Free speech isn't just for laughs

Following reports that Bill Maher will receive the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to believe it. "This is fake news," she told CNN. "Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award." Ah, guess again. On Thursday, the center confirmed that Maher was the pick. (This reversal was first reported by Politico.) The annual award, presented by the Kennedy Center, will be given on June 28, right before the performing arts center closes for a two-year renovation. In the spirit of the honor, Maher thanked "the Mark Twain people," in a statement. "I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it's like an Emmy, except I win." "I'd just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who's been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain." Indeed, Maher, is a particularly appropriate honoree since, like Twain, he is famous for edgy topical humor that aims, as journalist Finley Peter Dunne wrote in 1902 about newspapers, to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." If the response from Team Trump sounds like a disdainful "harrumph," that's partly because Maher's program "Real Time" appears uncensored mostly on HBO. (The show is also presented on CNN on Saturdays. HBO and CNN are both part of Warner Bros. Discovery.) He has, at times, been a target of Trump's outrage yet also draws criticism — and cries of betrayal — from his own fans for such offenses to liberal sensibilities as attending a friendly, yet no-holds-barred dinner with Trump, a form of personal outreach that he urges the rest of us to try at least once in a while. In announcing Maher's prize, Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center's vice president of public relations, acknowledged Maher's "politically incorrect" jokes. "For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy," said Daravi. "For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse — one politically incorrect joke at a time." Speaking as a regular viewer, I can only envy his freedom to pontificate unfettered by censors on HBO and CNN. I also appreciate in this age of rampant left-or-right coding by humorists of all types that Maher refuses to limit his barbs to one partisan side or the other. After all, there's ample lunacy to be found on both left and right these days. Why should we limit ourselves? But not everyone agrees, of course, and Trump himself is well-known to be changeable, to say the least. In February, Trump slammed Maher as a "highly overrated lightweight" and a "jerk" and called their earlier White House dinner a "total waste of time." Yet Maher has said repeatedly that having dinner with a subject does not mean he stops criticizing them and that he hasn't been "seduced" into lowering his scrutiny. Unfortunately too many other bigwigs of broadcasting fail to show similar even-handedness. Take, for example, the case of ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, whose monologue after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought his suspension. "The MAGA gang," Kimmel observed, "[is] 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. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving." Kimmel continued, referring to Trump's casting blame on left-wing groups for Kirk's death: "This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish." Right on, I said, as I viewed the show from home. That's telling it like it is. Was what Kimmel said tasteless? Maybe. But, hard as some people find this to believe, tasteless speech is protected by the First Amendment, too. You should not be prosecuted for it, but your friends and family might not appreciate it. Still, someone needs to tell that to Trump's Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr. Before ABC announced Jimmy Kimmel's suspension, Carr called his remarks "the sickest conduct possible." Further, Carr got punitive. He threatened to deploy the power of the federal government against Disney, ABC's parent company, if it didn't take action against Kimmell on this "very, very serious issue." Then in a remark that sounded like an old-school Chicago mobster, he said, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way." By which he meant the broadcasting license granted to them by the FCC could be in jeopardy for failing to honor their "obligation to operate in the public interest." Kimmel was suspended by ABC for approximately one week last September before a blizzard of objections from viewers helped lead to his reinstatement, according to PBS and CNBC. Alas, Trump was not pleased but you can't please everyone. The First Amendment doesn't settle all disputes but it does help provide an arena for views to be exchanged and disputes to be resolved — peacefully, one hopes.