Colbert response to Kimmel suspension

 

Better than Jon Stewart's response, which was pretty good.

Colbert's monologue.

No poking fun at the king

When Trump praised CBS for canceling Stephen Colbert, he said "I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next."

Late Wednesday, the network pulled the plug on Kimmel’s show before he took the stage by claiming, “Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely."

That followed a statement from media powerhouse Nexstar Media Group, which owns hundreds of television stations, claiming, “Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views or values of the local communities in which we are located.”

  Raw Story

Those people are not watching Jimmy Kimmel. Obviously there is a government watchdog policing speech on TV. Pure authoritarianism. Fascism at work.

[T]he banning of Kimmel was set in motion by Donald Trump’s handpicked FCC Chair Brendan Carr who previously threatened ABC/Disney on a podcast by stating, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

[...]

[H]e took a completely opposite view about censorship in years past.

Everything changed when Trump 2.0 began.

[I]n 2019 [Carr wrote on X (Twitter)], “Should the government censor speech It doesn't like? Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in. The name of the public interest.”

“In 2021 he wrote, quote, ‘A newsroom's decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official in 2022.” Brzezinski read.

In 2023 he wrote, "Free speech is the counterweight. It is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian's dream.

[...]

Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people into the discussion. That's why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.”

So what did Kimmel say about Kirk anyway?

"We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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, uh, grieving on Friday − the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this. "Yes, he's at the fourth stage of grief: construction. Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend; this is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?"

  USA Today

Reveling in Kimmel's cancellation, Trump is going after two more comedians: Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.

"Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done," Trump wrote. "Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT"

  TV Insider

Just a few months ago, MAGA was screaming about "cancel culture." Now, they're loving it.

In a couple of months, the only thing we'll have to watch is state TV propaganda.

In reality, ABC claims Kimmel is suspended "indefinitely".  I guess they're waiting to see how much of a backlash it causes.  

Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr took to X earlier on Wednesday to praise Nexstar for not airing the late-night talk show on its ABC affiliate networks in response to Kimmel’s comments about the death of Kirk: “I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing. Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community.”

The news came after Nexstar, which owns dozens of local ABC affiliates, announced its intention to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! episodes starting Wednesday night.

[...]

Carr said, “Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up and say, ‘This garbage, to the extent that that’s what comes down the pipe in the future, isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities.’ But this sort of status quo is obviously not, not acceptable where we are.”

  TV Insider

Apparently, Carr is a whore to power.

BTW, Stephen Colbert won Best Talk Show a few days ago.

And, reminder...

UPDATE 03:23 pm:  The orange god king is looking really unhealthy.

Legally, they are.

The Trump administration is full of hateful, evil, vengeful nut jobs.  

UPDATE 09/19/2025:

Apparently, the law is whatever he thinks it is.

And what exactly did Jimmy Kimmel say? Reports are making it sound like he said something objectionable about Charlie Kirk. But that's not true. He said something objectionable about the Orange God King and his minions.

"Thank you for joining us here in Los Angeles, the second largest city in a bitterly divided nation where, like the rest of the country, we're still trying to wrap our heads around the senseless murder of the popular podcaster and conservative activist Charlie Kirk yesterday, whose death has amplified our anger, our differences," Kimmel said on his show last week.

"I've seen a lot of extraordinarily vile responses to this from both sides of the political spectrum. Some people are cheering this, which is something I won't ever understand," he said in the opening monologue.

"We had another school shooting yesterday in Colorado, the 100th one of the year. And with all these terrible things happening, you would think that our president will at least make an attempt to bring us together. But he didn't," Kimmel continued.

"President Obama did. President Biden did. Presidents Bush and Clinton did. President Trump did not. Instead, he blamed Democrats for their rhetoric," he said, shifting his monologue to attack Trump for his past behavior on matters such as the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

[...]

Kimmel said in his opening monologue on Monday that the U.S. had "hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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, but in between the finger-pointing, there was grieving."

He noted the White House "flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this."

Kimmel added: "Yes, he's at the fourth stage of grief: construction. Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend; this is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish?"

