US television

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares36 Views

    Colbert on Trump ‘building a massive compensation for his weird tiny penis’

    by

    Late-night hosts spoke about the controversial behavior of a small group of Democrats and Donald Trump’s continued destruction of the White House.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert spoke about the vote to end the federal government shutdown which has seen some Democrats choosing to cave to Republican demands without restoring the healthcare subsidies which were initially threatened.Chuck Schumer told his party he would give the deal neither a blessing nor a curse and would give no steer on how to vote.Colbert joked that this was “bold leadership” and commented on Schumer’s “failure” in the situation.The shutdown has caused major chaos at airports as air traffic controllers were being unpaid for so long that many of them stopped coming to work.On social media, Trump attacked them, saying they would be “substantially docked” and he would hold “a negative mark” at least in his mind against their record.“A negative mark in that mind?” Colbert quipped. “You know what, I’ll take my chances.”He also wrote that he wanted them to be “quickly replaced by true patriots” to which Colbert responded: “Maybe I’m alone, but I don’t care if the guy landing my plane is a true patriot.”He called Trump “an old nepo-billionaire who simply does not understand how hard it is for regular people to survive these days”.This week also saw that regular people are not happy with the state of living, with a consumer satisfaction survey falling to 52.3%, the worst ever score dating back to 1951.“Consumers have not felt this bad since we fed our babies cigarettes,” he said.This week also saw Trump tout a 50-year mortgage in a supposed bid to help those struggling to afford home ownership, yet a study showed that interest would almost double from the standard 30-year mortgage.Colbert called it “a big dumb policy that fixes nothing”.He also warned that a new 107% tariff could lead to Italian pasta disappearing from shelves. “We are officially in a pasta-mergency,” he said.Colbert joked that Trump’s destruction of the White House’s East Wing was “to build a massive compensation for his weird tiny penis” before moving on to his latest addition: labelling the Oval Office.The host claimed that the font being used was called “luxury assisted living” before showing that when you Google it, the same font that comes up.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers started by talking about the House speaker, Mike Johnson, ordering Congress to return to Capitol Hill for the vote.“I’m sure they would if only the flights weren’t all grounded,” he said.This week also saw Trump write “Less crime more Trump” on social media. “Less crime sounds great but how could there be more Trump?” Meyers asked, before adding: “We’re maxed out on Trump.”Last week saw Joe Biden speak for 30 minutes at a fundraising dinner. Meyers expressed surprise that it was so short, joking that “he usually speaks that long to the valet”.Transportation secretary and former Real World contestant Sean Duffy warned Americans that ongoing issues over flights might mean that many will miss celebrating the holidays with their families.“Oh no, I was so excited to discuss that Zohran win with my uncle,” Meyers said. More

    More stories

    • 163 Shares71 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Most horrific death you could imagine’: the truth behind Netflix’s Death By Lightning

