SO MUCH FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Jimmy Kimmel cancelled on U S TV for making fun
Jimmy Kimmel is one of the most talented comics in the United States. In a country where the litmus test of freedom was supposed to be the much vaunted First Amendment of their constitution that protects freedom of the press, he was an outlier. He scorched the U S President Donald Trump with his humour and rhetoric every night on television and he boasted that he had 20 million viewers on his social media platform.
All of that came to a screeching halt last week, when the American Broadcasting Corporation who pays him to run the show decided that as a result of a protest by their local affiliate stations about a joke he made, they would suspend the show indefinitely.
This comes on the heels of the cancellation of another comic’s show, a man named Steven Colbert. He too was an outlier in criticism of the present president of the United States. That will no longer be the case on nationwide American TV as of next year. Cancelled.
The irony of this is that these folks who are now in power in the US all came to power railing against what they said was a cancel culture. They claimed that the people in power in the US before them were throttling the ability of their right wing messages to get heard. Now that they are in charge, it appears that what they preached against they have adopted.
In so many cases, this is a disappointment to a world that looked at that country for solace with the doctrine of free speech and freedom of opinion. The US was supposed to be the freest country in the world.
For us small countries who voiced their opinions in the past about US policies, this is chilling and emblematic of future relations.
Well we say no more. Res ipsa loquitor
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