You can subscribe to The Buzzmeter by clicking here.
Jane Fonda and The Ankler have decided to cosplay oppression and fear of “authoritarianism” and free speech. Neither of them had spoken a single word in the past ten years, as Hollywood brought back the blacklists and silenced speech, forbade dissent, and transformed the industry into a dogma delivery device. Gone was real creative expression, gone was the truth, any kind of truth. Only one message was allowed — and still is allowed.
They said nothing when Graham Linehan was arrested in the UK for offensive speech that they deemed dangerous. They said nothing when Gina Carano was fired for a tweet (later uncanceled by Disney, who settled), or when the FBI worked with the Democrats to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop by pressuring Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube ahead of the 2020 election, lying to the public that it was “Russian disinformation.”
They said nothing when the Biden administration censored speech on social media with a direct line to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. That is a violation of the First Amendment, but saying so would be a thought crime. You see, it isn’t free speech they care about. It’s power. They feel theirs slipping away.
If Jimmy Kimmel is tossed off the air for two seconds because he lied to the American people about the Charlie Kirk shooter, he could have easily set up shop somewhere else, as those of us who have been purged from utopia had to do. That doesn’t mean authoritarianism is here — if he had been shot on the spot or thrown in jail, then you could make that argument.
The side where people are afraid to express their thoughts is the side that doesn’t value free speech. That’s not the Right, that’s the Left. In fact, no one can shut the Left up. They have a 100% share of voice, morning, noon, and night. Trump’s FCC was concerned that the public airwaves not be used as a platform for pure propaganda for one political party at the taxpayers’ expense. Never in my lifetime has television been this partisan, but all media, comedy and Hollywood took a side in 2016.
The Democrats claimed all of American culture for themselves and told the other half of the country they were not allowed in because they did not believe or comply with the curated language and strident doctrine of the Left. The Democrats and the Left took ownership of public television, public radio, and the airwaves — but these were not theirs to take. Theoretically, they belong to all of us. They don’t get to decide what ideology must be forced down America’s throat. That isn’t democracy. It’s totalitarianism.
I find it ironic that Jane Fonda is out front pretending to care about McCarthyism, knowing full well that the blacklists are already here. They’ve been here for ten years. If you are “canceled,” you are blacklisted. Take it from me.
Jane Fonda’s Women’s Media Center dropped me as a freelance writer for their annual Oscars report, which I’d been writing, for low pay, mind you, for many years. Why? Because of thought crimes. The Hollywood Reporter’s Rebecca Keegan believed those thought crimes warranted a spotlight, so she approached Academy voters and industry professionals to ask them about their thoughts on my thought crimes, and lo and behold, they did not like them. They were punishable with blacklisting.
The problem for Hollywood is that they have built an insular feedback loop of confirmation bias. They want you in the AM with NPR, then in the afternoon with an insular media feedback loop of confirmation bias and mass hysteria, then the MS-NOW power lineup before finishing the night with Kimmel, Colbert, Oliver. Can you imagine being able to escape that? It’s Orwell’s Two Minutes of Hate all day, every day.
Those who dissent are blacklisted, while those who pander and conform are rewarded. Then, everyone pats themselves on the back and pretends they’re the free speech side. Jeff Wells’ Hollywood Elsewhere is read by many Academy members, including JJ Abrams, Cameron Crowe, Warren Beatty, and Luca Guadagnino, among others. His site is a must-read. But he, too, has been blacklisted. Why? Because he posted something as distasteful as Jimmy Kimmel’s joke, he was immediately deleted, but it didn’t matter. The mob came for him.
Jeff Wells was booted out of Gold Derby, the Critics’ Choice, and now is lucky if one studio advertises on his site, and we’re all supposed to take them seriously when they pretend to care about free speech?
Inside utopia, the wealthy have everything they could ever want. They have their massive homes in Malibu. They have their Oscars. They have their extreme wealth. They have award shows. They have their lovely serene photos on Instagram where they are celebrated by the media. We’re meant to envy them, to want to be like them, even as they point their finger and tell half of America that they’re human garbage.
By now, much of the public has turned away, which is why independent media and a counterculture are experiencing a surge. This is a truth no one on the Left wants to face, even with box office failures, or declining ratings, or disappearing voters. They demand people love them, or at least are too afraid to speak out against them.
That was the key difference between Hitler and Stalin, and why George Orwell wrote 1984. Hitler didn’t care. Fascism meant it doesn’t matter what people think. If you go against the state, you are not canceled from your low-rated late-night TV show, but thrown in jail or shot on the spot.
The fear in this country is not on the Right, it’s on the Left. Look around. Ask yourselves, are you afraid to say what you really think? Do you think the writers in the trades feel comfortable speaking the truth about anything? Do screenwriters feel free to write the truth every time they sit down to write a screenplay? Do producers and directors feel free from activists with clipboards policing their hearts and minds?
Let’s not pretend for one second that this is a side that cares about free speech. They care about “correct” speech. If you obey, as Jimmy Kimmel, Jane Fonda, and everyone who covers film and television in Hollywood now, you are handsomely rewarded. If you do not obey, if you dissent, you are severely punished. Kimmel finally got a tiny taste of what everyone else has been dealing with forever.
True, the government wasn’t always involved, but they didn’t have to be. And sometimes they were. Chuck Schumer demanded that Rupert Murdoch rein in Tucker Carlson just before the network fired him. But in general, the mob tends to do the bidding of politicians on both sides. The Right is attempting to “cancel” Netflix because of its ubiquitous queer programming. The Left just tried to cancel a TikTok influencer named Hannah Brown for attending Charlie Kirk’s memorial service.
You won’t hear in your circles any defense of JK Rowling, who is too rich to touch. But recently, Emma Watson backed off from the trend to condemn, cancel, demonize, threaten, bully, and harass JK Rowling for her thought crimes on gender ideology. It did not go well for Emma, I’m afraid.
The worm has turned. The majority is tired of being bossed around and scolded for thought crimes. The reason Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X was that the Democrats had taken complete control of the platform, and censorship was routine. You could be banned for using the wrong pronoun, for instance. The price to pay for that is offensive speech, which is all over the platform, though I suppose it depends on how you define the word “offensive.”
Elon Musk spent $45 billion to free the bird. That is how much he cares about free speech and how little the Left or the Democrats do. It isn’t speech they want freed — it’s their power to drive their own singular message to the people. That is why Richard Rushfield openly wept, he said, when Kimmel was put back on the air, a decision the network could have made at any time.
The lawsuits by Trump, the defunding of NPR and PBS are ways the discarded half of America is choosing to fight back. The Democrats have known for my entire lifetime that the Republicans wanted to defund NPR and PBS. So why were they so careless with that? Why were they careless with Roe v. Wade and the border? They’ve had decades to deal with these conflicts; they could see coming from a mile away. They just never factored in a guy like Trump, who would fight back.
Kimmel, Colbert, and others on the Left celebrated when people on the Right were banned from social media or when they were fired for thought crimes. It’s okay when it happens to other people, their sworn enemies. But if you stand up for free speech, you have to fight for all free speech, even speech you detest. Why didn’t any of them say a word about Graham Linehan? Because to do so would be a thought crime. Just admit it. Admit you are too afraid to say anything. At least then you won’t be lying to yourselves.
Kimmel’s firing was not a free speech issue, no matter how much people want it to be. Sooner or later, the networks will have to confront the issue of fairness and themselves, considering that ABC, CBS, and NBC are often accused of being pure propaganda for one political party. I can tell you, if the Right had that kind of totalitarian control, the Left would never stand for it.