      by

      The descendants of James Garfield, the 20th US president, were proud of his life but rarely spoke of his death. “We knew what had happened, that he was shot in a train station,” says James Garfield III, his great-great-great grandson. “We read about the story in books but, in one way or another, we just glanced over it.”That changed in 2011 with the publication of Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, a book by Candice Millard that revived interest in Garfield’s unfinished life. Her work has now inspired a Netflix drama, Death By Lightning, starring Michael Shannon as the president and Matthew Macfadyen as the drifter who gunned him down.The series promises to shine a light on Garfield, who rose from poverty to the presidency in the Gilded Age only to fall victim to its toxic political divisions. His tenure was cut short after only 200 days not only by the assassin’s bullet but by medical malpractice – an event now forgotten as surely as the killings of Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy continue to fascinate.That tragedy set the table for one of US history’s great “what ifs” with Garfield’s lost potential felt most acutely in the area of civil rights, where his commitment to equality for African Americans might have altered the nation’s post-Reconstruction trajectory.James Garfield III, 58, an athletic trainer and professor from Cleveland, Ohio, adds: “You can’t help but be proud of what he did. He was like a multi-threat: he was a lawyer, he was a preacher, he was a farmer. He was all of these things which also shaped who he was and how he was and everything that we know about him the family carries down with us.”Garfield was the last president born in a log cabin, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1831. His father died when he was 18 months old, leaving his mother, Eliza, to raise five children in difficult circumstances. An insatiable reader, Garfield worked on canal boats to earn money for an education.He studied law, was ordained as minister, became president of Hiram College in Ohio and was a state senator. In 1858 he married a former classmate, Lucretia Rudolph, with whom he would have seven children. An ardent Unionist, Garfield viewed the civil war as a holy crusade against slavery and advanced to the rank of major general.Speaking via Zoom, Millard says: “When I started researching him, I couldn’t believe it. He was absolutely brilliant. He was incredibly brave. He was very progressive for the time. He was kind. He was a decent human being and would have been one of our great presidents had he lived.”Garfield was persuaded by Lincoln to resign his military commission when he was elected to the House of Representatives, where he would serve as a Republican for 17 years. He was strong supporter of black suffrage, viewing it as a matter of justice and the fulfillment of a wartime covenant.Millard continues: “The speech he gave on the floor of Congress will tear your heart out. He was an incredibly powerful orator and this issue was very important to him.“He wrote an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem while he was in Congress. He was this incredible classicist; he spoke Latin and Greek and knew huge lengths of the Aeneid by heart in Latin. He was an extraordinary mind.”At the 1880 Republican national convention in Chicago the party was deeply divided between the “Stalwarts”, led by Senator Roscoe Conkling, who supported a third term for Ulysses S Grant, and the “Half-Breeds”, who supported James G Blaine. Garfield attended as a supporter of his friend and fellow Ohioan John Sherman.When the 15,000-person convention was deadlocked between Grant and Blaine, delegates began looking for a compromise. Garfield’s impassioned speech nominating Sherman impressed them. During the speech, he reportedly shouted, “And now, gentlemen of the convention, what do we want?” to which a voice from the crowd unexpectedly replied: “We want Garfield!”On the 36th ballot, a stampede of delegates made Garfield the surprise nominee. To placate the Stalwart faction, Chester Arthur, a Conkling loyalist from New York, was chosen as his running mate. In the general election Garfield defeated the Democratic nominee to become the only sitting member of the House ever to be elected president.Millard says: “What would have made Garfield great and what is extremely rare and maybe unique to the American presidency is he didn’t want the job. It’s not that he had never thought about it but he was thrust into it.“He used to call it presidential fever because he would watch people he admired change drastically because they wanted the office so much that they were willing to give up their own values, set aside their own morals in order to get this position, and he was never willing to do that.”She adds: “When he found himself president, he was in this uniquely powerful position because he didn’t owe anyone anything, which never happens. To degrees people lose a little bit of themselves along the way and he didn’t because he wasn’t hungering for it. He was like, well, there’s some good I want to do and here I am so I can do it. Then unfortunately he didn’t have the chance to.”View image in fullscreenThe defining conflict of Garfield’s short presidency was his confrontation with Conkling over the “spoils system”. Conkling demanded control over federal patronage in New York, particularly the powerful and lucrative post of collector of the Port of New York. Garfield refused, stating the issue was “whether the president is registering clerk of the Senate or the executive of the United States”. He nominated a political foe of Conkling to the post.The confrontation escalated into a public battle but Garfield outmaneuvered Conkling in the Senate. Facing a humiliating public defeat, Conkling and his junior senator resigned their seats in protest. The next day, Garfield’s nominee was confirmed. It was a landmark victory for the power of the presidency over the party machine and for the cause of reform over “boss rule”.But even as Garfield battled the titans of his party, he was being stalked by a disturbed and delusional man who embodied the dark side of the patronage system. Charles Guiteau was a drifter with a history of professional failures, mental instability and physical and psychological abuse in his childhood. He had failed as a lawyer, bill collector, preacher and member of the Oneida free-love commune.Millard explains: “He was mentally ill and his particular brand of madness was delusion. He always believed that God had chosen him for greatness. He actually had financially a better start than Garfield but where Garfield achieved and rose, Guiteau failed at everything.“He tried to be a lawyer and failed; he tried to be a journalist and failed; he tried a free love commune and they nicknamed him ‘Charles Get Out’. He was the only one not able to partake in what they had to offer at the free love commune, partly because he refused to do any manual labor. He thought it was beneath him.”But Guiteau believed he had finally found a pathway to success: politics. Swept up in the drama of the 1880 election, he wrote and delivered an insignificant speech, “Garfield against Hancock”, and became convinced in his own mind that he was single-handedly responsible for Garfield’s victory.Under this logic, Guiteau reckoned he had earned a high-level government job. He travelled to Washington and relentlessly pestered Garfield, Blaine and other officials, demanding to be made the US consul in Paris — a post for which he had zero qualifications. He became such a nuisance that he was eventually banned from the White House.As he followed the dramatic Garfield-Conkling feud in the newspapers, Guiteau’s rejection curdled into a fanatical delusion. As he later described it, he woke one night with an “epiphany” he believed was a message from God: if Garfield were removed, the party’s internal conflict would be solved and he would be hailed as a hero.On 2 July 1881, just four months into his presidency, Garfield was leaving Washington for his college reunion. As he walked through the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad station, Guiteau stepped from the shadows, pulled an ivory-handled British Bull Dog revolver from his coat pocket and shot the president twice in the back.View image in fullscreenGarfield cried out: “My God, what is this?” and collapsed on the station floor. When a police officer seized Guiteau, he declared: “I did it and I will go to jail for it. I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be president.”One bullet had grazed Garfield’s arm; the other lodged behind his pancreas. Modern medical historians agree that the wound was not mortal. Had Garfield been left alone, he probably would have survived, as many civil war soldiers did with similar injuries. However, what followed was a catastrophic case of medical malpractice.Millard laments: “Can you imagine a more germ-infested environment than the floor of a train station? That’s where he fell and was immediately examined. People were coming off the streets where there was horse manure everywhere, inserting their fingers in his back, putting him in this horse hair and hay mattress.“At that time, the hospitals were so bad, you only went there to die so they took him to the White House, but the White House itself was falling apart at that point. It was rat-infested.”A doctor with a controversial past named Dr Doctor Willard Bliss (confusingly, his first name was Doctor) took charge of Garfield’s care. He repeatedly probed Garfield’s wound with unsterilised fingers and instruments, introducing massive infection. He invited Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, to find the bullet with his self-designed metal detector but without success.Millard says: “Bliss saw in this national and personal tragedy an opportunity for personal fame and achievement. He was very worried about taking what he thought were risks with the the newfangled medicine, including sterilising and cleaning antiseptic.For 79 days Garfield suffered immensely as the infection spread, developing sepsis and blood poisoning. He lost nearly a hundred pounds, becoming a skeletal figure. One of the last things he wrote was “strangulatus pro republica”, or “tortured for the republic”.Despite the president’s obvious decline, Bliss issued rosy reports to the press, driven by what historians describe as immense hubris. On 19 September Garfield finally succumbed to the infection his doctors had caused.Millard adds: “It was the most horrific death you can imagine. He was riddled with infection and, when they did the autopsy, there were huge gouges. The fingers had created these burrowing holes through him and they were filled with pus and infection. He lost so much weight and was horribly dehydrated. He almost certainly would have survived had it not been for his doctors.”As for Guiteau, he pronounced himself the happiest he had ever been because he was now a celebrity. Millard says: “He’s doing every interview he can. He’s having his portrait taken. He’s polishing off his memoirs that he had written before.“He writes a letter for the New York Herald to publish offering himself to any young woman who would like to marry him but she has to be younger than 30 and wealthy. He thinks he’s quite a catch now and he’s waiting for Arthur, whom he assumes is very grateful to him, to free him and then he expects to run for president himself.”Guiteau’s trial was a spectacle. His defence lawyers argued he was not guilty by reason of insanity and, more pointedly, that the president’s doctors, not Guiteau, were responsible for Garfield’s death. Both defences failed. Guiteau was convicted and hanged, his brain and enlarged spleen preserved by a museum.View image in fullscreenThe nation feared that Arthur, the ultimate machine politician, would entrench the spoils system. Instead, rising to the gravity of the office, he became an unexpected champion of reform. In 1883 he signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which established a merit-based system for federal employment and stands as Garfield’s most direct legacy.Garfield was the second of four US presidents who have been assassinated. The shootings of Lincoln and Kennedy have spawned countless books and conspiracy theories; those of Garfield and, in 1901, William McKinley are little remembered. It was not until 2018 that a marker was erected on the National Mall close to the spot where Garfield was shot.Millard hopes that Death By Lightning will inspire fresh curiosity or renewed interest, especially among young people, and impress on viewers what America lost. She visited the set in Budapest, Hungary, during filming and is thrilled by the finished product. She credits Mike Makowsky, its creator, writer and executive producer, for doing his own research and offering a faithful portrayal of Garfield.“When we were talking early on six years ago, I told him I understand you’re going to take some creative licence and that’s fine. The one thing I really care about is Garfield’s character. It needs to stay intact because not only do people not know much about him; think there’s nothing interesting to know. You can’t understand the weight of this tragedy unless you understand who he was. Mike succeeded spectacularly with that. You understand who Garfield was.”Speaking via Zoom from Los Angeles, Makowsky says: “Garfield was truly a Renaissance man. He was fiercely intelligent and empathetic and was so ahead of his time on the prevailing questions around civil rights and reforms within his own government.“He believed in universal education at a time where that was not at all a popular notion. He exhibited genuine leadership and I hope that the show is able to successfully make the case for Garfield as one of the great tragic what-could-have-beens in our history. I can only speculate the positive effects that a full Garfield presidency would have had on our country.”