  Axios

UPDATE 09/25/2025:

Today in history 1941

Labor pressures had been building in the Magic Kingdom since promises made to artists over the success of Snow White were reneged on, and Walt Disney’s lawyer Gunther Lessing encouraged a hard line with his employees.

On May 28, in defiance of the Wagner act, Disney fired animator Art Babbitt, the creator of Goofy, and 13 other cartoonists for demanding a union. A motion to strike was made that evening.

The picket line with major cartoonists began the next morning.

  Zinn Education Project

With neither side willing to give in, the event lasted into the fall, turning uglier and lasting longer than either side had ever imagined. In the end, the workers won, and neither the Disney company nor the animation industry would ever be the same again.

[...]

While a union seems like a no-brainer for keeping employees happy and content, they are still resisted by people in positions of power, whether that person be the co-creator of Rick and Morty or Ed Catmull, the current president of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Catmull is staunchly anti-union, and has fought tooth-and-nail to keep the company he co-founded, Pixar, a union-free shop. As a result, even though Pixar is now owned by Disney, and even though Pixar has been the most financially successful animation studio in America for the last twenty years, the average starting wage for animators at the studio remains below unionized feature animation workers.

It also shouldn’t be a surprise that Catmull has emerged as the mastermind behind a wage-fixing scheme that has rocked the feature animation world over the past year, with evidence emerging that Catmull has worked for decades to prevent the industry’s employees from advancing their careers or being paid what they were truly worth.

[...]

[Disney Corp] today is worth $163 billion, making it the most valuable entertainment conglomerate currently in the world.

  Cartoon Brew

Animator Art Babbitt, one of the strike leaders, leads a picket 

at the premiere of “The Reluctant Dragon.”

Yes, many of the women are marching the picket line in skirts and heels, and men wear sport coats and ties.

More images here.

The destruction of Twitter is almost complete

Technically, I think it was because they put IBM advertising next to Nazi advertising.  At any rate, Musk paid over $40B for Twitter, which he is consistently turning into a hotbed of MAGA garbage.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 06:15 pm:

UPDATE 11/18/2023:

Other big advertisers pulling out of X:  Comcast/NBCUniversal, Paramount Global, Warner Brothers Discovery

Elon Musk has said he will be filing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters and others, after major US companies paused their adverts on his social media site over concerns about antisemitism.

The media watchdog Media Matters said earlier this week that it found corporate advertisements by IBM, Apple, Oracle and Comcast’s Xfinity were being placed alongside antisemitic content, including that praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

It led to a number of big names in technology and media announcing they would be withdrawing their advertising.

  The Guardian

Well, if they got screenshots, his bomb will fizzle.

Musk on Wednesday agreed with a post on X that falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user, who referenced the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, was speaking “the actual truth”.

 

UPDATE 11/18/2023 09:53 am:  Still abandoning the ship.

Feeling the pressure...

UPDATE 11/21/2023:

The only problem with serious and legitimate accounts leaving Xitter for Threads is that the unserious, illegitimate, and just plain xitty accounts will follow.  Hopefully Threads will keep the worst xit at bay.

UPDATE 11/21/2023 07:23 am:

UPDATE 11/22/2023:  Still leaking advertisers.  He won't last long like this.

Ron DeSantis will destroy Florida

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 05/19/2023:

No end in sight to the feud

And if I were you, I'd place my bets on Disney.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Nikki Haley is not ready for prime time

Hell of a pitch:  Hey, Disney, we'll take the business, but we're not your kind of people.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Disney is suing DeSantis

And a bunch of Florida tourism officials.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Disney turns the tables

Taking a cue from Republican legislatures.

Board members picked by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to oversee the governance of Walt Disney World said Wednesday that their Disney-controlled predecessors pulled a fast one on them by passing restrictive covenants that strip the new board of many of its powers.

[...]

The five supervisors were appointed by the Republican governor to the board after the Florida Legislature overhauled Disney's government in retaliation for the entertainment giant publicly opposing so-called "Don't Say Gay" legislation that bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, as well as lessons deemed not age-appropriate.

