September 24, 2025 • 35 mins
Disney briefly pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air last week for comments he made about Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer, after FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened action against Disney and ABC. But this is not the first time the government has tried to censor the media: Maria walks us through a brief history of presidents trying to limit what the press says. Then, Nate and Maria discuss whether cancel culture led us to this particular moment.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova and I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Stay in the show. Have you been canceled ever?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Maria, I have not been canceled. Have you ever been
canceled night?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh people have tried.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
If you listened to the last episode with elehone, you
know you come at the King, you best not miss
fucking blue Sky. Idiots on fucking Twitter and now they
moved to Blue Sky.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yeah, well that's how you really feel, Nate about.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
No, it's a strategy of the week.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
No, No, it is and sometimes of the strong.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Today in the show, we're going to be talking a
little bit about Jimmy Kimmel. Maria, I think you're going
to have some historical points of view. I'll just I'll
just be rampting.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Evidence. I'll just have takes.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
We will we will go into some historical context in
a discussion of free speech and how it has evolved
throughout the history of the United States. So on. On
that note, Nate, let's let's talk some Jimmy Kimmel. Last week,
Jimmy Kimmel's show was canceled indefinitely by the powers that
(01:42):
be at Disney and ABC, and we are taping this
on Monday, September twenty second. We just found out that
Jimmy Kimmel Live Show is going to be returning. By
the time you guys here this Wednesday will have been
last night. But I do want to stress that we
have not actually seen or heard the return yet. But yes,
(02:04):
they just made an announcement that they will be bringing
Me Kimmel back to the air after discussions with mister
Kimmel about the future. And the original cancelation was very,
very different from anything we've talked about on the show
(02:26):
in terms of like cancel no, no, in some ways
hold on, may I finish in terms of cancel culture
because it was coming from Brendan Carr, the chairman of
the FCC, who exerted pressure on the brass at Disney
to cancel the show and made some very veiled but
not that veiled threats that you know, we're probably going
(02:49):
to pull your license.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
It was like, hey, we can do it's the easy
way of the hodway. You sound exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
It sounded like we were back in the Sopranos, you know,
or or you know Sopranos because a much worse written
version of the Sopranos, someone who didn't actually know how
to write and decided the easy way or the hard
way was the way to write this dialogue. But yeah,
so that's what happened. And that's why I said, that's
a different from what we've been talking about, because there's
(03:18):
you know, cancel culture, and then there's the chairman of
the FCC saying, hey, if you can say anything we
don't like, we're gonna yank your license. So in response,
you know, there were tons of protests. There was a
lot of people canceling their subscriptions to you know, Hulu, ABC, ESPN,
all of these things. And Nate, I'm actually very curious.
(03:38):
I do want to give some background to this in
a second, but while we're setting kind of the present
day context, I'm curious what you think the you know,
financial impact of this was, because I actually I saw
a lot of people canceling subscriptions that I wouldn't have expected,
and I wonder, you know, I wonder if this is
in any way a financial decision as well, whether that
(03:59):
actually had an effect or not. I don't know. I
want to think that it did, but I'm actually just
curious what you what your take on that particular element is.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, and I worked for Disney for ten years.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I've ESPN and ABC News, so full disclosure, you know,
I have you know, a pension which is a Disney stock.
But I also hate their guts, so that bias probably
outweighs my financial motivation. But like, look, these companies tend
to make decisions very expediently.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Is one way I would put it.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Right, Maybe you have people who have vision about individual products, right,
but like I think at the end of the day,
Bob Eiger cares about theme parks and movies and big
franchise IP right use gigantic projects and like and probably
sees ABC News as this thing that like, you know,
(04:52):
still I think probably makes money. I mean, TV news
does not get the ratings at once to you, but
it's not that expensive to produce as compared to like
scripted drama or things like that.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
But like, increasingly these big.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Networks have wondered, do we even want to be in
the news business at all? Right, Like the head of
Disney doesn't really care about like the creative or journalistic
integrity accept to the extent that like you know, it
might create problems for talent down the line. So yeah, look,
the president I would draw is to the Washington.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Post, which is all by Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
I'm a keen observer of media, particularly when it comes
to covering American domestic politics. Right, I would say five
or ten years ago and people would say, well, you know,
the New York Times is the most presigious and highest
grossing newspaper at least center left newspaper media brand in America.
But the Washington Post is nipping at their heels. They
have a lot of talent on domestic politics. They're kind
(05:46):
of coequal. They break a lot of stories, they win
a lot of Pulitzers, and they've made one decision after
another have led to a lot of the other kind
of cancelations, canceled subscriptions, you know, when they squashed a
op ed endorsing Kamala Harris. And again I don't really
think that like newspapers should be in the business of
(06:07):
endorsing candidate, at least for national office. Have always found
that strange in some ways. I find that as six
between otbed and news kind of strange. But that led
to I think maybe tens of thousands to hundreds of
thousands of canceled subscriptions. And meanwhile, if you look at
the talent, right, like, if you took like the fifty
(06:28):
biggest name brands at the Washington Post from two years ago,
I think literally half might be gone and absolutely are
voluntary based on on feel like did not have editorial
support of the masthead.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And you know that's a challenge.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
I mean it might be in a world where like,
you know, I think the Washington Post has significantly declined
in both revenue and relevance, right and like, yeah, I know.
I mean they're going to be very sensitive things like
like Hulu subscriptions.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
That's the way these businesses work, right.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Like again, ordinarily, sometimes I think boycotts are a little
pretentious and cilly.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Like the way these big.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Gigantic, generic kind of media brands work is, you know,
they don't want to get yelled at by people, right,
They're risk averse, and so if they're like, well, this
could jeopardize our whole business, and I think that's that's
probably part of it.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I Mean, one thing to understand.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
About Trump is he does a lot of things that
I think are very extreme and objectionable. And I think
this is one of the clear things that like is
classic authoritarian capital a right, you look at Turkey or
Russia or other countries where there's been to pull back
from democracy, and like finding a pretense to cancel broadcast licenses,
is is capital a authoritarian? They did kind of pulled back,
(07:45):
and Carr kind of said, well, I was just pontificating,
and well, it's important that they, you know, and people
have a heuristic where they're kind of discount what it is,
you know, they.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
They could have not pulled back. Yes, this is true now,
but lo I will.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Say it's I criticize them in my newsletter over that
we can like, you know, I will say good for
Disney for uncancelling Kimmell, who, by the way, did fuck
up in some let me just you know. The fuck
up is that he said or strongly implied that the
person who allegedly killed Charlie Kirk was MAGA, and that
(08:21):
MAGA was trying to MAGA made America creager and was
trying to deny the fact that like he was MAGA.