      Death By Lightning is now available on Netflix More

    • 163 Shares112 Views

      in US Politics

      De Niro to JLaw: should celebrities be expected to speak out against Trump?

      by

      If you were hoping Jennifer Lawrence might be able to tell you who to vote for and why, you’re in for some disappointment. “I don’t really know if I should,” the actor told the New York Times recently when asked about speaking up about the second Trump administration – and she’s not the only one. “I’ve always believed that I’m not here to tell people what to think,” Sydney Sweeney recently told GQ, after a year in which she was the subject of controversy over a jeans ad and a possible Republican voter registration. This marks a shift from Donald Trump’s first term, when more celebrities seemed not just comfortable speaking out against the administration, but obligated to do so. Now voters will no longer be able to so easily consult with Notes-app-made posts on Instagram to decide who and what they care about before they head to the polls. The era of movie-star-swung elections has come to an end.Of course, this era didn’t really exist in earnest. Celebrity opinion doesn’t seem to hold much genuine sway over the public, with the possible exception of the segments of each that belong to Taylor Swift. (Call that an extremely vocal plurality, if not necessarily a majority.) If it did, the George Clooney/Jennifer Lawrence/Tom Hanks/Scarlett Johansson party would soundly thump the Dean Cain/Tim Allen/James Woods/Chuck Norris party in every contest. In her recent interview, Lawrence is speaking to precisely that point, albeit without invoking any catty status differences: “As we’ve learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for,” she continues. “So then what am I doing [when speaking out against Trump]? I’m just sharing my opinion on something that’s going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart.”Lawrence still isn’t actually shy about confirming her feelings (“The first Trump administration was so wild and just, ‘how can we let this stand?’” she says earlier in the interview, and she alludes to the dispiriting feeling when some voters actively chose a second term after seeing the results of the first). Sweeney, for her part, is more genuinely evasive. (“I’m just here to kind of open their eyes to different ideas. That’s why I gravitate towards characters and stories that are complicated and are maybe morally questionable, and characters that are – on the page – hard to like, but then you find the humanity underneath them.”) But the effect is similar: putting the work first and doing that shut-up-and-sing thing that has been thrown around, in some form another, for half a century or more but felt particularly amped-up around the George W Bush administration, when applied to the artists formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, among others.View image in fullscreenTo some extent, Lawrence is correct to advocate for her work as more potentially meaningful than issuing a statement that underlines her celebrity status, noting that her political views are pretty easy to read in terms of what her production company puts out into the world (including a documentary about abortion bans), and what she does as a performer: “I don’t want to start turning people off to films and to art that could change consciousness or change the world because they don’t like my political opinions,” she says elsewhere in the interview. “I want to protect my craft so that you can still get lost in what I’m doing, in what I’m showing.” In other words, it’s the artistic principle of “show, don’t tell” bleeding over into politics.More personally, who wouldn’t grow exhausted by the expectation that these opinions should be publicly expressed and available for judgment and nitpicking, and prefer instead to speak through art, if that alternate platform was available to them? Trump doesn’t consume art, but he does perform the old-media equivalent of constant name-searching, which means he is likely to name-check any celebrities with high-profile opposition to him – or even those he senses are somehow aligned with his movement, like Sweeney, whose jeans ad he nonsensically praised. Getting dragged into the Trump sphere is a real lose-lose proposition for anyone who wants a genuinely interesting career in the arts. If that sense of self-preservation spares us some cookie-cutter awards show speeches that don’t move the needle outside of the auditorium applause-o-meter, or Clooney relitigating the specifics of Democrats’ mistakes and pitfalls in the 2024 election, all the better.The other side of that strategy, though, is a form of quivery brand management that doubles as faulty market research, implying a tidy split between Trump supporters and those who oppose the president’s policies. In fact, 77 million voters pulling the metaphorical lever for Trump in 2024 out of approximately 258 million adults in the US equals a less-than-robust 30%, not 50 – a percentage his approval rating has rarely crossed. Currently, that number continues to sit below 40% by most estimates. Maybe that’s splitting hairs; 77 million voters is a hell of a lot of people, and 37% of 258 million is even more than that, even if it’s not a majority. But the gesture toward “lowering the temperature”, as so many including Lawrence allude to, feels less noble and more businesslike capitulation. Personal politics becomes a choice between allowing people to read between the lines (as Lawrence does) or an outright opacity (like Sweeney’s) that is, ironically, very politician-like. It also fits with an executive mindset that treats audiences more like shareholders than human beings.View image in fullscreenAs little as celebrity advocacy tends to move the needle on broad political decisions, and likely more effectively moved toward particular issues rather than tilting at the windmills erected by specific politicians, it’s also cathartic to see which folks aren’t backing down. It is telling, too, that some of the most outspoken figures are those closer to Trump’s advanced age. Harrison Ford, for example, had no compunction about telling the Guardian that he considers Trump one of history’s biggest criminals. Robert De Niro has gone further as an anti-Trump spokesperson, recently noting that he was “very happy” to see so many mobilizing against Trump at recent No Kings protests, and repeatedly bringing up his concern that Trump will not abide by the legal term limits on his presidency: “We cannot let up because he is not going to leave the White House. Anybody who thinks, ‘Oh, he’ll do this, he’ll do that,’ is just deluding themselves.”Does anyone need to hear this alarm sounded by De Niro in particular? Probably not, and surely some former fans will dismiss him as an anti-Trump crank. But at 82, the actor is too late in his career to spend much time calculating what is best for business, which also inures him from charges of empty virtue-signaling. He is clearly saying this stuff because he fully believes it. It’s not that De Niro needs Lawrence, Sweeney or whoever else to stand alongside him, but for all the strangeness of a legendary actor reinventing himself as a cable-news staple, it does seem like De Niro better understands his fellow baby boomer New Yorker. He especially seems to get that Trump is a poisonously ironic figure to inspire this kind of celebrity silence.This president is himself a celebrity first, a corrupt politician second, and an actual political strategist in a distant and possibly accidental third. He may well survey his presidency and secretly conclude that his greatest triumph was asserting that celebrity over others – to get away with literally telling people how to think and how to vote (or maybe in the future, that voting is no longer necessary) while cowing others from expressing their opinions on the matter. If celebrities had no political sway at all, Trump would be doddering and leering his way around a TV studio. Lawrence and Sweeney are right to aspire toward their work saying more than they do – but maybe not for the reasons they think. Celebrity without art is what gets you Donald Trump in the first place. For this administration, it’s not the singing that’s important; it’s the shutting up. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      A South Park Halloween: latest episode destroys Trump over White House demolition

