(TNND) — Dave Portnoy, the popular founder of Barstool Sports, doesn’t believe Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air because of cancel culture.
“With Kimmel getting canned I’m seeing lots of people talking about the hypocrisy of cancel culture,” Portnoy said in a Wednesday night post on X.
But Portnoy said he views cancel culture as digging up old dirt on someone in an effort to get them fired.
“But when a person says something that a ton of people find offensive, rude, dumb in real time and then that person is punished for it that’s not cancel culture,” Portnoy said. “That is consequences for your actions.”
ABC announced Wednesday it was pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air indefinitely after the late-night host generated backlash for something he said related to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel made the comments during his Monday night monologue.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said in the broadcast. “In between the finger-pointing, there was, uh, grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism. But on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.”
Kimmel then played a clip of President Donald Trump being asked how he was holding up following Kirk’s death, giving a short answer and then pivoting to the construction of the new White House ballroom.
The chair of the Federal Communications Commission wasn’t pleased with Kimmel’s comments, which he called “some of the sickest conduct possible” during a conversation with podcaster Benny Johnson.
Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman, told Johnson that there’s a “concerted effort to try to lie to the American people” in some circles about the nature of the Kirk assassination or the political beliefs of the alleged shooter.
He said Kimmel played “into that narrative” that the shooter could be a Republican or aligned with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, despite officials stating that the suspect has a clear “leftist ideology.”
Carr went on to tell Johnson that broadcasters, who are licensed by the FCC, have an “obligation to operate in the public interest.”
Carr said the FCC has been “trying to reinvigorate the public interest and some changes that we’ve seen.”
“But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he continued. “These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action frankly on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Following that, Sinclair, the nation’s largest ABC affiliate group, and Nexstar Media Group, which also has ABC affiliate stations, announced they were going to preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for the foreseeable future.
Both broadcasters said they objected to Kimmel’s comments.
“Mr. Kimmel’s remarks were inappropriate and deeply insensitive at a critical moment for our country,” Sinclair Vice Chairman Jason Smith said in a news release. “We believe broadcasters have a responsibility to educate and elevate respectful, constructive dialogue in our communities. We appreciate FCC Chairman Carr’s remarks today and this incident highlights the critical need for the FCC to take immediate regulatory action to address control held over local broadcasters by the big national networks.”
The National News Desk and the local TV station websites to which this story has been syndicated are Sinclair-owned and/or operated properties.
So, was Kimmel taken off the air because of cancel culture?
“We really don’t have a good definition of cancel culture,” said Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
This might fit some people’s definition of cancel culture, he said.
Some people might think that comments must go against accepted societal norms in order to merit cancellation. Others might have higher or lower thresholds, he said.
“Generally, when we think of cancel culture, we think of more of a mass boycott or the public forcing the hands of employers to get rid of someone,” said Todd Belt, the Political Management program director at George Washington University. “This is something that seems to have come from the top.”
Belt pointed to the FCC chairman’s comments about possible action “the easy way or the hard way” as something that “implies some coercion on the part of government rather than sort of a groundswell of opposition from the mass public.”
Belt also said something we typically associate with cancel culture is lasting damage to a person’s reputation or employment prospects.
He said it’s too soon to know if this episode will be a permanent black mark on Kimmel’s reputation.
“It depends on who’s calling it that and whose definition of ‘canceling,’” Peter Loge, the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at GW, said in response to the question of whether Kimmel was taken off the air because of cancel culture.
Loge said multiple factors could be at play in this case.
“One way to look at the cancellation of Kimmel’s show is there’s a big public outcry,” Loge continued. “That he did something that a lot of people disagreed with and was appropriately punished for that. But I expect that most of the people doing the outcrying on one side or the other didn’t see the monologue in real time, or maybe not even at all. And so, it’s worth asking, why is everybody weighing in? And part of it is they could be legitimately angry about what he said or the reaction to what he said. Part of it could be they are legitimately concerned about free speech. We have some conservatives saying keep him on the air. It could be predictable partisanship. The Republicans said ‘no,’ therefore we as Democrats have to say ‘yes.’ Democrats are saying ‘yes,’ therefore we as Republicans have to say ‘no.’ Another, I think more plausible explanation, is a transactional one. ABC and a lot of affiliate stations have business interests before the Federal Communications Commission and other parts of the U.S. government. They need approval for things. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and the president of the United States came out and said, ‘We really don’t like what Kimmel said. We were really troubled by it. We don’t think this is how these companies should behave.’ The companies want things from the FCC and the president. It is therefore in their transactional interest to do what the president and the FCC want them to do. And that is a logical business decision, given that the entities involved are commercial enterprises. So, all of these things are true. Part of it is cultural, part of it is a First Amendment issue, but I think a lot of it is a business issue, just as it was with CBS and with other decisions coming down in the past few months.”
Loge’s CBS reference was in regard to the recent cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show, which has been scrutinized as being done to garner political favor rather than a financial decision based on ratings or the cost to make the show.
Meanwhile, Nexstar, one of the broadcasting companies that decided to preempt Kimmel’s show, is involved in a merger with fellow broadcaster TEGNA.
What does Loge see as cancel culture?
“It is taking something someone said or did that you think is especially heinous and then saying they are therefore unworthy of being part of the conversation at all,” he said.
But, Loge said, the definition of heinous “is often in the eyes of the beholder.”
Belt and Jones both said politics and cancel culture are intertwined.
Politics is about power, Belt said.
Cancel culture is usually about the public using its power against an individual they deem did something offensive.
“This is generally public power, the power of the people used against people in a privileged position, whether that be their celebrity, their status, or their voice,” he said.
Jones said both conservatives and liberals look for opportunities to take advantage of missteps from the other.
“I guess part of it also is just sort of the weaponization of all this within the constant right-left battle that we have in the country,” Jones said.
And that’s become easier to do because of social media, he said.
As a result, Jones said companies and elected officials have become more reactive to cancel culture forces.
“Imagine 10 years ago or something, or 15 years ago, they may have received like 100 or 200 phone calls about something. Now … their (social media) handle is being included in millions of social media posts,” Jones said.
Belt said comments about Kirk or his death carry risk in the current political and cultural environment.
“You have to be very careful, and this is particularly true with people who make political humor their stock and trade,” Belt said. “And the whole point of political humor is to push the edges of propriety. And that is what creates the humor. And so, you’re treading on very, very dangerous ground when you do that.”
Kimmel is a famous talk show host. But should everyday people be worried about getting “canceled” if they say something deemed inaccurate or offensive about Kirk or his death?
“I think what everyone should be doing is saying that political violence is wrong, it is rare, it is wildly politically unpopular, and leave it at that,” Loge said.
Added commentary might not be worth the risk.
“Simply reject political violence and stop talking,” he said.