When CBS Canceled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour for Criticizing the American Establishment and the Vietnam War (1969)

I was 9 years old when that hap­pened, and I still remem­ber it. It was such a huge, shock­ing, and con­tro­ver­sial event, it dom­i­nat­ed the news to the point that 9 yo’s heard all about it. It was huge because of the threat to our First Amend­ment rights. Peo­ple who did­n’t appre­ci­ate the Smoth­ers Broth­ers or their takes were as out­raged as those who sup­port­ed them, because it’s one thing to dis­like some­one’s speech, and it’s a whole dif­fer­ent thing to pre­vent them from say­ing it.

Bryan. So you are out­raged that Kim­mel lumped Kirk’s assas­in with the Maga move­ment and you accuse him of lying about this on nation­al TV.
You are cor­rect. Kim­mel used the ini­tial press report that the killer came from a MAGA fam­i­ly and he should not have used pre­lim­i­nary info in his monolog as a state­ment of fact. But, if you are out­raged by this “lie”, then you must real­ly be out­raged night­ly by Pres­i­dent Trump who is on nation­al TV dai­ly often lying to the Amer­i­can peo­ple and false­ly accus­ing his oppo­nents of all types of crim­i­nal offens­es. Think about which is the greater crime.

Maybe if Susan Car­lyle took her head out of the a55 of MSNBC, CNN, and oth­er sim­i­lar net­works, she’d real­ize that the mur­der­er was in no way a MAGA sup­port­er. Nei­ther was his boyfriend. It’s this spew­ing of hatred and fac­tu­al mis­in­for­ma­tion that leads to events such as that which occurred on Sep 10. Do bet­ter, Susan Car­lyle!

Even if you think Kim­mel was wrong or reck­less in what he said, that does­n’t change the fact that the FCC chair pub­licly threat­ened broad­cast licens­es over a host’s polit­i­cal com­men­tary. That’s not a “busi­ness deci­sion,” that’s gov­ern­ment pres­sure chill­ing speech, and it’s exact­ly what the First Amend­ment for­bids. Net­works can can­cel shows for bad rat­ings or com­men­tary they find objec­tion­able, but when fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors use licens­ing threats to steer polit­i­cal con­tent, it cross­es into uncon­sti­tu­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry.

Thumbs way way up!

The far left can stomp their feet, scream it’s how it’s not fair, and hold their breath’til they turn pur­ple, but remem­ber when they got Rosanne fired from ROSANNE!

I still get mad about that! I won’t watch it.

Noth­ing in the Con­sti­tu­tion reserves you the right to say what you want on tele­vi­sion. You can com­plain your employ­er isn’t let­ting you express your­self at work, but the Con­sti­tu­tion does­n’t allow you to say what you want to the detri­ment of your employ­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it’s a per­son­al opin­ion. You can say what you want, but you are not pro­tect­ed from oth­er pri­vate indi­vid­u­als’ opin­ions. Unless it’s a clear whistle­blow­er sit­u­a­tion, an employ­er is well with­in its rights to remove you from its employ­ment if it does­n’t agree with your speech or finds it hurts the employ­er in some way. The Smoth­ers Broth­ers had a con­tract and were com­pen­sat­ed for the break­ing of that con­tract, but not because their free speech rights were vio­lat­ed — which they weren’t — but because CBS said in a con­tract they would give the broth­ers anoth­er sea­son for their show and then vio­lat­ed the con­tract by can­celling the show. You are not enti­tled to say what­ev­er you like with­out reper­cus­sions from oth­er pri­vate indi­vid­u­als. The gov­ern­ment is pre­vent­ed by the 1st Amend­ment from silenc­ing peo­ple; it does not pro­tect any­one from pub­lic opin­ion. Like­wise, no one is enti­tled to spout demon­stra­bly false infor­ma­tion… We have slan­der and libel laws, and employ­ers are acute­ly aware of their expo­sure to those laws by their employ­ees. Are some peo­ple on both sides tak­ing their reac­tions to extremes — yes, as has become all too nor­mal in this coun­try. Trump and his peo­ple need to think before act­ing and speak­ing, which isn’t hap­pen­ing fre­quent­ly enough fol­low­ing the Kirk assas­si­na­tion; some of that can be explained by grief and shock, but gov­ern­ment can’t act like a pri­vate indi­vid­ual. Like­wise, peo­ple on the left need to show com­mon decen­cy when some­one with which they dis­agree is gunned down while try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate and con­nect with oth­ers; you don’t sup­port, defend or glo­ri­fy that.

Gee Mr Trump. The lady doth protest too much. Noth­ing you said is true. Kim­mel said the truth and you did­n’t like it. Sor­ry not sor­ry. CANCEL DISNEY, PARAMOUNT, AND BOYCOTT SINCLAIR AND NEXSTAR.
NO MORE PROPAGANDA! CANCEL FOX FOR LYING TO AMERICA FOR DECADES AND STOP THE DOUBLE STANDARDS… REPUBLICAN CRIMINALS GASLIGHT US DAILY… THE SHOE WILL BE ON THE OTHER FOOT ONE DAY AND QE WILL MAKE SURE IT FITS FIRMLY UP YOUR .…

I agree; buf­foons all.

The shoot­er was in a rela­tion­ship with a male fur­ry. Putting it blunt­ly, he was doing the hibib­dy-dibidy with a dog. And left­ists love it!

Peo­ple laud­ing Kirk here might want to research these three names: Her­schel Gryn­sz­pan, Sergei Kirov and Horst Wes­sel.

All of that is sim­ply not true. To take on the eas­i­est of your mis­state­ments: if his rat­ings were bad, why would they bring him back on the air less than a week lat­er?

What he actu­al­ly SAID was the right (I assume that includes you) were tying them­selves into knots try­ing to deny that the shoot­er might be a right-winger. That’s a true state­ment — Trump and oth­ers were claim­ing it was a lib­er­al before they even had a sus­pect in cus­tody.

Try not to take every­thing right-wing media says as gospel, and think for your­self a lit­tle.

Kel­ly, did you see the news report that Grindr, the hookup app for gay men, crashed in Ari­zona at the exact time that Kirk’s funer­al was going on?

My, my, my…

All so very true!

Appar­ent­ly you can’t spell and you debate a top­ic with crude sex­u­al ref­er­ences — grow up!