And you know, Kimmel said that on Monday Evenings episode
based on really no evidence whatsoever, based on kind of
like you know what I think are properly called kind
of conspiracy theories on Blue Sky and Twitter and know
(08:45):
and everyone uses that phrase insensitivity, Like I think this
to a certain extent, the job of comedians is to
press the line on sensitivity. So I think sensitivity is
like a dumb euphemism, right, He Jimmy Kimmel spread misinformation.
But I'll tell you what, who hasn't at some point
(09:05):
it's script TV. It's not like to be known the
reason I'm lest forgiving, but like it's far far below
a canceling offense, right or a firing offense.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, And just to give a bit of history to
that particular point. But then I also want to go
even a little further back to highlight something else that
you said. There was a pretty substantial Supreme Court decision
back in nineteen sixty four New York Times versus Sullivan,
And that decision came out of an ad that The
(09:37):
New York Times had run, and they basically were trying
to contribute donations to defend MLK on perjury charges. And
the ad had some factual inaccuracies, and LB Sullivan, who's
the Sullivan of the case, said that he felt personally
criticized even though he was never actually mentioned by name
(09:58):
in the ad. He sent a request to The Times
to retract the information and wanted damages. The Times refused anyway,
this went all the way up to the Supreme Court,
and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Times
and establish the standard known as the actual malice standard
(10:19):
or reckless disregard of the truth. So basically, if you
want to win a libel suit, you have to prove
that the person who was making this statement knew it
was false and acted with an malicious purpose, right, with
an intent to harm the subject. Which was a huge,
kind of huge win for free speech because these factual
(10:42):
inaccuracies that were in the ad, they weren't on purpose, right,
It's not like they wanted to take this guy down
and so but they just said, you know, okay, yeah,
like factual inaccuracies, but it's not enough to suspend our
license and to get rid of this. And this was
kind of a landmark First Amendment free speech decision, but
something that I want to kind of go back even
(11:03):
further in history. The reason, by the way that I
invoke the actual malice standard is I think that Jimmy
came well you know, also you can be factually inaccurate
and not actually fullifol of that standard. Right, you didn't
say it knowing that you were blatantly saying something untrue.
I think at the time he probably thought that he
was saying something.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
That was right.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Whether you know he was correct journalistically or not is
a different story. But going even further back, Nate, one
of the things that you said was that, you know, networks,
places like Disney are constantly way playing this calculus, right.
They don't want to get criticized, and they're trying to
figure out, like what do we do, how do we
(11:45):
sidestep that? And it's really interesting to me because I
think that all of the free speech attacks in the
United States have shown this kind of constant calculus, and
it's not always worked out the way that the person
thought it was. So I think this the oldest kind
of attack goes back to seventeen ninety eight with the
(12:05):
Sedition Act, right, And this was John Adams when he
basically said they were in a war with France. It
wasn't a declared war, and he wanted to silence media
critics of the government, and so he passed an act
that said it was unlawful to publish any quote, false,
scandalous and malicious writing against the government end quote. And
(12:29):
the measures were huge, fins up to two thousand dollars.
I mean, how much is that, I don't even know.
In seventeen ninety eight, like that's insane, two years in prison.
And so a lot of publications started censoring themselves. But
what ended up happening, and they actually used it very punitively.
They ended up sending people to jail. Several newspapers had
(12:51):
to shut down. But what ended up happening was that
there was a huge backlash against this right. This was
the end of the Federalists. Jefferson came to power on
like a huge wave of support, and even later the
Justice Samuel Chase of the Supreme Court, who had been
very pro Sedition Act, he was impeached for this. So
(13:15):
basically everyone was galvanized against it. So it ended up
just having a huge, huge backlash to that. Attempt to
stem free speech happened again during World War One with
Woodrow Wilson, who was a scholar who had actually defended
free speech, and he tried to get another Sedition Act.
(13:36):
Then we had McCarthyism in the fifties who tried to
bully journalists and do all of that that again big
backlash people did. The people who stood up to McCarthyism
have fared much better in the eyes of history than
the people like McCarthy himself. Then we've got New York
Times versus Sullivan. Then we get Richard Nixon, and so
(13:58):
it's very funny when you started saying that you think
the best kind of example is the Washington Post. I
thought you were going to go in a totally different direction,
because the other time that an FCC license was threatened
was against the Washington Post when they were trying to
publish the Pentagon Papers. They published them anyway, and obviously
they won that battle. But Nixon was probably, other than Trump,
(14:22):
the single most vindictive president against the media. He ousted
Stuart Lourie for an article that he wrote in nineteen
seventy one for the La Times, so he actually just
banned him from the White House. And you know, he
basically said that the press, whom he started calling the
(14:43):
media that comes from Nixon, was the enemy, and told
his Vice president Spiro Agnew, to constantly attack the media.
He referred to them as a small and unelected elite
and basically create a rift so that people wouldn't trust
the media. And he even threatened lawsuits if anyone used
(15:06):
tricky Dick in print, so that you know, it became
incredibly petty, and he did kind of this. Trump is
really taking a page out of his playbook in a way,
because he had the irs investigate tax returns by Seymour,
Hirsh and other journalists that the White House didn't really like.
(15:27):
And so the thing that I found that I thought
was the most ridiculous is this was pre Watergate, Gordon
Liddy and Howard Hunt discussed murdering a journalist, Jack Anderson,
like actually killing him, so that he would stop basically
(15:48):
the leaks that were damaging to Dixon into the administration
and stop any further criticism of the administration. They considered
things like putting LSD on his steering wheel so that
he would start hallucinating while driving his car and get
into a car crash, which isn't.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Free osc Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I don't think they realized how LSD. Yeah. Anyway, and
then Lyddy, this is a quote from Lyddy. He said,
I would have knifed him or broken his neck end quote.
So this is all to say that, you know, we
see these sorts of attacks in the past, and every
single time they have not worked out well, but every
single time the media has actually fought back. Right the
(16:31):
Washington Post published Pentagon papers, Laurie had a career in journalism,
like people would hire him after that, and Seymour Hirsch
obviously Pulitzer Prize, like all of these people are storied
journalists and people who had the support of the country.
And with Kimmel at the beginning, it was the first
(16:52):
time that an organization had gotten a threat from the
FCC and rather than saying no, fuck you, you know,
we're the media and this is freedom of press, said okay, okay,
we'll fire you until they didn't. So this is I
think a very interesting moment. But those historical precedents I
think are really interesting to keep in mind, especially because
(17:14):
they did not turn out well for the government.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
And we'll be right back after this break. I think
with anything we're covering in today's age, you have to
be aware that most commentators have a bias towards thinking
(17:41):
history begins when their age eight, you know what I mean.
In the longer sweep of like how does this moment
in America relate to There's a lot of miles in
the sixties, right, the Civil War. I mean that, you know,
I think I think one has to be careful with
those comparisons, and it might be concerning enough that we
seem to be losing decades of progress.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
On some issues, right, yep.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I mean there was the other president, which is you know,
do you know who Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Used on ABC.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
I don't remember Bill Maher because Bill Maher's politically incorrect
got canceled because he said the nine to eleven terrorists
were courageous and we.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Are not lobbying cruise missiles from thousands of miles away, right.
