Jimmying The System

This will be short. You all know what happened to Jimmy Kimmel. So I will give you the minimalist version, edited down to its four essentials.

1. Two months ago, after Donald Trump used his muscle and sleaze to get Stephen Colbert cancelled by CBS, Trump exulted, "Next up, the even less talented Jimmy Kimmel."

2. Yesterday, he got Kimmel. Trump’s bludgeon was his toady FCC chair, Brendan Carr, who declared himself shocked, shocked that Kimmel had said that MAGA had been "scoring political points" in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination — which it had — and implied that the shooter had been “one of theirs,” which he may not have been. Carr labeled that run-of-the-mill political commentary “the sickest conduct possible.” This is incorrect. The sickest conduct possible is what Carr did to Jimmy Kimmel, one of Trump’s fiercest and funniest critics, at the behest of an amoral man hellbent on destroying free speech to consolidate his own power by seizing control of America’s entertainment industry. It is from the blue book on fascism. Carr was using his position to extort ABC, threatening the station and other carriers with unstated but ominous business and regulatory problems.

3. ABC disgustingly caved. That is what media bosses are doing today, en masse: caving in to Trump’s bullying, because they are feckless and spineless. Their cowardice is a historic embarrassment. Given the stakes, their collapse of courage may have finally done the impossible: out-shamed Hollywood during the McCarthy era.

4. Yes, colleges and universities, too. And, this week, businesses and police departments, and schools all over, kowtowing to Magat threats against persons who failed to show requisite anguish and distress over the death of Mr. Kirk. (We’ll leave this one for another time.)

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Was the shooter, in fact, leftist? Probably, but his motives are still unclear. One of the few mildly amusing facts to come out of this national spasm of self destruction is that more than one prominent right winger has argued this, with no sense irony: That the assassin cannot be one of them, since he’d said he disliked Kirk because he’d “had enough of his hatred” and that “some hate can't be negotiated out.”

Hey, if you’re sick of hate, you can’t be on our team.

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Make no mistake, Kimmel is funny and merciless. Among the observations he made this week was that Trump’s flaccid reaction to Kirk’s shooting — for example, the president skipped a prayer vigil to play golf — this way: “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish."

Kimmel quoted JD Vance, who had said, “While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left.”

Then Kimmel paused, smiled, and said:

“And by ‘statistical fact’, he means ‘complete bullshit’.” Indeed, DOJ stats show just the opposite — though after the Kirk murder, the department quietly purged those stats from its website.

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So. What’s next?

I have a suggestion for the remaining late-night hosts. It’s simple.

Be great. Double down. Keep firing. Aim true. Back down not a millimeter in content or tone. In fact, ramp it up. And yes, Trump will come for you, and your sniveling, selfish bosses will cave, and yes, you will lose your jobs. But then there will be no broad-based accessible political comedy in this country, and then, possibly, at long last, the complacent, pliant, passive, sheeplike public will awaken and be heard as the furious, vengeful electorate they could become.

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Todays Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Okay, see you later today in The Invitational Gene Pool.