Proglodytes are strange creatures. A few years ago, there was fanfare and parade confetti for the Jankowitch. Nina Jankowitz was hand-picked to be Joe Biden’s federal censor. The new leader of the Department of Truth, appropriately misnamed the Disinformation Governance Board, would pick and choose truths and ensure that all media, social, antisocial, whatever, understood what was not true.
It was a bit ex post facto. Biden’s DOJ was already using the FBI to strong-arm social media into censoring for it. Old news that would make news as the Twitter Files. Years of lying about it were exposed after Elon, then only a paltry mega-billionaire, shared the internal memos with actual reporters who promised to break the stories on X.
A good deal of unconstitutional behavior was uncovered, and while X marked the spot, Facebook had to admit to it as well. Police-state intimidation was leveraged to silence what turned out to be the truth, but that didn’t in any way detract from the Disinformation Governance Board’s eponymous, fleeting existence. Its job was to manage disinformation to keep the truth from finding the light of day and, if it did, to deprive it of oxygen.
It was one of the few times the left actually called something what it was, and at the time, all of the moths that circle the progressive dim bulb were 1) all in on COVID censorship and 2) sad to see Nina’s Ministry of Truth undermined before it could even learn to walk.
Leap from 2022 to 2025/2026, and it’s a different world, and not just for people on the right who are smiling loudly about how miserable the left is since November of 2024. The FCC, which is one of those independent things that isn’t independent when it does things Libs think they can leverage to make Trump look like a dictator. It suggested how it might bring the hammer down on ABC for letting Kimmel be a dick. But that’s his job. And whether you agree or disagree about the anti-Kirk, post-assassination drivel that got him briefly suspended, ABC pays him to lose money.
The left, always happy to champion a dick if he’s one of theirs, especially if it’s on a woman (Kimmel should consider the irony of that as a possible ratings move with or without a trampoline), acted outraged. How dare you censor Kimmel, even after it was the honey in their gruel during the COVID dark ages and inseparable from the final form of government they claim to crave.
Late-Night failure becomes an overnight hero, and unlike a lot of things that happen to which Democrats respond, this one has translated into actual legislation.
[D]efying all rational prediction, and within 24 months from progressives championing pandemic censorship, the ACLU, the fever swamps of lefty media, and NPR listeners still wearing double masks in their cars are all now championing a free-speech bill that outlaws exactly the sort of grey-area government censorship-by-proxy that they recently labeled as responsible moderation. …
How fully have progressives turned the corner on censorship? Get this: yesterday, the Daily KOS even renamed the Cruz-Wyden JAWBONE Act as, and I am not making this up, the “bipartisan Jimmy Kimmel Act.”
Long story short, there appears to be serious bipartisan support for a law that would make it illegal for the government or its agencies to use any of their powers to censor “media.”
Basically, the bill would forbid the government from censoring people by pressuring their media platforms. If it does happen, JAWBONE provides for injunctions, discovery, attorneys’ fees, damages, and basically a giant gavel with which to club bossy bureaucrats. It also requires the government to publish all its communications with media platforms transparently. No secrets.
Take a breath.
This is everything we could ask for and more. Everything we complained about during COVID that the proglodytes insisted was just more conspiracy theory. Shadow banning, deplatforming, and even debanking were encouraged by the feds using their police powers to silence dissent and disconnect rising digital soapbox stars from their revenue streams.
Trust me, Democrats do not want this. It is a maximum expression of a desire for transparency, which makes the progressive superstate more difficult to build.
To answer the question, no, if ever again in power, there is no evidence that any democrat run agency would behave any differently. The law doesn’t apply to them. I can also see a very clear and easy path for the progs to use this to fund third-party progressive actors. Just make a claim, demand damages, the Feds can cite some low-level flunky who owns up to something that didn’t happen, but there is a record of a call, and the Government claims no contest and writes a check.
Just another reason to support not just JAWBONE but the continued election of Republican presidents and majorities. If transparency and following the law actually matter, you can only begin to guarantee that could happen with Republicans in power.
JAWBONE undermines everything Dems claimed was good for public health during COVID. It exposes the underbelly of corruption and censorship. It attaches an actual cost to pretending such a law doesn’t exist, and while I don’t think Democrats would care if Democrats tried to ignore it, the Trump Administration has managed to use being honest about threats of censorship in public (remember Biden’s flunkies tried to hide theirs) into something Democrats should hate but can’t wait to make into law.
Yeah, it looks like 4D chess. Getting the left to want what we wanted by using their tactics openly against their side.
More of that, please, and bring on the denial because whether you admit to the possibility or not, it happened. We went from applause for the Disinformation Governance Board (open censorship of the truth) to applause for the Jimmy Kimmel Act (which would make the former illegal).
Checkmate, again.