He said that like seven days after nine eleven. It
was litigated in the press for a much longer time.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Eventually his show was.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Let lapse, and then he went to HBO and I'm
sure made lots of money and became more than ye
you know, part of cancelation. And now I want to
be clear, I thought that their cancel culture was a
thing that liberals I call them progressives because it's a
very illiberal attitude, right, that progressives really were bloodthirsty for
(19:02):
a number of years kind of picking in the year
twenty twenty or so, I thought it was an embarrassment
to the liberal tradition of free speech. I think there
hetty and jealous, and they don't understand how in a
relatively free country that when you suppress speech, it usually
only makes it more compelling and like and more powerful. Right,
And they thought they could contain the information ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
They accomplished nothing that they wanted.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
And you know, they have direct moral responsibility for contributing
to a climate in which free speech is compromised. With
that said, Maria, as you said, people have always been
hypocritical about free speech. The definition's always been contingent and
evolving in practice, right. And so you know, if you
(19:49):
were around for September eleventh when Bill mahrg got canceled,
the Dixie Chicks and Phil Donahue and and other you
know people, you know you're not like, you're not surprised
very much by by any of this.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And now if I'm Trump, now it's my turn. Now
it's my turn.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
And I felt, I think justifiably, there was a lot
of bullshit from progressives when they were in power, right,
and we went rever right and by the way, I
don't think progressives have often stood up for like the
higher minded principles either, right, they don't think like good
poker players, where it's like, okay, what is the equilibrium
If everybody adopts this attitude, it's kind of contient, like
(20:24):
the golden rule, right, have decided to get along, if
you know, literally just put yourself in the person's shoes
and say, eventually your public is going to win back
in office. And by the way, eventually we'll be a
Democrat back in office, maybe in in I guess for
early in Trump term three and a half years, right,
you know, turnabout will be fair play then, But like
perpetually you're losing it.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
No, I think that we forget that. We forget that
free speech was created to protect speech we don't like,
but not speech that we agree with. People forget this
all the time. They're like, yes, free speech. Wait, you
said something that I disagree with. You can't say that.
And we've said this on the show before, and you know,
(21:06):
I don't want to constantly give you history lessons, but
remember we talked about Skochie, Illinois, Nate and kind of
and the ACLU on this show before. For people who
missed that episode. I was basically kind of a case
that went to the Supreme Court that involved letting neo
Nazis march in a Jewish in a predominantly Jewish community,
(21:29):
and the ACL you took it on, and I remember,
I still remember learning about that and being like, holy shit,
Like fuck those guys. But yes, like you have to
protect the speech that you most disagree with, because that's
the whole point, right, that is what free speech means.
It means that we can disagree. It means that we
can have civil discourse. It means that we can all
(21:51):
have all of these different ideas, and it's okay. So
I actually nate agree with you that, you know, the
liberals went way too far. I think this was the
case in academia, you know. I think this was the
case at my alma mater, Harvard, where certain professors lost
their jobs right for I was saying idea, you know,
for engaging in research that was not politically correct, and
(22:15):
that's not what academia is about. As long as you
are not academically dishonest, as long as you're actually kind
of trying to figure out what the truth is, you know,
you're allowed to hold different opinions. But I think that
as you say, this isn't like we've devolved, like this
is horrifying, like that this is now the spiral right,
(22:36):
and instead you need to kind of reset and go
back to those first principles and say, Okay, you know,
free speech, we're for it. The Supreme Court has to
say this country is for free speech, and the FCC
can't be threatening licenses because of something somebody said that
they don't like, and we can't be in a climate,
you know. After that, Trump doubled down and said, yeah,
(22:58):
you know, you shouldn't criticize the president. If we don't
like you or you say something bad about me, there
are going to be consequences. I mean, it's insane right
for a president to say that, But we're at the
point where people there are a lot of people who
don't think it's insane and who are like, yeah, serves
you right, you shouldn't criticize the president. And the funniest
thing is what has prompted this whole conversation is the
(23:23):
death of Charlie Kirk, who I think, you know, I
didn't know him and I didn't know much about him
until he died. To be perfectly honest, But I think
he would be someone who actually would be opposed to
all of this because he was a proponent of free speech.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
No, and you know a lot of these videos have
circulated on social media of him, like debating on college
campus is kind of like his big thing, and like,
you know, he he was good at that. And the
whole idea was it's an open for him, come debate me,
bro right, and like here, I'll get myself in trouble
with probably only a very small fraction or audience. Right,
(24:01):
you know, there aren't that many I don't think super
eloquent spokespeople for the Trumpian movement. Okay, and yet half
the country forty nine point nine percent, he won the
popular vote. You know, half the country voted for it
last time. And like and like, you know, you have
(24:24):
to live in that world. And if you're not going to, like,
you know, give a platform to Ben Shapiro or Charlie kan,
who the fuck are you going to give a plat
form too? You know what I mean, you have to
be willing to have you know, again, I believe in
speech broadly, not I just don't think of speech as
the free amendment. But I believe in like we have
to have a more tolerant tolerance is a word I
(24:45):
would use, right, A more tolerant ecosystem for disagreement.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Absolutely more tolerant. And I would also say kinder right
where your knee jerk reaction isn't like fuck this person.
But okay, you know this doesn't sound right to me,
But where are you coming from? Like to try to understand,
to at least try to come from a place of
(25:12):
kindness and not a place of pitchforks, and like, let's
burn you down, which is I think, you know, to
bring this back to Kimmel, which is I think the
natural end of all of this rhetoric is, you know,
we're going to burn you down, and we're going to
remove you from the air, and we're going to threaten
(25:33):
the license of your parent company, and we're going to
show you whose boss. And as you started off you
know the segment by saying, Nate, you know, this is
authoritarianism with a capital A one oh one, right, Like
this is the playbook? Like this is what you do
is you take opposition, You take things that you don't
(25:54):
agree with, and instead of tolerating them having discourse, you
just remove it, you say no, and then you remove
the people and next step jail right like that, that's
what happens. Next you start jailing the journalist. You don't
just remove them from air. And this has happened in
the United States before, and we had come a long
(26:15):
long way since then, and now it seems like we're
devolving again. The United States has been falling right on
all of the rankings of freedom of press and freedom
of society, all of those global rankings. All of a sudden,
the United States has gone from being a leader to
you know, in some cases, falling out of the top ten.