[...]

The new supervisors replaced a board that had been controlled by Disney during the previous 55 years that the government operated as the Reedy Creek Improvement District. The new board members held their first meeting earlier this month and said they found out about the agreement after their appointments.

"We're going to have to deal with it and correct it," board member Brian Aungst said Wednesday. "It's a subversion of the will of the voters and the Legislature and the governor. It completely circumvents the authority of this board to govern."

  Florida

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They can't win if they don't cheat

Because they have such regressive attitudes.

House Republicans, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), have promised to investigate some of the largest U.S. companies over their so-called woke politics, referring to support of the Black Lives Matter movement; environmental, social and corporate governance, or ESG, investing and abortion access, among other hot-button issues.

[...]

“Companies like Disney, Coke and Delta should be focusing on their customers, not engaging in political fights,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has also threatened retribution against “woke” companies, tweeted last year.

[...]

Seventy-one percent of voters oppose Congress punishing companies that “speak out against discrimination,” including two-thirds of GOP respondents, according to [a Morning Consult poll commissioned by the tech industry-backed Chamber of Progress and released on Monday].

  The Hill

Republicans have long had their finger on the pulse of America. The trouble is, they've been standing in the morgue.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Major sports, now Disneyland and Disney World

What will we do to distract ourselves from Trump World?

UPDATE:

Smart capitalists distance themselves

That's gonna cost ABC some bucks

Unless, of course, the advertisers were pulling out already.

ABC canceled its hit sitcom "Roseanne" on Tuesday after the show's biggest star, Roseanne Barr, went on a racist Twitter rant.

"Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show," ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said in a statement.

Disney CEO Bob Iger added on Twitter that "There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing."

The cancellation stunned Hollywood. The revival of "Roseanne" premiered to huge ratings just three months ago. Pre-production was already underway on a second season, which was scheduled for Tuesdays at 8 p.m. this fall.

  CNN Money

Also...

Barr's talent agency, ICM Partners, dropped her following her tweets.

[...]

Barr went on A tweetstorm Tuesday morning, attacking Valerie Jarrett, Chelsea Clinton and George Soros.

ABC went silent for several hours while deciding what to do. By late morning on the West Coast, executives had decided to boot the reboot.

When asked why ABC ultimately decided to cancel the show, a Disney source said, "It's a question of right and wrong. And it's a question of our company's values."

Reactions to the decision were overwhelming and largely positive.

Maybe it takes a while for the Magaheads to get the info from Fox. Waiting for the "Unfair!" tweet when His Lordship sees this.

About 18 million live viewers watched the premiere episode in March.

[...]

Later, the show saw its audience come back down to earth, but its finale still nabbed roughly 10 million live viewers, a huge achievement for ABC.

[...]

President Trump praised the debut saying, "Over 18 million people! And it was about us!" The President also called Barr to congratulate her.

"Us". Everything is about him.

Actress Emma Kenney, who played Roseanne's granddaughter on the reboot, tweeted that she was in the process of quitting the show when she found out that it had been canceled.

About an hour and a half before the cancellation was announced one of the show's consulting producers, Wanda Sykes, said she was done with the show. "I will not be returning to @RoseanneOnABC," Sykes tweeted.

What was Wanda Sykes doing on a production that featured Roseanne Barr?

ABC was not entirely surprised by Tuesday's rant. After all, Barr is notorious for tweeting about pro-Trump conspiracy theories and other controversial topics.

[...]

But even by her low standards, Tuesday's remarks were egregious.

In one of the tweets, she wrote, "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj."

[...]

So bad that it isn't even actually a joke.

Sara Gilbert, who plays Barr's daughter on the ABC sitcom, tweeted that Barr's comments are "abhorrent and do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show."

Except for the STAR.

There's a bunch of actors who thought they were back in the money:

Hope they had some good contracts.

And...who's that token little black girl?

UPDATE:



I was thinking something very like that.



UPDATE 6/3:

TPM is reporting that ABC is considering the idea of dumping Roseanne but keeping the show.