When Punchlines Become Permission Slips

Oh, the horror; poor, oppressed multimillionaire Jimmy Kimmel gets suspended just for making an innocent joke that displeased Donald Trump. Please. If that mutt was trash-talking Democrats the way he’s been trash-talking Republicans for years, they’d have been calling for his head on a pike by the second commercial break of the first episode.

This formula is long past played out: get a second- or third-rate comedian—Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, whoever, they’re all interchangeable—give ’em a TV show, and tell ’em they can spew out all the hate, bile, and lies they want because, hey, we’re gonna call it a monologue or satire, and that makes you untouchable. Because you can’t be held to account for all the hate and chaos you’re spreading around as long as you’re calling it comedy.

Or even when you’re calling it news, as I confirmed when I tried to find a stripped-down, bare-bones, just-tell-me-what-actually-happened account of Charlie Kirk’s murder. Most of the articles started out by distilling his entire life down to him being “a right-wing activist and close associate of President Trump,” then went straight into trying to gin up sympathy for the poor, misunderstood waif who shot him dead for no reason at all.

They say he was pushed over the line into violence by Charlie’s relentless fascism and homophobia (though they didn’t offer any evidence of either). And they all insisted there’s just no way to know anything about the shooter’s politics. Seriously? He scrawled things like “hey fascist, catch!” on his bullets, ferchrissakes; that doesn’t give you any insight into his mindset and motivation? Bet you wouldn’t have any trouble piecing a picture together if you found ammunition with “hey wokie, catch!” written on it.

I don’t know a whole lot about Charlie, but quite a few of his YouTube talk-back videos have caught my eye over the years, and they’ve all gone the same way: he’d invite anyone who disagreed with him about anything to step up to the mic and make their case. He never interrupted, insulted, or disrespected anyone in the clips I watched; he let them have their say, he paid attention while they said it, then he responded with his own perspective.

Because he obviously understood the value in knowing what makes people tick—what makes people believe what they believe. It’s also worth knowing which people can’t answer that question. They don’t make big red flags any bigger or redder than “I believe this because Jimmy Kimmel told me to.”

But like I say, I’m just going by the talk-back videos that I’ve run across deep down in various YouTube rabbit holes. Maybe there are videos that do show him out to be what the radical left keeps accusing him of being. That would surprise me, though. I’ve run up against enough actual neo-Nazi omniphobes over the years that I just can’t picture one hosting civil, courteous exchanges of beliefs and philosophies, even as a ruse.

Ordinarily, I’d do a quick search to see if there are any “fascist, Nazi, homophobic Charlie” videos out there, but no way am I walking into THAT punji pit again. I was disgusted enough with the kind of vermin I ran across just searching his name alone: people literally laughing about his murder, people saying he deserved to die, people mocking his widow and children. I shudder to imagine what I’d find by adding any of the left’s favorite buzzwords to the search.

Besides, I think it’s actually getting through to some of the ideologues that their team has crossed a dead-serious line this time. There’s no way to justify Charlie’s murder, but if they had anything that they believe mitigates it, I doubt we’d have to go looking for it.

But since I don’t want to keep standing up for something I’m wrong about, I gotta ask if there’s evidence: if you have any proof that Charlie Kirk was any of the things they’ve been calling him, I’d be grateful if you’d share it with me. Or actually, in Charlie’s memory, I’m gonna borrow his format:

Way too many people will believe without question everything their favorite morning show slags and late-night comics tell them, and if someone they disagree with gets murdered for it, well, that’s just pure comedy gold. Prove me wrong.

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Bama has been a rodeo cowboy, a professional stuntman, and, for 39 years and counting, a bouncer at various biker bars and redneck rat cage juke joints through the Deep South. He makes cool stuff as Crimson Tied Paragear, using knots his Army Ranger Scoutmaster taught him at Boy Scout summer camp deep in the Okinawan boonies back in 1972.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.