(26:35):
And that's not where you want to be going. We'll
be back right after this. Like I said, we're taping
this on Monday, and I'm very curious to know what
Kimmel is going to sound like when he comes on
(26:57):
the air, because there's also, as we talked about last
week Nate chilling effects right and self censorship, and you
can imagine a future where people are like, Okay, well,
I'm just going to tread really lightly and not talk
about certain people and not talk about certain topics and
engage in self censorship, which people have been doing for
a number of years. And I think that happened with
(27:20):
the first wave of actual cancel culture. I just I
keep wanting to stress that the Kimmel thing is different
because it was coming from the FCC. So that's censorship.
That's media censorship, which is a very different thing.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
It's different. I mean there are you know, different does
not necessarily mean worse or better. I mean, I feel
like people are like.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
In this case, I think it means worse. I understand
that word does not, but I think government censorship is
worse than well.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
I kind of believe in the fourth estate in a
sense of like media both kind of upper highbrow media
meaning like the New York Times and publications like that,
and kind of lower media like mass entertainment. Like you know,
they have a lot of shared cultural powers, like I don't.
(28:13):
I think they're equal to a branch of government de
facto in terms of the amount of power they have
and when they act in unison, right, when you organize
attemps to cancel people that may originate, you know, from
progressive to now them a livelihood, like I I it's different.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
It's probably less capital a authoritarian.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, it's also awful, Like I I'm not I'm not
trying to say anything nice about the Jeff Bezoss of
the world. Don't get me wrong, I think that it's
really scary on that level too.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Yeah, And you know, I would like to see more liberals,
especially they want to have the moral hot ground. If
progressors want to say, we're just in a fucking wrestling
match with the GOP and will win through not brute force,
but will win a maybe we're we think we're smarter,
will win a tactically battle or whatever else. Right, you know,
(29:03):
I would like to say I've seen a couple like
Abby Phillip, who was an anchor on CNN right, had
a good segment about this.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
But like, I would like to see more liberals say
we fucked.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Up, right, we fucked up by abandoning free speech as
a principle, by pretending. You know, all these people that
do the cancel and they never have any heterodox quote
unquote opinions themselves, right, they always like have tuikie cutter
opinions because they're not Actually, I mean, I don't like
these people, so I'm not going to say anything overly generous, right,
you know, I think a lot of people formulate their
(29:33):
political beliefs because of pure pressure.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
And one of the problems with journalism and kind of
the liberal academy more broadly is like, and that includes
a lot of fucking lonely souls who who are looking
to be joiners, right, And I'm I'm against that, you know.
I think if you've never pissed an audience off or
your own audience off, then like, how can you have
lived in a very complicated world like we live in
for you know, decades and not at some point had
(29:59):
an opinion that differed from your tribe?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Right? You know, that's totally fine if you each want
to go in like and open a.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Nice little you know, pasta restaurant or something and get
along with your customers.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
But if you're a political commentator and you've never said
anything that pisses someone off, then you are fucking like
terrible at your job. You shouldn't be canceled scent upliveing cancelation.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
But like, but you just tell that you don't have
any independent minded opinions and if you always align with
one party, the parties are these weird monstrosities. It's like
saying I think that like PEPSI coo everything that It's
like being a fanily of like PepsiCo or Coca Cola
or something. Right, Like, everything this gigantic, faciless corporation makes
is the best thing on earth. Right, It's you know,
that's what the political parties are. They're these kind of mediocre,
(30:40):
gigantic brands that are trying to cater to the mass
consumer and are pretty darn good at it.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
But like, but you're just being a fanboy if you're
always on the always advocating the party line.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely, you're being a brown spokesperson. I think
actually the the uh tie that you made to like
coke or Pepsi or something like that is a really
good one. Right, You're just being a brand spokesperson for
the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. And this is
why this is something that you and I talk about
on the show frequently. I don't think either one of
(31:10):
us likes the two party system. One of the main
problems I have with it is that it discourages independent thinking.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Too many people are like, oh, i'm a this, I'm
a that you apply the label and then you figure
out what do I think based on that, not what
do I think? Therefore, what do you know who do
I support people don't get that granular, or of course
some people do. But that kind of critical independent thinking
is something that we should be encouraging, we should be fostering.
We should be creating a culture where people are rewarded
(31:40):
for heterodoxy, not for its own sake, but just for
having their own mind and for being able to say
what they think. And there are you know, you can agree,
you can disagree, but yeah, we should be living in
a society where people think for themselves. And this is
something that both parties are absolutely to blame for, and
(32:02):
we are not in a good place right now. So
I really hope that everyone comes to their senses, including
the Supreme Court, that we actually start supporting free speech
and what it actually means right, which means that Jimmy
Kimmel could have fucked up something that he said and
then said, oh, you know, this wasn't actually true, and
(32:23):
he wasn't removed from the air. It's kind of that
sort of a culture, as opposed to one where we
start getting threats and trying to strong arm people into
cow towing whatever the party line happens to be right,
which could be liberal and it could be Republican and
(32:43):
it could be either one. I think that that's such
an incredibly dangerous moment. It really does bring me back
to the Soviet Union and that is not a good feeling.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Yeah, and usould create more sigma for cowardice.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
I mean, you know there were some people like in
the whole Charlie kirk Kimmel thing, I mean, like you
know Ted Cruz of all people.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Oh, I was about to say I actually agreed with
Ted Cruz for once in my life. I was like,
what is happening, Ted, Crew? Like this is bad?
Speaker 3 (33:11):
You probably are more familiar with the research on this, right,
But like when when a small number of people who
are influential or actually have something to lose, right when
they speak up. You know, even Michael Eisner, the former
CEO of Disney, I don't know if he's a friend
of me with Bob byker or right, but he said,
what the fuck are you doing?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Bob?
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Right, And like, I'm sure that's you know, Disney's company,
where people are usually pretty nice, right, And so that
might have had an influence too, Right.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yes, there's a lot of research on that night. It's
a very good point, and yes, all it takes is
one even just one influential voice, and that can completely
change the dynamic and what people feel empowered to say
or do. But this is a really interesting topic and
I think one that we are going to keep revisiting
on this show. And I hope Nate that our show
(34:01):
is still on the air even if we say something
that you know, the FCC might not like.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
What's your most cancelable opinion? See, that's like a question
you can answer.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, well, let's come back to that. I think that'll
be an interesting and interesting segment. No, I actually I
think that that is an interesting segment.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
What's the most cansful opinion?
Speaker 3 (34:19):
That It's like, it's actually your seventh most canceful opinion
probably you know what I.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Mean, right right?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
You have to do the game theory of that and
you have to play that out.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Well.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
We hope you feel more educated about free speech, which
is something that really is core to risky business and
to our ability to have this show, and to me
as an ex Soviet immigrant, it's something near and dear
to my heart. So good luck, Jimmy Kimmel. I hope
that your return to the air was a good one.