      by

      The second episode of South Park’s abrupt 28th season was meant to air this past Wednesday (the immediately preceding season 27 was just five episodes) but ended up being pushed back to Friday. This worked in the show’s favor, since tonight’s installment, titled The Woman in the Hat, is very much a Halloween special.After shuttering Tegridy Farms, the Marsh family find themselves rudderless, living out of motels while patriarch Randy looks for work (thanks to the federal government shutdown, he can’t go back to his former job as a government geologist). Out of desperation, Randy moves his family into the old folks’ home where he’s stashed his elderly father.This leads a bitter Stan Marsh to lament that “South Park sucks now … and it’s because of this political shit”. Reminiscing about simpler times when the boys used to do things together, he teams up with best friends Kyle and Kenny, as well as Kyle’s uber-stereotypical relative from New York, Cousin Kyle, to launch a new meme coin. Cousin Kyle works his “savvy Jew-jitsu” to “screw a lot of people out of their money”.Meanwhile, in Washington DC, President Trump oversees the destruction of the White House’s East Wing. Although he’s promised his lover Satan that the remodeling is for a new nursery for their forthcoming love child, he fully intends to build yet another party space for himself. Trump’s plans get derailed when he receives word from his inner circle – including a brown-nosed Pam Bondi (her face covered in literal feces, or “rectoplasm”) and a ghoulish Stephen Miller – that unknown forces are conspiring to kill his and Satan’s baby. Despite attempting to force an abortion himself, an already paranoid Trump is freaked out by the news, and he finds himself haunted by the ghostly specter of wife Melania, appearing as a ghostly figure from out of a J-horror film, a la The Ring or The Grudge.(The true murderous mastermind behind everything, JD Vance, continues to plot with co-conspirator Peter Thiel, who is keeping a demonically possessed Eric Cartman on ice.)These disparate threads converge when Cousin Kyle seeks out White House approval for the boys’ crypto dump, only to find himself part of an impromptu seance alongside Trump, Bondi, Miller, Vance, Don Jr, Kristi Noem and FCC head Brendan Carr (still suffering from injuries sustained a few episodes back). A ghostly wrath descends upon the party and threatens to expose both Trump’s Epstein ties and Vance’s power grab until Cousin Kyle, ravaged by guilt, admits that “crypto’s just a money-laundering scheme for the rich to get richer!” Cut to a screeching Fox News alert announcing that Bondi – her entire face still covered in feces – has indicted Cousin Kyle for crypto fraud. He gets sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Bondi vows to “indict anyone who says bad stuff about our amazing president”.Back home, a defeated Stan realizes that “there’s just no really going back to the way things used to be”. Kyle attempts to console him, promising that things will return to normal at some point down the line, but the dark, Shining-esque note that the episode closes on casts doubt on this.Another solid building block in what, when all is said and done, promises to be South Park’s most ambitious season (or two seasons) yet. While the show has always tackled current events, its never folded them into its long-term storytelling in such a way.At the same time, series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker clearly recognize that the fervency of these latest seasons’ political satire is alienating some of their longtime fans, who likely feel that the show has gone too far in this direction. The self-satirizing within this episode may not placate those critics, but it puts Stone and Parker’s perspective into sharp relief: as the world has changed, so too has South Park. Per voice-of-reason Kyle, there’s no point in trying to go back to simpler times – all anyone can do is “make the most of where we are”. More

    • 225 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘No reason not to be all in’: is Saturday Night Live ready to meet a major political moment?

