This Just In – The Disney/ABC television network’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live was a red herring of the most spectacular variety. The combination of the Epstein scandal and the brazen corruption of this administration is reaching a total tonnage that is nearly incalculable.
When the FCC put the squeeze on Disney/ABC to pull Kimmel off the air, it was premised on observations of hypocrisy that Kimmel made after the murder of Charlie Kirk. This was not about Jimmy. It was about Jeffrey.
The Epstein scandal is so threatening to Trump that he is now willing to abuse his power as president to reach out through a regulator and try to shut down a critic … a comedian no less … for the sake of distraction. This is, indeed, a very short-term strategy which he deployed while also jetting across the pond to spend a day or two at Windsor Castle, claiming to be the first U.S. President to do so.
That claim, of course, made at the state dinner and elsewhere, is comically false. Trump himself went to Windsor Castle in 2018, while president. Biden visited there while president, as did Obama. I remember Ronald Reagan riding horses with Queen Elizabeth at Windsor. Disappointing to me is that no reporter put this in front of Trump while he made his absurd claim on camera on Air Force One. Perhaps they were too dazzled by the complimentary White House M&Ms.
The extortion attempt between Trump and Disney/ABC failed miserably. Legit mobsters would be offended by the clumsy effort. Disney customers responded with a massive boycott. Vacations were cancelled. Social media blasts announced subscription cancellations. Perhaps the tipping point was that more than 400 artists signed a letter saying they would not work with Disney.
And the geniuses at Disney remembered that they’re in business to make money. Perhaps after a week or so of providing the CEO of Disney with nightly heartburn their lawyers announced they’d have a case to resist the FCC’s squeeze play and might be able to get Kimmel to return. After all, with the shock of the suspension having worn off, most of the value to Trump was diminishing. He had already moved on to his eyepopping and reckless, dangerous “announcement” that Tylenol causes something other than headache relief and fever reduction.
Disney/ABC execs know something else, too. They know that Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert (also arguably being pressured out of late night after this season) don’t need the conventional television model of programming to be successful and very influential. They could start a podcast and break the internet. Go ahead. Run Celebrity Family Feud. We’ll find these guys wherever they might land. A lot of their content is viewed this way already.
The execs know that America is not relying on late night talk shows to summarize and poke fun at the day’s events. We get that information in real time now. That wasn’t true in Johnny Carson’s heyday. They know that this landscape is changing like a NASCAR pit crew swapping tires.
The guy who launched his political career on an escalator, making speeches about how lame it was that President Obama often used a teleprompter, had a bad day at the UN this week. Stalled at the bottom of the moving stairs and stranded with only written copy in front of him on the dias in the general assembly.
Karma … it’s real.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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