(34:54):
Let us know what you think of the show reach
out to Us at Risky Business at pushkin dot Fm.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova and by.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Me Nate Silvery.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
The show was a cool production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer
is Sonia gerwit Lydia, Jean Kott and daphnew Chen are
our editors, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
If you like this show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, but once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova and I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Stay in the show. Have you been canceled ever?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Maria, I have not been canceled. Have you ever been
canceled night?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh people have tried.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
If you listened to the last episode with elehone, you
know you come at the King, you best not miss
fucking blue Sky. Idiots on fucking Twitter and now they
moved to Blue Sky.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yeah, well that's how you really feel, Nate about.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
No, it's a strategy of the week.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
No, No, it is and sometimes of the strong.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Today in the show, we're going to be talking a
little bit about Jimmy Kimmel. Maria, I think you're going
to have some historical points of view. I'll just I'll
just be rampting.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Evidence. I'll just have takes.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
We will we will go into some historical context in
a discussion of free speech and how it has evolved
throughout the history of the United States. So on. On
that note, Nate, let's let's talk some Jimmy Kimmel. Last week,
Jimmy Kimmel's show was canceled indefinitely by the powers that
(01:42):
be at Disney and ABC, and we are taping this
on Monday, September twenty second. We just found out that
Jimmy Kimmel Live Show is going to be returning. By
the time you guys here this Wednesday will have been
last night. But I do want to stress that we
have not actually seen or heard the return yet. But yes,
(02:04):
they just made an announcement that they will be bringing
Me Kimmel back to the air after discussions with mister
Kimmel about the future. And the original cancelation was very,
very different from anything we've talked about on the show
(02:26):
in terms of like cancel no, no, in some ways
hold on, may I finish in terms of cancel culture
because it was coming from Brendan Carr, the chairman of
the FCC, who exerted pressure on the brass at Disney
to cancel the show and made some very veiled but
not that veiled threats that you know, we're probably going
(02:49):
to pull your license.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
It was like, hey, we can do it's the easy
way of the hodway. You sound exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
It sounded like we were back in the Sopranos, you know,
or or you know Sopranos because a much worse written
version of the Sopranos, someone who didn't actually know how
to write and decided the easy way or the hard
way was the way to write this dialogue. But yeah,
so that's what happened. And that's why I said, that's
a different from what we've been talking about, because there's
(03:18):
you know, cancel culture, and then there's the chairman of
the FCC saying, hey, if you can say anything we
don't like, we're gonna yank your license. So in response,
you know, there were tons of protests. There was a
lot of people canceling their subscriptions to you know, Hulu, ABC, ESPN,
all of these things. And Nate, I'm actually very curious.
(03:38):
I do want to give some background to this in
a second, but while we're setting kind of the present
day context, I'm curious what you think the you know,
financial impact of this was, because I actually I saw
a lot of people canceling subscriptions that I wouldn't have expected,
and I wonder, you know, I wonder if this is
in any way a financial decision as well, whether that
(03:59):
actually had an effect or not. I don't know. I
want to think that it did, but I'm actually just
curious what you what your take on that particular element is.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, and I worked for Disney for ten years.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I've ESPN and ABC News, so full disclosure, you know,
I have you know, a pension which is a Disney stock.
But I also hate their guts, so that bias probably
outweighs my financial motivation. But like, look, these companies tend
to make decisions very expediently.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Is one way I would put it.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Right, Maybe you have people who have vision about individual products, right,
but like I think at the end of the day,
Bob Eiger cares about theme parks and movies and big
franchise IP right use gigantic projects and like and probably
sees ABC News as this thing that like, you know,
(04:52):
still I think probably makes money. I mean, TV news
does not get the ratings at once to you, but
it's not that expensive to produce as compared to like
scripted drama or things like that.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
But like, increasingly these big.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Networks have wondered, do we even want to be in
the news business at all? Right, Like the head of
Disney doesn't really care about like the creative or journalistic
integrity accept to the extent that like you know, it
might create problems for talent down the line. So yeah, look,
the president I would draw is to the Washington.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Post, which is all by Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
I'm a keen observer of media, particularly when it comes
to covering American domestic politics. Right, I would say five
or ten years ago and people would say, well, you know,
the New York Times is the most presigious and highest
grossing newspaper at least center left newspaper media brand in America.
But the Washington Post is nipping at their heels. They
have a lot of talent on domestic politics. They're kind
(05:46):
of coequal. They break a lot of stories, they win
a lot of Pulitzers, and they've made one decision after
another have led to a lot of the other kind
of cancelations, canceled subscriptions, you know, when they squashed a
op ed endorsing Kamala Harris. And again I don't really
think that like newspapers should be in the business of
(06:07):
endorsing candidate, at least for national office. Have always found
that strange in some ways. I find that as six
between otbed and news kind of strange. But that led
to I think maybe tens of thousands to hundreds of
thousands of canceled subscriptions. And meanwhile, if you look at
the talent, right, like, if you took like the fifty
(06:28):
biggest name brands at the Washington Post from two years ago,
I think literally half might be gone and absolutely are
voluntary based on on feel like did not have editorial
support of the masthead.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And you know that's a challenge.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
I mean it might be in a world where like,
you know, I think the Washington Post has significantly declined
in both revenue and relevance, right and like, yeah, I know.
I mean they're going to be very sensitive things like
like Hulu subscriptions.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
That's the way these businesses work, right.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Like again, ordinarily, sometimes I think boycotts are a little
pretentious and cilly.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Like the way these big.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Gigantic, generic kind of media brands work is, you know,
they don't want to get yelled at by people, right,
They're risk averse, and so if they're like, well, this
could jeopardize our whole business, and I think that's that's
probably part of it.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I Mean, one thing to understand.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
About Trump is he does a lot of things that
I think are very extreme and objectionable. And I think
this is one of the clear things that like is
classic authoritarian capital a right, you look at Turkey or
Russia or other countries where there's been to pull back
from democracy, and like finding a pretense to cancel broadcast licenses,
is is capital a authoritarian? They did kind of pulled back,
(07:45):
and Carr kind of said, well, I was just pontificating,
and well, it's important that they, you know, and people
have a heuristic where they're kind of discount what it is,
you know, they.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
They could have not pulled back. Yes, this is true now,
but lo I will.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Say it's I criticize them in my newsletter over that
we can like, you know, I will say good for
Disney for uncancelling Kimmell, who, by the way, did fuck
up in some let me just you know. The fuck
up is that he said or strongly implied that the
person who allegedly killed Charlie Kirk was MAGA, and that
(08:21):
MAGA was trying to MAGA made America creager and was
trying to deny the fact that like he was MAGA.
And you know, Kimmel said that on Monday Evenings episode
based on really no evidence whatsoever, based on kind of
like you know what I think are properly called kind
of conspiracy theories on Blue Sky and Twitter and know
(08:45):
and everyone uses that phrase insensitivity, Like I think this
to a certain extent, the job of comedians is to
press the line on sensitivity. So I think sensitivity is
like a dumb euphemism, right, He Jimmy Kimmel spread misinformation.