      by

      Paul Simon sang The Boxer. New York mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared with firefighters. When producer Lorne Michaels asked: “Can we be funny?”, Giuliani replied: “Why start now?”It was September 2001 and, just 18 days after the worst terrorist attack in US history, Saturday Night Live’s blend of satire, silliness and live music was back on the air. “In bad times, people turn to the show,” Michaels told Rolling Stone magazine 20 years later.SNL turns 50 this month and must once again try to meet the moment. This time, the crisis is not external but taking place in late-night TV comedy itself. In recent weeks, the genre has become the canary in the coal mine of US democracy.Over the summer, CBS announced the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, ostensibly for financial reasons, though notably Colbert is a longtime Trump critic and CBS owner Paramount had been seeking government approval of an $8bn merger with Skydance.On 17 September, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s show over comments he made after the assassination of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk. Hours before the suspension, the Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, warned that local broadcasters who aired Kimmel could face fines or loss of licences and said: “It’s time for them to step up.”The move prompted an outcry over freedom of speech. ABC parent Disney faced pressure from Kimmel’s fans, some of whom cancelled subscriptions to the company’s streaming services Disney+ and Hulu. Kimmel returned to the air six days later and mocked Trump: “He tried his best to cancel me and instead he forced millions of people to watch this show.”Now the spotlight shifts from CBS and ABC to America’s other major network: NBC. When SNL returns on 4 October, Bad Bunny will host with Doja Cat as the musical guest and five new featured players following several cast departures. But no moment will matter more than the “cold open” in how it deals with the current climate.View image in fullscreen“This would be one of the biggest, most important cold openings in the 50-year history of the show,” says Stephen Farnsworth, a co-author of Late Night With Trump: Political Humor and the American Presidency. “But in the past, when Saturday Night Live has faced a major challenge, like they did in the wake of 9/11, they’ve risen to the occasion.”SNL’s mockery of Trump has at times earned the wrath of his supporters and the president himself, but Farnsworth advised against pulling punches, saying: “Saturday Night Live will face charges that it isn’t going far enough or that it went too far pretty much no matter what they do, so there’s no reason not to be all in.”Farnsworth, the director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, adds: “It’s striking that a man who desires the spotlight as much as the president does, who wants to be a public figure as badly as he has over the years, doesn’t understand that criticism is part of the package that comes with power.”Launched a year after the Watergate scandal toppled Richard Nixon, SNL features sketches and live musical performances. But it is also known for covering politics and featuring politicians. The weekend update segment provides ongoing commentary while cast members often parody presidents, candidates and other figures.The most famous include Gerald Ford (Chevy Chase), George HW Bush (Dana Carvey), Bill Clinton (Darrell Hammond), George W Bush (Will Ferrell), Sarah Palin (Tina Fey), Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) and Joe Biden (various cast and guest actors). Trump is now portrayed with aplomb by James Austin Johnson.Susan Morrison, author of Lorne, a biography of Michaels, recalls: “When Alec Baldwin was doing him, Trump was furiously tweeting right about SNL: it wasn’t funny, FCC should investigate, Lorne was over. Watching Alec Baldwin do his thing, it almost felt like bear baiting. It was so fun to watch the back and forth, and don’t anticipate that they’re going to pull back.”Politicians have also appeared as hosts or in cameos. Al Gore, John McCain, Jesse Jackson and Sarah Palin have all featured. Trump hosted in 2004 and, more controversially, in 2015 during his presidential run. Hillary Clinton appeared multiple times, including alongside her impersonator, Kate McKinnon, and Kamala Harris took part before last year’s election.The show picked up 12 Emmys recently for its 50th season and anniversary programming, including an award for outstanding variety special. Saturday’s episode will be scrutinised closely for how it deals with Trump’s attack on comedy, free expression and democracy – and whether it can make a serious point in a funny, unsanctimonious way.View image in fullscreenMorrison continues: “Lorne and his very smart writers will come up with some clever but on-the-nose way of dealing with this. The thing that it’s important to remember about Lorne is he’s been doing this for so many decades. He’s outlasted so many slates of executives. He’s a survivor. As Conan [O’Brien] told me, in the Game of Thrones of show business, Lorne would be the last man standing.“That isn’t to say that he’s going to cave but he will figure out a way to address this and stay on the air. I also don’t think the people at NBC or Comcast or the FCC are going to mess with him. He’s too much of a statesman in the TV business. But he’s going to come up with a way of dealing with it and addressing it and he’ll be funny about it.”Conservatives have long accused SNL of bias, arguing that the show disproportionately lampoons right-leaning figures while going easier on Democrats. Former head writer Tina Fey openly acknowledged a “liberal bias” in a 2003 interview, fueling the narrative. But Michaels insists that it is nonpartisan and willing to mock both sides.Morrison adds: “It isn’t to say he would ever be an apologist for the Trump regime; nobody could have expected that politics would jump the shark in quite this way. But he certainly would not hesitate to make fun of Democrats even now if they merit it and that’s part of it.“To quote Jim Downey, one of the show’s longtime writers, you never want the show to seem like it’s the comedy division of the DNC [Democratic National Committee]. Lorne is committed to that and that will help here as well.”David Litt, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama dubbed “the comic muse for the president” for his work on White House Correspondents’ Association dinner monologues, acknowledges that he has been on the receiving end.“I was in the audience at SNL when their cold open was about the Obamacare website crashing,” he said. “I was working at the White House at the time and I remember thinking, I’m not having fun. Everyone else in the audience seemed be having a better time than I was.”Writing comic material under time pressure is tough, Litt says, and that will be the SNL team’s top priority for the new season. He said: “This is a show that rises to a pretty intense challenge every week and I assume they’re going to be thinking about rising to the exact same challenge, which is, how do we turn around a show that is good and funny because that’s hard enough without having the president of the United States breathing down your neck.“That’s part of what infuriates Trump so much about comedians. It’s not that they’re making fun of him, it’s that the audience is laughing. It’s connecting. If Kimmel or Colbert or weekend update was making a joke about Trump and the audience was rejecting that joke, I don’t think Trump would care. It’s the fact that it exposes him as still, despite everything, a fundamentally laughable person, or at least a human person.”Litt, whose new book, It’s Only Drowning, is about his unlikely friendship with a Joe Rogan fan, adds: “I can’t imagine that people are going to be sitting around a writers’ room saying, how do we address this as though they were journalists. I think they’re saying, how do we do funny stuff? Because doing funny stuff is really hard.”SNL has already used up one potential Trump gag. Its cold open on 9 November last year, the first weekend after Trump won the presidential election, was entitled SNL for Trump and had cast members sarcastically trying to get on Trump’s good side, singing: “We will, whatever you want.” The sketch was a satirical take on the public figures and institutions that had shifted their stances or expressed deference to Trump for political or personal gain.Bill Carter, author of the book The Late Shift and executive producer of the CNN docuseries The Story of Late Night, says: “The gauntlet has been thrown now and, if they don’t do something, they will disappoint people. People will be expecting their take and their take won’t be the most obvious one. It’ll be some creative way of approaching it. They have a very good Trump right now so they ought to use him.”Trump has frequently railed against SNL over the years and is likely to be watching its return with fingers poised for a hot take on the cold open. But like Morrison, Carter thinks it unlikely that SNL will suffer the same fate as Colbert or Kimmel.“Unlike those shows, Trump cannot say this has terrible ratings and does not make money,” he says. “Saturday Night Live does not have terrible ratings. In fact, with the right host, it will often be among the most watched shows on television. And it has the best demographics on any show on television except for sports.“The idea that they would abandon that show is nuts, because if they did, some streaming service would say, we’ll put on Saturday Night Live. It’s 50 years that show’s been on. It’s had an audience all those times of a new generation of viewers. It continues to do that so it’s a tremendously valuable franchise. NBC is not walking away from that show. I don’t care what pressure they put on it.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      They’ve finally gone there: South Park lets rip at Benjamin Netanyahu

