I started this publication to talk about women’s health, women’s words, women’s battles, and women’s lives, but when men men men keep gunning down our fellow humans, sowing division, trafficking and raping girls, covering up evidence of the same, spouting lies, silencing detractors, quoting bible verses to excuse bigotry, and running both democracy and our fragile republic into the ground with unprecedented attacks on our constitutional norms, those of us who still have rational voices cannot afford to stay silent, no matter our gender, politics, or belief systems.
But speaking up, as we learned yesterday, has its costs.
I spoke up early on the morning of November 6, 2024, and was not only accused of an overreaction to the news of Trump’s election coronation that seems almost quaint in retrospect, I also received multiple threats from the far right and letters from subscribers cancelling their subscriptions, telling me to stay in my lane. I also worry about being added to an alleged McCarthy-esque, FBI watchlist of writers and journalists for even mentioning the name Charlie Kirk on the internet, minus hagiography.
But those of us who are independent journalists and therefore beholden only to you, Dear Subscribers—and not to corporations with billion dollar deals that require bending the knee to the FCC—must, I believe, start exercising our First Amendment rights as loudly as we can, while we still can. Besides, I was a whistleblower during the first Trump administration, I was interviewed extensively by the FBI in my home, so I assume they already have a file on me that is fairly thick at this point. Never mind that the IRS audited my 2018 taxes—the year I first made a claim against my Trump-supporting harasser—but not until after the election in 2024. Which was odd, to say the least, and suspicious enough in its timing that I do not believe it was a coincidence.
For those of you who haven’t seen the clip that got Jimmy Kimmel suspended, here it is:
Please note that it is Trump, in this clip, who actually hoists himself by his own (reportedly malodorous) petard, and that Jimmy Kimmel’s immediate reaction to the murder of Charlie Kirk, on Instagram, was as follows: “Instead of angry finger-pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”
For the record, I agree with Kimmel’s sentiment. I do not and will not ever condone political violence or any violence of any kind. However, also, for the record, Charlie Kirk’s schtick and brand depended upon—and his income derived from—spouting sexist, racist, antisemitic, anti-trans, homophobic, and divisive rhetoric, which, like it or not, must also be protected, in a free society, by the First Amendment, but need not be mourned. I urge you to read Ta Nahesi Coats’ latest piece in Vanity Fair, where he has all the links and receipts. Here’s just a small taste of it:
But I don’t really want to talk about Charlie Kirk today. I want to talk about the erosion of our First Amendment rights when a comedian gets suspended for satire, which in this case was simply Jimmy Kimmel making fun of a sitting U.S. president’s inappropriate and cold reaction to the murder of his supposed friend. That is why this morning, I decided to text Ian Rosenberg, a former ABC News lawyer and professor, to ask him to help me not only make sense of what just happened last night vis a vis Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension and First Amendment law, but also to help us all figure out what we, as U.S. citizens, can and must do going forward to save our crumbling democracy and to speak out against tyranny. Conveniently, Rosenberg just published a book on the topic, the Free Speech Handbook. Let it be a guide for us all through these dark and scary times.
I will leave you with these prescient thoughts from two years ago, by Jon Stewart, in his 2022 acceptance speech for the Mark Twain prize for humor, because he said it all first and better:
“It’s not the woke police that’re gonna be an existential threat to comedy. It’s not the Fresh Prince, it’s the crown prince. It’s not the fragility of audiences, it’s the fragility of leaders. You don’t owe us anything, as an audience. If we say shit you don’t like, say shit back, do whatever you gotta do. Don’t get up and hit us. But that’s just the game we’re in. We talk shit for a living, you talk shit back, and we just gotta be better than you. And we’ve gotta find a way to entertain you. But the threat to comedy, comedy doesn’t change the world, but it’s a bellwether. We’re the banana peel in the coal mine. When a society is under threat, comedians are the ones who get sent away first. It’s just a reminder to people that democracy is under threat. Authoritarians are the threat to comedy, to art, to music, to thought, to poetry, to progress, to all those things. All that shit is a red herring. It ain’t the pronoun police, it’s the secret police. It always has been, and it always will be. And this man’s decapitated visage is a reminder to all of us that what we have is fragile, and precious. And the way to guard against it isn’t to change how audiences think. It’s to change how leaders lead. And so, I thank you so much for your support tonight, and for this award.
