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by rattlesnakedave 282 days ago
“Comments quoted in stories assert that the shooter was MAGA - maybe that’s somewhat controversial”

It was counter to what was reported by federal investigators the day before the show. He was deliberately spreading misinformation.

2 comments

> 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 did not assert Mr. Robinson was anything he wasn't. Kimmel noted how some people are doing everything possible to distance themselves from Mr. Robinson.

AFAIK all information anybody had at the time was that he grew up in a good gun-loving Republican family and he'd written some silly memes on the shell casings.

The discord chats and his relationship with a trans woman were AFAIK not revealed yet, or at least were so new that they maybe hadn't made it to Kimmel's writers room.

That kind of problem gets a demand of a retraction, not a firing.

Contrast that to a Fox News host calling for mass executions of homeless people the other day (and since that day there have been multiple mass killings of homeless people). That guy got off with a thin apology.

To be specific, Brian Kilmeade deliberately moved the Overton window on mentally ill homeless people into holocaust territory.

“just kill ’em”

But the FCC accuses Kimmel of “alienating the audience”.

It's "Rules for thee but not for me," with these folks.

And it's not like it's a surprise either. As Sartre observed[0] decades ago:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

It's quite nauseating.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-...