“If a bad president can come in and take away our rights and we’re dependent on a good president replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights. If politicians can take or distribute them, then they’re not “inalienable” and they’re not rights.” — George Carlin.

Hmmm. Let’s see now. Rapist. Pederast. Killer. Kidnapper. Destroyer of families. Fraudster. And, now, extortionist. All because several very smart, very well informed and very courageous comedians hurt the Emperor’s petty, childish feelings.

Worse still, we have grown used to this. We have come to expect it. It’s not unlike the mass shootings our fearless overarmed pals on the Rabid Right who believe they, personally, need to own more guns, larger guns, and faster guns. The Second Amendment is America’s ED pill… but they loathe the Amendment before it, the First Amendment. These dumb fucks can’t count.

In case you missed civics class — if you even had one to being with — here is the First Amendment. It’s a single paragraph that, for many decades now, the Rabid Right has pegged as a Communist plant. Or Socialist. Or at least Democratic Party. Here it goes, in its entirety:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Now, if you wanted to define what made America unique and a global game-changer, you can’t do better than this. Certainly not the Second Amendment, which seems to have been written as a sequel to that wonderful National Lampoon cover from decades ago. Of course, that one is a joke that appears to be critical of gun owners, so the Rabid Right won’t get it.

Which brings us to the matter of extortion. The true motivation behind the firings of Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel — as of this writing — lie behind the desire for the Rapid Right’s uncontrollable desire to kiss the Emperor’s pickled orange ass. Of course they want to incur the bastard’s favor. The Rabid Right wants to shine on Trump’s glutei will be making billions of dollars from that pathetically disgusting effort. Damn near everybody involved has skin in this game: literally, billions and billions of dollars to be made by Disney, Rapid Right television moguls Nexstar and Sinclair, Paramount, and the Ellison family, to name but a few. All have major deals before the FCC that will make them a hell of a lot more money than Trump spends on new clothes, if you could see them. By making out with the Emperor, history tells us they will most likely get their way. Paramount already did.

So what did Kimmel say that was so gross, so over-the-top, so offensive that he got shitcanned? He said this:

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Kimmel then noted Trump’s initial response to the question of how he was handling Charlie Kirk’s death. He said he was doing “very good” and then immediately shifted to his $200 million ballroom addition to the White House. “Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief: construction,” Jimmy concluded.

He didn’t dance around the stage praising the shooter for being a one-shot wonder. He didn’t say anything positive about the shooting at all; he’s got way too much class to do that. The Rabid Right knows nothing about class — and I’m speaking of style and not social standing.

By the way, Kimmel was absolutely right. As far as the Rabid Right is concerned, the truth, whatever it may be, does not count for shit.

While I’m still strip-mining the subjects of tastelessness and the National Lampoon, consider this: had Kristi Noem used this cover in her re-election bid for governor, she might not be Secretary of Homeland Security today.

UPDATE (and, I guess, Spoiler Alert?): Late Monday afternoon, ABC/Disney issued the following statement: “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.” No mention was made of the cascading Disney+/Hulu cancellations – streaming overall is drowning in debt – nor whether the NexStar and Sinclair controlled stations will reverse their decisions not to carry Kimmel until he “apologized” and forked over a shitload of money to Kirk’s Trump Youth Corps. Evidently, Kimmel did neither. All 200 members of his staff were kept on the payroll throughout this bullshit.