The news that ABC has quietly reinstated Jimmy Kimmel to his late-night perch is being sold as a triumph for free speech, but the truth is more cynical and more troubling. Kimmel was not fired because he made a joke or voiced an opinion; he was suspended because he refused to apologize. That distinction matters, though few in the media want to spell it out. In America, you can say just about anything you want — but your employer can still show you the door if you embarrass them. In Kimmel’s case, he was told to issue a mea culpa for the timing and tone of his remarks about Charlie Kirk. He didn’t, and that’s why his show went dark. To pretend this was a First Amendment battle is to miss the point entirely.
No one is saying Kimmel doesn’t have the right to call Charlie Kirk an “a**hole” or worse. He can stand on the roof of his studio, shout it into a megaphone, and nobody can haul him away for it. That’s free speech. But ABC also has the right to discipline him if they think his words cross a line. Networks exercise that right all the time. Roseanne Barr tweeted something offensive, and she was gone by the next morning. Dave Chappelle tells jokes that offend progressive orthodoxy, and activists swarm Netflix demanding his cancellation. Scott Baio, who gave speeches supporting Donald Trump, was effectively blackballed from Hollywood altogether. There was no handwringing about free speech when those artists were sidelined. They weren’t rescued by a sympathetic network; they were shut out. Yet Kimmel gets a different standard. Why? Because he is one of their own.
This is what rankles. When comedians or commentators outside the approved ideological bubble speak freely, they are punished. When insiders cross a line, they get a slap on the wrist and a glossy press release about the “importance of diverse viewpoints.” That’s not free speech. That’s favoritism. And it’s a telltale sign that America’s cultural and corporate institutions are not neutral referees. They are for sale to the highest bidder.
The FCC too, hovers in the background. If a broadcast network peddles falsehoods or violates decency rules, the Commission has the authority to revoke or suspend its license. That’s the nuclear option, but it’s always there, and every executive knows it. So the stakes are real. The government doesn’t regulate taste — it regulates licenses. The networks regulate their employees. Somewhere in that tangle, accountability is supposed to emerge. But in Kimmel’s case, the rules seem to have melted away. He refused to apologize, and instead of holding the line, ABC blinked. If he comes back on the air without so much as a token acknowledgment of poor judgment, it will be a signal that the game is rigged. Not in favor of free speech, but in favor of connections, money, and ideology.
It’s worth remembering that this is not the first time America has watched this play out. Celebrities and entertainers across the spectrum have been forced into humiliating public apologies for less. They’ve lost gigs, lost sponsors, lost their livelihoods. But Kimmel’s defenders are spinning his refusal to apologize as some bold stand for free speech. That framing is dishonest. This was never about the First Amendment. It was about whether a major network could enforce a basic professional standard on its own employee. And it turns out, when the employee is on the right team politically, the answer is no.
If Kimmel returns without ever apologizing, it won’t be a victory for free speech. It will be another reminder that in today’s America, some voices are protected and others are crushed, not by the government but by the corporate machinery that masquerades as neutral while doing the bidding of its friends. Roseanne Barr was expendable. Scott Baio was blackballed. Dave Chappelle is tolerated only because his talent makes canceling him too costly. Jimmy Kimmel, meanwhile, is reinstated because the lefty establishment cannot imagine punishing one of their own.
That double standard is corrosive. It doesn’t strengthen free speech; it cheapens it. It tells every American that accountability is selective, that the rules are written in disappearing ink, and that principle is always subordinate to profit. When a man keeps his job not because he did the right thing, but because the right people protected him, we learn less about the strength of the First Amendment than about the weakness of our institutions. And that weakness should trouble us far more than any late-night monologue.