The joke is on us

To those who think Jimmy Kimmel's show was "indefinitely preempted" because of what he said, think again.

"Nexstar and Sinclair, two big owners of local TV stations, said they would suspend 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' (Of note: Nexstar is seeking to buy a rival, Tegna, for $6.2 billion, a deal that needs F.C.C. approval; Sinclair is known for its conservative leaning.)"

That, from DealBook, whose reporting is both spot on and flawed. Kimmel got canned because of Nexstar Media Group's licking FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's jackboots, and the far-right Sinclair Broadcast Group is merely a Carr-Trump groupie whose double jackbootlicking is nonetheless sincere. Save for the common error of Sinclair's "conservatism," such are the accuracies of DealBook's report. 

Carr with his assembled team of FCC advisers/Foto: BundesUSAarchiv Bild

DealBook's weightier flaws: Its story relates the thumping cause of Kimmel's sacking parenthetically — that being its larger defect — plus the thumping truth lands in second place. DealBook's story should have begun, Because Nexstar is seeking to buy ...     

The irony, then, is that Kimmel's on-air termination fundamentally had little to do with corporate censorship but oodles to do with corporate cowardice and greed. Ask yourself this: If Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the free-speech advocacy organization FIRE, were chairman of the FCC, and Kamala Harris were POTUS, would the two station-owning media groups have yanked "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"?

On the other hand — this, nearly too bleeding obvious to note but story-required — Kimmel's termination had everything to do with censorial Chairman Carr's very own Trump-issued, spit-polished jackboots and nicely pressed jodhpurs, courtesy the Joe Goebbels Collection, on loan from the Smithsonian's reverent "Fascism Today" exhibit.

Said Carr to Charlie Kirk-wannabe Benny Johnson a few hours before Kimmel's ex-communication and endangered-refugee status: "There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters.... It's really surpassed time that ... Comcast and Disney [say] 'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore ... because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC.'" Joy to Brendan, they said it.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports on the terminating corporation's High Fantasy-as-Wheedling-P.R.: "While no return date has been set, Disney is monitoring the situation and sees a path to the show potentially returning in the next several days, according to a person familiar with the situation."

(Unreported: The person was heard giggling, barely able to vocally sketch the blind-alley path. Chortled the situationally aware mouthpiece, "Yeah, right, that'll open just as soon as Nexstar cancels its capitalistic rapaciousness, Sinclair learns to stop worrying and loves the often explosively enlightening First Amendment, and Trump joins the ACLU.")

The Journal adds that Kimmel "mocked Trump’s mourning process" by saying "This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish." Ben Meiselas' reporting of Trump's fake, infantile mourning was superior to the WSJ's lifeless portrayal: "When asked about how he was coping with Kirk’s death," observed Meiselas, "Trump immediately pivoted to bragging about building a new ballroom at the White House. The heartlessness was shocking."

Trump, of course, seized the opportunity to confirm Kimmel's portrayal of him as a sniveling toddler by blubbering on Truth Social that "Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible." Colbert's terrible ratings were, in fact, terrific, as is Kimmel's talent. But Trump and Trumpers are incapable of simply disliking a celebrity critic; his or her otherwise unquestioned, masterful craftsmanship must always be ridiculed as wholly untalented amateurism. 

Nor was the prepubescent in chief done with gloating even after the dreamy deed. "That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!" Perhaps the network could replace their hours with extended, right-thinking clips from Triumph of the Will. For there's just nothing like the nostalgia of post-Weimar Republic America's Nuremberg in its orgiastic infancy.   

The joke is on us. It's on the MAGA infatuated who believe they're getting away with a magnificent power grab, only to have that malevolent power ultimately boomerang on them; it's on the millions who last November stayed home in unheeding apathy, but won't be apathetic much longer; and, above all, it's on the terminally ill and quite possibly false "American character" of republican fame and unread civics texts.

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Cross-posted on Substack.