Dear Hollywood Free Speech Activists,
Where were you? No, really, where have you been?
ABC’s suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” has triggered a crush of celebrities bemoaning an assault on speech.
- Howard Stern bravely canceled his Disney+ account in response to Kimmel’s benching
- Sarah McLachlan nixed a publicity appearance to protest free speech under fire
- Angelina Jolie says she no longer recognizes her country following Kimmel’s punishment
- Hypocrite extraordinaire Pedro Pascal shared a stunning and brave “Standing with Jimmy” message on Instagram
That’s just a sample of the collective outrage. Today, 400 celebrities signed an ACLU pledge supporting Kimmel.
400 celebrities — from Tom Hanks to Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jason Bateman and more — have teamed up with the ACLU to slam Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension.
“We now find ourselves in a modern McCarthy era, facing exactly the type of heavy-handed government… pic.twitter.com/oZMe1TBjfO
— Variety (@Variety) September 22, 2025
First, some facts.
Kimmel is not gone from the late-night scene. ABC is trying to negotiate his return, but published accounts insist he refuses to apologize for a big, fat, cruel lie he told to smite MAGA Nation. And that’s after he once boasted he does all he can to get the facts right on his show and happily apologizes when he doesn’t.
The lie in question, which blamed MAGA for Charlie Kirk’s death, came during a national tragedy.
The late-night host’s ratings haven’t been good enough to protect him from controversy, at least not anymore.
Jimmy Kimmel did to ABCs ratings what the Liberal Party has done to Canada’s economy.
Relentless decline. For a decade.
His snarky take on Charlie Kirk’s murder was the final straw for ABC.
Kimmel wasn’t paid for ‘free speech’ he was paid to be funny.
Wasn’t funny,… https://t.co/CmsUZ2LnBp pic.twitter.com/NjBMsvZMX1
— David Knight Legg (@KnightLegg) September 21, 2025
The show may be losing money, if comparisons to CBS’s “The Late Show” can be made, although this isn’t clear. It’s true that late-night TV’s revenue stream has collapsed in recent years, and similar shows have tightened their belts by reducing the number of episodes per week (“The Tonight Show”) and firing the house band (“Late Night with Seth Meyers”).
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr did share views on “The Benny Show” last week that could be chilling for the free speech movement, but there’s no proof that the affiliates who balked at airing Kimmel’s show – the spark that set this imbroglio in motion – were coerced by Carr’s statements.
And President Donald Trump did what he often does … suggest the government will lean on free speech, even though those broadsides have yet to amount to actual action. Thank goodness.
That’s where we stand.
Now, celebrities who still insist it’s a free speech issue can have their say, of course. It’s important to stand tall when speech is threatened in any manner.
But, to repeat ourselves, where have they been? Or, to quote a certain movie cop, welcome to the party, pal!
Free speech has been under serial attack for the past decade.
- Cancel Culture threatened comedians for sharing the “wrong” jokes or just resurfacing decade-old material. Just ask Kevin Hart
- Sensitivity readers have erased passages from works by Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie. Said readers likely erased much more during the editing process of newer works. We may never know the damage done to the arts
- The Twitter Files revealed direct government pressure to censor Americans across the digital landscape
- The U.S. government pressured Facebook to ban or shadow ban news about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election
- The Biden administration tried to create a new body to eradicate so-called “misinformation,” but thankfully, it wasn’t successful
- A rodeo clown was drummed out of the business for mocking then-President Barack Obama
- The Left tried to cancel Joe Rogan for sharing alternate opinions on COVID-19, some of which proved 100 percent accurate
- Trans activists, and their media allies, tried to cancel Dave Chappelle for telling trans-adjacent jokes on his Netflix special, “The Closer”
- ABC fired Roseanne Barr for one ugly, racially-charged Tweet for which she swiftly apologized, unlike a certain late-night TV host
- European countries, particularly England, have clamped down hard on social media-related speech
- Disney fired Gina Carano for sharing a Nazi analogy that pleaded for empathy, ignoring nastier posts shared by her “Mandalorian” co-star, Pedro Pascal
- The Hollywood Blacklist 2.0 continued apace
- Conservative speakers faced relentless attacks on college campuses, often requiring sizable sums for security personnel. Ben Shapiro recently shared his security team pressed him to wear bulletproof vests during select appearances. Riley Gaines hid for hours while thugs raged outside
- Jewish artists faced cancellation threats, and worse, for simply appearing on stage and/or performing
- Artists self-censored for fear of professional reprisals. Some even memory-holed their own work
- Charlie Kirk, one of the most active proponents of speech and free debate, was gunned down by a Leftist thug and the stars ignored the topic at the Emmys
- Oh, and Hollywood celebrities cheered when social media giants kicked President Donald Trump off their networks following the Jan. 6 riot
This is a partial list. Most of the above items directly impacted the entertainment industry. And, with some notable exceptions – Rob Schneider, Joe Rogan, John Cleese rush to mind – Hollywood didn’t say “boo.”
Kimmel was one of many to stand down through it all.
Why?
The answer is simple and threefold. Celebrities were afraid that if they spoke up, they might be next. They didn’t realize that standing up, en masse, would protect them while sending a powerful message to the woke scolds.
They chose otherwise.
Some, due to their siloed newsfeed, weren’t aware of some of these horrifying cases.
More importantly, celebrities weren’t interested in defending speech when Trump wasn’t involved in the matter. President Trump was out of office for the last four years, so they couldn’t use speech-related battles to attack him.
Once they saw it as a way to attack Orange Man Bad, they pounced and seized on the matter.
It’s that simple.
Now, at the very least, these sudden free speech warriors should cop to their nuclear-grade double standards and let’s fight for free speech for everyone.
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