Back in October, the already-tense international relations between China and America’s late-night talk shows were further frayed by a segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live, in which a 6-year-old recommended that the U.S. “kill everyone in China” to solve its debt problems. China—still reeling from that time Jimmy Kimmel got its parents to pretend they’d eaten all of its Halloween candy—issued an official condemnation, while Chinese-Americans took to the streets in protest, presumably while the kid in question, Braxton, looked down from his bedroom window, tenting his fingers as he laughed that all was going as according to plan. But before Braxton could engineer the implosion of America, fracture the nation along racial lines, and make way for his genocidal reign over a people paralyzed by war and fear, The People knew they still had their most important democratic voice, in the form of an Internet petition.
Unfortunately, while more than 100,000 people signed the resulting WhiteHouse.gov page demanding that the Obama administration quit dicking around with healthcare and North Korea and “immediately cut the show,” the government’s obligatory response confirms it is powerless against the vast kids-and-darnedest-things complex. After pointing out that all parties involved have already apologized, the government threw up its hands and said this:
The Federal government cannot force ABC to remove this show. The First Amendment of the Constitution protects free speech, even if individuals might personally find it offensive or distasteful. It may be upsetting when people say things we might personally disagree with, but the principle of protected free speech is an important part of who we are as a nation.
So it seems that, once again, we’ve been hamstrung by our own Constitution, thanks to those damn liberal Founding Fathers. No wonder we’ll all soon be under Braxton’s iron rule.