But I'll tell you what, who hasn't at some point
(09:05):
it's script TV. It's not like to be known the
reason I'm lest forgiving, but like it's far far below
a canceling offense, right or a firing offense.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, And just to give a bit of history to
that particular point. But then I also want to go
even a little further back to highlight something else that
you said. There was a pretty substantial Supreme Court decision
back in nineteen sixty four New York Times versus Sullivan,
And that decision came out of an ad that The
(09:37):
New York Times had run, and they basically were trying
to contribute donations to defend MLK on perjury charges. And
the ad had some factual inaccuracies, and LB Sullivan, who's
the Sullivan of the case, said that he felt personally
criticized even though he was never actually mentioned by name
(09:58):
in the ad. He sent a request to The Times
to retract the information and wanted damages. The Times refused anyway,
this went all the way up to the Supreme Court,
and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Times
and establish the standard known as the actual malice standard
(10:19):
or reckless disregard of the truth. So basically, if you
want to win a libel suit, you have to prove
that the person who was making this statement knew it
was false and acted with an malicious purpose, right, with
an intent to harm the subject. Which was a huge,
kind of huge win for free speech because these factual
(10:42):
inaccuracies that were in the ad, they weren't on purpose, right,
It's not like they wanted to take this guy down
and so but they just said, you know, okay, yeah,
like factual inaccuracies, but it's not enough to suspend our
license and to get rid of this. And this was
kind of a landmark First Amendment free speech decision, but
something that I want to kind of go back even
(11:03):
further in history. The reason, by the way that I
invoke the actual malice standard is I think that Jimmy
came well you know, also you can be factually inaccurate
and not actually fullifol of that standard. Right, you didn't
say it knowing that you were blatantly saying something untrue.
I think at the time he probably thought that he
was saying something.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
That was right.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Whether you know he was correct journalistically or not is
a different story. But going even further back, Nate, one
of the things that you said was that, you know, networks,
places like Disney are constantly way playing this calculus, right.
They don't want to get criticized, and they're trying to
figure out, like what do we do, how do we
(11:45):
sidestep that? And it's really interesting to me because I
think that all of the free speech attacks in the
United States have shown this kind of constant calculus, and
it's not always worked out the way that the person
thought it was. So I think this the oldest kind
of attack goes back to seventeen ninety eight with the
(12:05):
Sedition Act, right, And this was John Adams when he
basically said they were in a war with France. It
wasn't a declared war, and he wanted to silence media
critics of the government, and so he passed an act
that said it was unlawful to publish any quote, false,
scandalous and malicious writing against the government end quote. And
(12:29):
the measures were huge, fins up to two thousand dollars.
I mean, how much is that, I don't even know.
In seventeen ninety eight, like that's insane, two years in prison.
And so a lot of publications started censoring themselves. But
what ended up happening, and they actually used it very punitively.
They ended up sending people to jail. Several newspapers had
(12:51):
to shut down. But what ended up happening was that
there was a huge backlash against this right. This was
the end of the Federalists. Jefferson came to power on
like a huge wave of support, and even later the
Justice Samuel Chase of the Supreme Court, who had been
very pro Sedition Act, he was impeached for this. So
(13:15):
basically everyone was galvanized against it. So it ended up
just having a huge, huge backlash to that. Attempt to
stem free speech happened again during World War One with
Woodrow Wilson, who was a scholar who had actually defended
free speech, and he tried to get another Sedition Act.
(13:36):
Then we had McCarthyism in the fifties who tried to
bully journalists and do all of that that again big
backlash people did. The people who stood up to McCarthyism
have fared much better in the eyes of history than
the people like McCarthy himself. Then we've got New York
Times versus Sullivan. Then we get Richard Nixon, and so
(13:58):
it's very funny when you started saying that you think
the best kind of example is the Washington Post. I
thought you were going to go in a totally different direction,
because the other time that an FCC license was threatened
was against the Washington Post when they were trying to
publish the Pentagon Papers. They published them anyway, and obviously
they won that battle. But Nixon was probably, other than Trump,
(14:22):
the single most vindictive president against the media. He ousted
Stuart Lourie for an article that he wrote in nineteen
seventy one for the La Times, so he actually just
banned him from the White House. And you know, he
basically said that the press, whom he started calling the
(14:43):
media that comes from Nixon, was the enemy, and told
his Vice president Spiro Agnew, to constantly attack the media.
He referred to them as a small and unelected elite
and basically create a rift so that people wouldn't trust
the media. And he even threatened lawsuits if anyone used
(15:06):
tricky Dick in print, so that you know, it became
incredibly petty, and he did kind of this. Trump is
really taking a page out of his playbook in a way,
because he had the irs investigate tax returns by Seymour,
Hirsh and other journalists that the White House didn't really like.
(15:27):
And so the thing that I found that I thought
was the most ridiculous is this was pre Watergate, Gordon
Liddy and Howard Hunt discussed murdering a journalist, Jack Anderson,
like actually killing him, so that he would stop basically
(15:48):
the leaks that were damaging to Dixon into the administration
and stop any further criticism of the administration. They considered
things like putting LSD on his steering wheel so that
he would start hallucinating while driving his car and get
into a car crash, which isn't.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Free osc Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I don't think they realized how LSD. Yeah. Anyway, and
then Lyddy, this is a quote from Lyddy. He said,
I would have knifed him or broken his neck end quote.
So this is all to say that, you know, we
see these sorts of attacks in the past, and every
single time they have not worked out well, but every
single time the media has actually fought back. Right the
(16:31):
Washington Post published Pentagon papers, Laurie had a career in journalism,
like people would hire him after that, and Seymour Hirsch
obviously Pulitzer Prize, like all of these people are storied
journalists and people who had the support of the country.
And with Kimmel at the beginning, it was the first
(16:52):
time that an organization had gotten a threat from the
FCC and rather than saying no, fuck you, you know,
we're the media and this is freedom of press, said okay, okay,
we'll fire you until they didn't. So this is I
think a very interesting moment. But those historical precedents I
think are really interesting to keep in mind, especially because
(17:14):
they did not turn out well for the government.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
And we'll be right back after this break. I think
with anything we're covering in today's age, you have to
be aware that most commentators have a bias towards thinking
(17:41):
history begins when their age eight, you know what I mean.
In the longer sweep of like how does this moment
in America relate to There's a lot of miles in
the sixties, right, the Civil War. I mean that, you know,
I think I think one has to be careful with
those comparisons, and it might be concerning enough that we
seem to be losing decades of progress.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
On some issues, right, yep.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I mean there was the other president, which is you know,
do you know who Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Used on ABC.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
I don't remember Bill Maher because Bill Maher's politically incorrect
got canceled because he said the nine to eleven terrorists
were courageous and we.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Are not lobbying cruise missiles from thousands of miles away, right.