      by

      In the three weeks since South Park last aired, things have changed. The assassination of rightwing pundit Charlie Kirk exploded already fiery political tensions, with the Trump administration and its base embarking on a campaign of retribution the likes of which haven’t been seen since the McCarthy era, and stating, without sufficient evidence, that Kirk’s murder was the result of a wide-ranging leftist plot. Scores of people in the public and private sectors have been punished for commenting on the situation, most notably late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, whose show was briefly pulled off air after the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, put parent company Disney under pressure to do so.Suffice to say, the situation is far too dire to worry about where a cartoon sitcom fits into it all, but South Park is a special case. The first episode of season 27 revolved around the politically motivated cancellation of Stephen Colbert, another late-night talkshow host critical of Donald Trump, while the second directly lampooned Kirk.Many on the right have declared South Park morally complicit in Kirk’s murder, despite the fact that Kirk himself celebrated the parody (going so far as to use its caricature of him as his X profile picture). Repeats of that episode were pulled from Comedy Central, although it remains available to stream on Paramount+. Then, a week to the day after Kirk’s death, it was announced that the new episode of South Park would be postponed. This sparked speculation of censorship, although showrunners Matt Stone and Trey Parker roundly denied this, claiming it was simply a matter of a blown deadline (the result of their famously tight schedule).View image in fullscreenWhile that seems like an all too convenient excuse, Parker and Stone have never backed down from controversy before. Then again, said controversy has never been this furious before, nor hit so close to home for them. The big question ahead of the newest episode was: what would South Park have to say about all this?The answer is … not much.The latest instalment, provocatively titled Conflict of Interest, makes no mention of Kirk, although it does tackle the aftermath in a roundabout way. In one of the two main storylines, Trump, upset over the impending birth of his unholy lovechild with Satan, sets a series of convoluted traps to force an abortion, only for Carr to continually wander into them. By the end of the episode, Carr, badly injured and hosting a brain parasite as a result of toxoplasmosis from being buried in a mountain of cat poo, is at risk of “losing his freedom of speech”.View image in fullscreenDespite avoiding one of the touchiest subjects of the day, South Park steered headlong into another, finally addressing the genocide in Palestine by way of prediction market apps. A bet on one of the platforms – “Will Kyle’s mom strike Gaza and destroy a Palestinian hospital?” – grows so large that Kyle’s mom ends up flying to Israel to put a stop to it.For most of the episode, the outrage is directed at all sides, with Kyle angrily yelling: “Jews and Palestinians are not football teams that you bet on”, and his mother proclaiming: “It’s not Jews versus Palestine, it’s Israel versus Palestine!”However, that outrage is ultimately aimed at a specific party, with Kyle’s mom barging into the office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and letting rip: “Just who do you think you are, killing thousands and flattening neighbourhoods, then wrapping yourself in Judaism like it’s some shield from criticism!” If Netanyahu’s comeuppance isn’t as scatologically extreme as Carr’s, it still provides a fleeting moment of catharsis.While not the most outrageous episode of the season, this may be the funniest, with the Looney Tunes-like gags and the prevalence of JD Vance’s impish caricature both earning huge laughs. And if this week’s South Park didn’t quite meet the moment head-on, neither did it back down. It’s good to know that it will continue to go after Trump and his cronies no matter how hot the political temperature grows.

      South Park is on Paramount+ More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Jimmy Kimmel comeback breaks his YouTube monologue views record

