During her interview with Donald Trump, Norah O’Donnell of 60 Minutes mentioned that the man accused of trying to assassinate him had attended a No Kings rally. Trump responded: “I’m not a king…If I was a king I wouldn’t be dealing with you.”
Trump’s kingliness, especially in contrast to a real monarch such as Charles, is open to debate. But it is hard to ignore Trump’s similarity to a different royal figure, namely the Queen of Hearts. Like that foul-tempered character from Alice in Wonderland, Trump lashes out at those who displease him, calling for punishments that echo the Queen’s famous command: “Off with their heads.”
While the Queen never succeeds in getting anyone decapitated, Trump, unfortunately, has filled his administration with lackies who are eager to satisfy his whims. These days, that seems to be the main function the Justice Department, whose acting head, Todd Blanche, just succeeded in getting a North Carolina grand jury to indict former FBI director James Comey for a social media posting of seashells that supposedly constituted a death threat against the president.
That case is unlikely to go anywhere. More serious is the announcement by the Federal Communications Commission chair, led by MAGA zealot Brendan Carr, that it intends to review the TV station licenses held by ABC. The unusual step is purportedly connected to the agency’s review of ABC’s diversity practices.
It is likely no coincidence that this move comes just as Trump and the First Lady are demanding that ABC fire late night host Jimmy Kimmel for making a joke that Kimmel says was a reference to the age difference between POTUS and FLOTUS but which the Trumps insist was a call for assassination.
A move by the FCC to threaten a license holder to silence a Trump critic is just as pernicious as doing so to punish a company for having sought to promote diversity. The first is an egregious violation of the First Amendment. It appeared that Carr had learned that lesson after he caused an uproar by making a similar threat against ABC for a comment Kimmel had made about the man accused of assassinating rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.
Carr’s crusade against DEI flies in the face of the FCC’s long history of policies to combat discrimination and promote diversity in the communications industry.
Those policies came about primarily through the efforts of non-profit groups with close ties to the civil rights movement. Chief among these was the Office of Communications of the United Church of Christ, now known as the UCC Media Justice Ministry. In the 1960s, the UCC effort, led by Dr. Everett C. Parker, began to research the way in which television and radio stations in the South covered the campaigns for racial justice.
The UCC found that stations such as WLBT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi mostly ignored the protests while frequently airing pejorative comments about African-Americans. The UCC petitioned the FCC to deny the station a license renewal because it was not serving the public interest, as broadcasters were required to do under federal law. After a lengthy legal battle, the UCC won a landmark court ruling.
Around the same time, the UCC successfully pressured the FCC to adopt equal employment regulations for license holders. Those rules were modified by a 1998 court ruling, but the agency continued not only to prohibit discrimination but also require broadcasters to take positive steps to promote the hiring and promotion of minorities and women. Operations with larger staffs were expected to engage in more initiatives than smaller ones.
The current FCC’s policies turn this tradition upside down. By embracing the wrong-headed idea that efforts to address discrimination are themselves discriminatory, the agency is starting to turn back the clock to a time when people of color were largely absent from the staffs of media companies.
It remains to be seen whether the “off with their heads” pronouncements of the Trump Administration are any more successful than those of the Queen of Hearts.
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