"Comics have long been on the front lines of democracy, the canary in the cat's mouth, Looney Tunes style, when it comes to free speech being swallowed by regressive politics. So Jimmy Kimmel is in good company, though he may not like this particular historical party: Zero Mostel; Philip Loeb; even Lenny Bruce, who claimed, after being watched by the FBI and backroom blacklisted, that he was less a comic and more "the surgeon with the scalpel for false values.""
"For a while, during Trump 2.0, the ire of the right was aimed at California in general and San Francisco in particular, that historical lefty bastion that, with its drug culture, openly LBGTQ+ ethos and Pelosi-Newsom political dynasty seemed to make it the perfect example of what some consider society's failures. But really, the difficulty with hating San Francisco is that it doesn't care. It's a city that has long acknowledged, even flaunted, America's discomfort with it."
Comics have long served as a frontline defense for free speech and democratic critique. Historical cases such as Zero Mostel, Philip Loeb, and Lenny Bruce show entertainers facing surveillance, blacklisting, and career destruction for satire. During McCarthyism the First Amendment right to lampoon public figures was attacked, costing careers and lives. Current actions against Jimmy Kimmel align with that lineage and demonstrate efforts to punish speech, silence dissent, and misuse government power. Political ire targeted California, especially San Francisco, during Trump 2.0, while San Francisco's outsider posture contrasts with Los Angeles's complacency and risk of normalizing silencing dissent.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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