      by

      So much for low viewership: Jimmy Kimmel’s comeback monologue is now his most-viewed one on YouTube.The nearly 30-minute segment, in which Kimmel acknowledged his suspension by ABC owner Disney under pressure from the Trump administration, clarified his remarks on the killing of Charlie Kirk and passionately defended free speech, racked up more than 15m views in 16 hours.Numerous Jimmy Kimmel Live! sketches, interviews and other short clips have attracted tens of millions of views over the year, but Tuesday night’s segment marked record viewership for one of the comedian’s monologues.His previous most-watched monologue was from another emotional occasion in 2017, when Kimmel revealed the birth of his son Billy with a congenital heart condition that required immediate open-heart surgery. Other highly viewed monologues include Kimmel’s reaction to Will Smith’s infamous slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars (13m views), his response to the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas in 2017 (10m views) and his thoughts on Trump’s re-election last November (9m views).The spike in viewership comes after Disney suspended his late-night show under pressure from the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over his comments on the shooting of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk. The decision quickly became a cultural flashpoint, prompting national outcry over free speech and condemnation over the bullying tactics of the Trump administration. Disney reversed course on Monday, following “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” and pressure from Hollywood stars, free speech advocates, consumer boycotts, union protests and even Republicans like Ted Cruz.Kimmel’s show remains pre-empted on the dozens of ABC affiliate stations owned by the companies Sinclair and Nexstar, which is seeking FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger. Jimmy Kimmel Lives! typically averages about 1.6m broadcast viewers per night, but according to the New York Times, experts expect this tally to be much higher for Tuesday’s show – despite the Nexstar and Sinclair eliminating about 20% of its broadcast audience.Shortly before Tuesday’s show aired, Donald Trump lashed out at the host, a longtime needler and critic, and criticized ABC for allowing his return to broadcast.“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” he added.“Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” Trump said, seemingly referring to the settlement he reached with ABC News last year in a defamation lawsuit filed against the network.In his return, Kimmel was neither conciliatory nor fiery. He decried his suspension as “anti-American” – “this show is not important,” he said, “what is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this” – and clarified his stance on Kirk’s death. “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”“Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what – it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual,” he added. “That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make, but I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way.”Kimmel also praised Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, for offering the accused killer forgiveness in a televised memorial service over the weekend.“Look, I never imagined I would be in a situation like this,” he later said. “I barely paid attention in school. One thing I did learn from from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern, is that a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American … Let’s stop letting these politicians tell us what they want and tell them what we want.”Jimmy Kimmel Live! will air as usual on Wednesday night, except on the 28 affiliates owned by Nexstar and the 38 owned by Sinclair. On Wednesday, Nexstar told Variety that it is “continuing to evaluate the status of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ on our ABC-affiliated local television stations, and the show will be preempted while we do so. We are engaged in productive discussions with executives at The Walt Disney Company, with a focus on ensuring the program reflects and respects the diverse interests of the communities we serve.” More

    • 175 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      With Kimmel’s suspension, the FCC chair has made himself Trump’s comedian-in-chief | Sidney Blumenthal

