics.
If you wept over Kimmel getting Carred but you rejoiced over RFK getting Psaki’d, go back to fourth grade civics.
And when you’re done with that, shoot me an email and give me a piece of your mind. I can handle it – and so too should you.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
