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Amid Trump’s latest Kimmel kerfuffle, it bears repeating — Disney and the NFL might be better off without the regulatory burdens of broadcast

The medium’s virtues aside, the emergence of the FCC as kangaroo court is getting in the way of legitimate free enterprise

Stop us if you’ve heard this before (because you almost certainly have): network comedian makes modestly edgy joke about Donald Trump. Trump allies express manufactured outrage, calling for FCC review/boycotts/other Very Serious Responses. That ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel is the subject of this latest round only makes it that much more familiar to those of us wearying of Trump’s efforts to batter independent voices into acquiescent submission.

Kimmel made a joke about Melania Trump’s “expectant widow” look, this time a couple of days before another lone gunman took a literal run at the 79-year-old president during last weekend’s misbegotten White House Correspondents Dinner. Right after, nepo-lapdog FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced his agency would accelerate its review of Disney O&O station licenses.

Of course, the FCC says it’s all about Disney’s fealty to DEI, the diversity bugaboo that so vexes the most entitled people in global history. But timing, as they say, is everything. It’s pretty obvious what this is all about: any FCC cudgel in a media storm is fair, uh, use.