He said that like seven days after nine eleven. It
was litigated in the press for a much longer time.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Eventually his show was.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Let lapse, and then he went to HBO and I'm
sure made lots of money and became more than ye
you know, part of cancelation. And now I want to
be clear, I thought that their cancel culture was a
thing that liberals I call them progressives because it's a
very illiberal attitude, right, that progressives really were bloodthirsty for
(19:02):
a number of years kind of picking in the year
twenty twenty or so, I thought it was an embarrassment
to the liberal tradition of free speech. I think there
hetty and jealous, and they don't understand how in a
relatively free country that when you suppress speech, it usually
only makes it more compelling and like and more powerful. Right,
And they thought they could contain the information ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
They accomplished nothing that they wanted.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
And you know, they have direct moral responsibility for contributing
to a climate in which free speech is compromised. With
that said, Maria, as you said, people have always been
hypocritical about free speech. The definition's always been contingent and
evolving in practice, right. And so you know, if you
(19:49):
were around for September eleventh when Bill mahrg got canceled,
the Dixie Chicks and Phil Donahue and and other you
know people, you know you're not like, you're not surprised
very much by by any of this.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And now if I'm Trump, now it's my turn. Now
it's my turn.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
And I felt, I think justifiably, there was a lot
of bullshit from progressives when they were in power, right,
and we went rever right and by the way, I
don't think progressives have often stood up for like the
higher minded principles either, right, they don't think like good
poker players, where it's like, okay, what is the equilibrium
If everybody adopts this attitude, it's kind of contient, like
(20:24):
the golden rule, right, have decided to get along, if
you know, literally just put yourself in the person's shoes
and say, eventually your public is going to win back
in office. And by the way, eventually we'll be a
Democrat back in office, maybe in in I guess for
early in Trump term three and a half years, right,
you know, turnabout will be fair play then, But like
perpetually you're losing it.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
No, I think that we forget that. We forget that
free speech was created to protect speech we don't like,
but not speech that we agree with. People forget this
all the time. They're like, yes, free speech. Wait, you
said something that I disagree with. You can't say that.
And we've said this on the show before, and you know,
(21:06):
I don't want to constantly give you history lessons, but
remember we talked about Skochie, Illinois, Nate and kind of
and the ACLU on this show before. For people who
missed that episode. I was basically kind of a case
that went to the Supreme Court that involved letting neo
Nazis march in a Jewish in a predominantly Jewish community,
(21:29):
and the ACL you took it on, and I remember,
I still remember learning about that and being like, holy shit,
Like fuck those guys. But yes, like you have to
protect the speech that you most disagree with, because that's
the whole point, right, that is what free speech means.
It means that we can disagree. It means that we
can have civil discourse. It means that we can all
(21:51):
have all of these different ideas, and it's okay. So
I actually nate agree with you that, you know, the
liberals went way too far. I think this was the
case in academia, you know. I think this was the
case at my alma mater, Harvard, where certain professors lost
their jobs right for I was saying idea, you know,
for engaging in research that was not politically correct, and
(22:15):
that's not what academia is about. As long as you
are not academically dishonest, as long as you're actually kind
of trying to figure out what the truth is, you know,
you're allowed to hold different opinions. But I think that
as you say, this isn't like we've devolved, like this
is horrifying, like that this is now the spiral right,
(22:36):
and instead you need to kind of reset and go
back to those first principles and say, Okay, you know,
free speech, we're for it. The Supreme Court has to
say this country is for free speech, and the FCC
can't be threatening licenses because of something somebody said that
they don't like, and we can't be in a climate,
you know. After that, Trump doubled down and said, yeah,
(22:58):
you know, you shouldn't criticize the president. If we don't
like you or you say something bad about me, there
are going to be consequences. I mean, it's insane right
for a president to say that, But we're at the
point where people there are a lot of people who
don't think it's insane and who are like, yeah, serves
you right, you shouldn't criticize the president. And the funniest
thing is what has prompted this whole conversation is the
(23:23):
death of Charlie Kirk, who I think, you know, I
didn't know him and I didn't know much about him
until he died. To be perfectly honest, But I think
he would be someone who actually would be opposed to
all of this because he was a proponent of free speech.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
No, and you know a lot of these videos have
circulated on social media of him, like debating on college
campus is kind of like his big thing, and like,
you know, he he was good at that. And the
whole idea was it's an open for him, come debate me,
bro right, and like here, I'll get myself in trouble
with probably only a very small fraction or audience. Right,
(24:01):
you know, there aren't that many I don't think super
eloquent spokespeople for the Trumpian movement. Okay, and yet half
the country forty nine point nine percent, he won the
popular vote. You know, half the country voted for it
last time. And like and like, you know, you have
(24:24):
to live in that world. And if you're not going to, like,
you know, give a platform to Ben Shapiro or Charlie kan,
who the fuck are you going to give a plat
form too? You know what I mean, you have to
be willing to have you know, again, I believe in
speech broadly, not I just don't think of speech as
the free amendment. But I believe in like we have
to have a more tolerant tolerance is a word I
(24:45):
would use, right, A more tolerant ecosystem for disagreement.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Absolutely more tolerant. And I would also say kinder right
where your knee jerk reaction isn't like fuck this person.
But okay, you know this doesn't sound right to me,
But where are you coming from? Like to try to understand,
to at least try to come from a place of
(25:12):
kindness and not a place of pitchforks, and like, let's
burn you down, which is I think, you know, to
bring this back to Kimmel, which is I think the
natural end of all of this rhetoric is, you know,
we're going to burn you down, and we're going to
remove you from the air, and we're going to threaten
(25:33):
the license of your parent company, and we're going to
show you whose boss. And as you started off you
know the segment by saying, Nate, you know, this is
authoritarianism with a capital A one oh one, right, Like
this is the playbook? Like this is what you do
is you take opposition, You take things that you don't
(25:54):
agree with, and instead of tolerating them having discourse, you
just remove it, you say no, and then you remove
the people and next step jail right like that, that's
what happens. Next you start jailing the journalist. You don't
just remove them from air. And this has happened in
the United States before, and we had come a long
(26:15):
long way since then, and now it seems like we're
devolving again. The United States has been falling right on
all of the rankings of freedom of press and freedom
of society, all of those global rankings. All of a sudden,
the United States has gone from being a leader to
you know, in some cases, falling out of the top ten.
(26:35):
And that's not where you want to be going. We'll
be back right after this. Like I said, we're taping
this on Monday, and I'm very curious to know what
Kimmel is going to sound like when he comes on
(26:57):
the air, because there's also, as we talked about last
week Nate chilling effects right and self censorship, and you
can imagine a future where people are like, Okay, well,
I'm just going to tread really lightly and not talk
about certain people and not talk about certain topics and
engage in self censorship, which people have been doing for
a number of years. And I think that happened with
(27:20):
the first wave of actual cancel culture. I just I
keep wanting to stress that the Kimmel thing is different
because it was coming from the FCC. So that's censorship.
That's media censorship, which is a very different thing.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
It's different. I mean there are you know, different does
not necessarily mean worse or better. I mean, I feel
like people are like.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
In this case, I think it means worse. I understand
that word does not, but I think government censorship is
worse than well.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
I kind of believe in the fourth estate in a
sense of like media both kind of upper highbrow media
meaning like the New York Times and publications like that,
and kind of lower media like mass entertainment. Like you know,
they have a lot of shared cultural powers, like I don't.
(28:13):
I think they're equal to a branch of government de
facto in terms of the amount of power they have
and when they act in unison, right, when you organize
attemps to cancel people that may originate, you know, from
progressive to now them a livelihood, like I I it's different.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
It's probably less capital a authoritarian.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, it's also awful, Like I I'm not I'm not
trying to say anything nice about the Jeff Bezoss of
the world. Don't get me wrong, I think that it's
really scary on that level too.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Yeah, And you know, I would like to see more liberals,
especially they want to have the moral hot ground. If
progressors want to say, we're just in a fucking wrestling
match with the GOP and will win through not brute force,
but will win a maybe we're we think we're smarter,
will win a tactically battle or whatever else. Right, you know,
(29:03):
I would like to say I've seen a couple like
Abby Phillip, who was an anchor on CNN right, had
a good segment about this.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
But like, I would like to see more liberals say
we fucked.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Up, right, we fucked up by abandoning free speech as
a principle, by pretending. You know, all these people that
do the cancel and they never have any heterodox quote
unquote opinions themselves, right, they always like have tuikie cutter
opinions because they're not Actually, I mean, I don't like
these people, so I'm not going to say anything overly generous, right,
you know, I think a lot of people formulate their
(29:33):
political beliefs because of pure pressure.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
And one of the problems with journalism and kind of
the liberal academy more broadly is like, and that includes
a lot of fucking lonely souls who who are looking
to be joiners, right, And I'm I'm against that, you know.
I think if you've never pissed an audience off or
your own audience off, then like, how can you have
lived in a very complicated world like we live in
for you know, decades and not at some point had
(29:59):
an opinion that differed from your tribe?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Right? You know, that's totally fine if you each want
to go in like and open a.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Nice little you know, pasta restaurant or something and get
along with your customers.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
But if you're a political commentator and you've never said
anything that pisses someone off, then you are fucking like
terrible at your job. You shouldn't be canceled scent upliveing cancelation.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
But like, but you just tell that you don't have
any independent minded opinions and if you always align with
one party, the parties are these weird monstrosities. It's like
saying I think that like PEPSI coo everything that It's
like being a fanily of like PepsiCo or Coca Cola
or something. Right, Like, everything this gigantic, faciless corporation makes
is the best thing on earth. Right, It's you know,
that's what the political parties are. They're these kind of mediocre,
(30:40):
gigantic brands that are trying to cater to the mass
consumer and are pretty darn good at it.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
But like, but you're just being a fanboy if you're
always on the always advocating the party line.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely, you're being a brown spokesperson. I think
actually the the uh tie that you made to like
coke or Pepsi or something like that is a really
good one. Right, You're just being a brand spokesperson for
the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. And this is
why this is something that you and I talk about
on the show frequently. I don't think either one of
(31:10):
us likes the two party system. One of the main
problems I have with it is that it discourages independent thinking.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Too many people are like, oh, i'm a this, I'm
a that you apply the label and then you figure
out what do I think based on that, not what
do I think? Therefore, what do you know who do
I support people don't get that granular, or of course
some people do. But that kind of critical independent thinking
is something that we should be encouraging, we should be fostering.
We should be creating a culture where people are rewarded
(31:40):
for heterodoxy, not for its own sake, but just for
having their own mind and for being able to say
what they think. And there are you know, you can agree,
you can disagree, but yeah, we should be living in
a society where people think for themselves. And this is
something that both parties are absolutely to blame for, and
(32:02):
we are not in a good place right now. So
I really hope that everyone comes to their senses, including
the Supreme Court, that we actually start supporting free speech
and what it actually means right, which means that Jimmy
Kimmel could have fucked up something that he said and
then said, oh, you know, this wasn't actually true, and
(32:23):
he wasn't removed from the air. It's kind of that
sort of a culture, as opposed to one where we
start getting threats and trying to strong arm people into
cow towing whatever the party line happens to be right,
which could be liberal and it could be Republican and
(32:43):
it could be either one. I think that that's such
an incredibly dangerous moment. It really does bring me back
to the Soviet Union and that is not a good feeling.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Yeah, and usould create more sigma for cowardice.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
I mean, you know there were some people like in
the whole Charlie kirk Kimmel thing, I mean, like you
know Ted Cruz of all people.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Oh, I was about to say I actually agreed with
Ted Cruz for once in my life. I was like,
what is happening, Ted, Crew? Like this is bad?
Speaker 3 (33:11):
You probably are more familiar with the research on this, right,
But like when when a small number of people who
are influential or actually have something to lose, right when
they speak up. You know, even Michael Eisner, the former
CEO of Disney, I don't know if he's a friend
of me with Bob byker or right, but he said,
what the fuck are you doing?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Bob?
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Right, And like, I'm sure that's you know, Disney's company,
where people are usually pretty nice, right, And so that
might have had an influence too, Right.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yes, there's a lot of research on that night. It's
a very good point, and yes, all it takes is
one even just one influential voice, and that can completely
change the dynamic and what people feel empowered to say
or do. But this is a really interesting topic and
I think one that we are going to keep revisiting
on this show. And I hope Nate that our show
(34:01):
is still on the air even if we say something
that you know, the FCC might not like.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
What's your most cancelable opinion? See, that's like a question
you can answer.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, well, let's come back to that. I think that'll
be an interesting and interesting segment. No, I actually I
think that that is an interesting segment.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
What's the most cansful opinion?
Speaker 3 (34:19):
That It's like, it's actually your seventh most canceful opinion
probably you know what I.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Mean, right right?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
You have to do the game theory of that and
you have to play that out.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Well.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
We hope you feel more educated about free speech, which
is something that really is core to risky business and
to our ability to have this show, and to me
as an ex Soviet immigrant, it's something near and dear
to my heart. So good luck, Jimmy Kimmel. I hope
that your return to the air was a good one.
(34:54):
Let us know what you think of the show reach
out to Us at Risky Business at pushkin dot Fm.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova and by.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Me Nate Silvery.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
The show was a cool production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer
is Sonia gerwit Lydia, Jean Kott and daphnew Chen are
our editors, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
If you like this show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, but once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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