      by

      Who’s the comedian? Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairperson, pressured the Disney company to indefinitely suspend Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night talkshow host on ABC, for a remark he made about the right wing’s attempts to shape perceptions about the murderer of the far-right political operative Charlie Kirk. (Kimmel is now back on the air.) It was the opening riff of Carr’s stand-up routine.Carr’s choice of venue to issue his threat – a hard-right podcast – indicated the kind of media of which he approves. His pressure against Kimmel is no isolated gesture, but the execution of a calculated plan he himself helped hatch to eradicate critical political speech. But Carr’s exploitation of the death of Charlie Kirk to serve as the trigger for Trump’s repression only succeeded in turning Jimmy Kimmel into a free speech symbol before his return to television on Tuesday.“Free speech is the counterweight – it is the check on government control,” Carr wrote as an FCC commissioner in 2023. “That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.” Then, on 17 September, he told the podcast: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.“These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”Now, Carr was fulfilling “the authoritarian’s dream”. He seems indifferent to his duplicity, boldly tossing aside pretense. Dealing with Kimmel, he posed as a stereotypical gangster speaking in clichés from a 1930s movie: “the easy way or the hard way.” Carr seems excited by his own rough language. His display of brass knuckles, however, demolishes his legitimacy to wear a badge. As the violator of free speech, he betrays his office as a protector. He also destroys conservative posturing as the special victim of speech suppression.Carr is using government power to eliminate criticism. He is implementing a policy of censorship he himself authored in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook. Even when he imitates a mobster, he does not issue his threats in a raised voice. His tone does not rise to the histrionics of Stephen Miller. Carr is a zealot of a certain type, the rightwing Leninist with the grim resolve of a commissar, the bureaucrat rigorously checking off boxes – in this case, purging late-night comedians – to fulfill the larger ideological agenda.The operation of Trump’s purge involves not the slightest bit of persuasion, debate or discussion. Carr is executing the will of the leader who is not to be questioned and above all never to be ridiculed. “We’re not done yet” with the changes in “the media ecosystem”, Carr told CNBC on 18 September. He called the erasure of Kimmel a “market correction”. Carr is incapable of comprehending when he is unintentionally funny in a way that is self-undermining. He’s not only Trump’s executioner. He’s Trump’s straight man.Before the identity, let alone the motive, of the Kirk assassin was known, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, raged against “an ideology at war with family and nature”. Weeks before, on Fox News, he had already declared the Democratic party “a domestic extremist organization”. Now, after Kirk’s assassination, taking Miller’s cue, the rightwing site the Federalist stated: “After a long history of condoning, advocating, and participating in political violence, it is time to designate the Democrat party a domestic terrorist organization.”The influential anti-woke activist Christopher Rufo tweeted: “The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years. It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”JD Vance threatened: “We are working very hard to ensure that the funding networks for leftwing violence, that the radicalization networks for leftwing violence – that if you encourage or fund your fellow Americans or anybody else to commit acts of violence because you disagree with political speech, you are going to be treated like a terrorist organization and we are going to go after you.”Trump went on Fox & Friends to point his finger: “The radicals on the left are the problem – and they are vicious and horrible and politically savvy.”All of this occurred before Jimmy Kimmel’s ouster.Meanwhile, gaggles of feverish far-right influencers, whose stock-in-trade is conspiracy theories, tried to debunk one fantasy spinning around the internet that threatened to boomerang on them. Within the Maga hothouse, Kirk had faced backlash in 2019 from the Groypers, led by Nick Fuentes, who once dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and accused Kirk of being too moderate. Kirk later shifted his position to the hard right on immigration. “I’ve noticed people like Charlie Kirk … are now calling for an immigration moratorium,” Fuentes said in June. “That means they want to shut down all immigration. And suffice to say, the Groypers have won. It’s just not even a question at this point.”The theory spread like wildfire that the killer’s cryptic inscriptions on shell casings could be Groyper messages. If they were, he would be an errant rightwing extremist, not a leftwing one. Those etched messages, however, apparently referred to a range of things, including gaming memes. No evidence has emerged that Tyler Robinson, the suspect, had political connections to any group or the involvement of anyone else in his act.But with the far-right’s history of heated factional warfare flaring in the background, Jimmy Kimmel said in his monologue on 15 September : “The Maga gang [is] 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.”Kimmel’s comment condensed, into a line that was not a joke, a complicated and fraught situation, down the rabbit hole of the far right, involving the frenzied Maga effort to pin the blame on the “radical left” and by extension the whole Democratic party, and to deflect scrutiny of their own infighting. Kimmel’s remark assumed a lot of arcane knowledge on the part of his audience.At the same time, the FCC, which Carr chairs, was considering a $6.2bn merger between Nexstar Media, a large owner of TV stations, and the Tegna media company.Within days of Kimmel’s rather innocuous comment, Carr stated that the comedian was “appearing to directly mislead the American public”. Nexstar announced it would no longer broadcast Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Disney followed by suspending him from ABC. Carr praised Nexstar “for doing the right thing”.Ironically, during the Red Scare, in 1950, when Gypsy Rose Lee, soon to be the host of an ABC radio gameshow called What Makes You Tick?, was accused of being a Communist by the American Legion and Red Channels, a conservative publication seeking to root out subversives in the media, ABC executives stood by her. CBS, on the other hand, demanded all of its employees sign a loyalty oath. Gypsy Rose Lee said about the efforts at censorship: “This may be all right for Russia, but I hope not for us.”Sinclair, a rightwing-controlled media outlet that broadcasts ABC shows, announced that suspension of Kimmel was insufficient and that it would pre-empt his program until further notice. But even that was not enough. Sinclair demanded that Kimmel “make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA”. Instead of airing the show, Sinclair said, it would offer to its affiliates a “remembrance” of Kirk, “who boldly and tirelessly defended biblical values and truth as he challenged a new generation to stand firm for Christ”. The piece was sanitized of his racist, nativist, antisemitic and misogynist views, and his assertion that Joe Biden “should honestly be put in prison and/or be given the death penalty for his crimes against America”. Kirk, extolled as an exemplar of free speech and debate, had in fact created a “Professor Watchlist” to blacklist liberal academics across the board. Sinclair made Kirk, touted as an advocate of free speech, into a symbol of its suppression. But, after further stoking the firestorm, Sinclair put its “remembrance” on YouTube and instead ran an episode of Celebrity Family Feud. Once Disney restored Kimmel’s show, Sinclair and Nexstar stated their affiliates would not air it.Carr launched his attack on Kimmel on a podcast called The Benny Show, hosted by Benny Johnson, the former chief creative officer at Kirk’s Turning Point USA. Carr had plunged down a deep rabbit hole of the right with a dubious character.Johnson was fired from BuzzFeed in 2014 after being accused of plagiarism. He was later associated with a political consulting firm called Arsenal Media – “a chaotic working environment, rife with internal bullying, toxic HR practices, and an intense culture of secrecy”, where some contractors said they were not paid, according to an investigative report in the Verge. (Johnson’s own website described him as a co-founder and chief creative officer of the site until April 2022, according to the report, but a spokesperson for Johnson told the Verge in April 2022 that he “is not currently, nor has ever been an owner, executive, or even employee of Arsenal Media”.) Johnson was also exposed last year to be among a group of six rightwing influencers who were funneled $10m from two Russian agents indicted by the justice department. Johnson and the others claimed to have been duped.When Pam Bondi, the attorney general, created an uproar, including on the right, by stating: “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” Jonathan Karl, the former ABC White House correspondent, asked Trump his reaction.“She’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly,” Trump replied to Karl. “You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they will come after ABC. ABC paid me $16m recently for a form of hate speech. Your company paid me $16m for a form of hate speech, so maybe they will have to go after you.” Trump was referring to his suit against ABC for This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos’s comment coming out of the E Jean Carroll trial describing Trump’s sexual violence. It was generally believed that ABC would have won the case, but the prospective threat to the Disney company from the Trump administration prompted its first capitulation.Trump, on his state visit to Britain, slammed Kimmel at a press conference with Keir Starmer, saying the host had been “fired because he had bad ratings” and was “not a talented person”. The old reality-TV host’s jealousy for an actual show-business star shone through. In fact, Kimmel’s show was rated No 1 with the highly valued young adult demographic.On Air Force One, Trump suggested that the FCC look into revoking the licenses of other networks, saying: “They give me only bad publicity or press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”If there are further attempts at impertinent humor, they will be met with even more severe punishments. Will Carr issue a full report to meet the crisis, perhaps to a newly created House committee on the weaponization of humor, the Trump era version of the Red Scare’s House un-American activities committee? Will witnesses be subpoenaed from the writers’ room? Will comics be permitted to sign confessions regretting their past gags? What about the audience members, fellow travelers all, who laughed? An inquisition of comedy would take everyone’s minds off the Epstein files. Are you now or have you ever been a comedian? No joking! That’s an order – an executive order.

      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 200 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Jimmy Kimmel says silencing comedians is ‘anti American’, as his show returns to air after suspension

      by

      Jimmy Kimmel returned to air on Tuesday night, calling government threats to silence comedians “anti American”, as he broke his silence about the suspension from ABC which ignited a national debate over free speech and outcry over the bullying tactics of the Trump administration.“This show is not important” Kimmel said during his first monologue since Disney, which owns ABC, suspended his late-night show from the network last week under pressure from Trump officials over his comments on the shooting of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. “What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”Kimmel’s comments come one day after Disney, facing backlash from Hollywood stars, unions, media hosts and even Republicans such as Ted Cruz, allowed Jimmy Kimmel Live! to resume production.The company had indefinitely suspended the show after right-wing outcry over Kimmel’s 15 September monologue, in which he said that “the Maga gang [is] 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.”On Tuesday night, Kimmel thanked his fellow late night hosts for their support and thanked his audience and supporters.“And most of all I want to thank the people who don’t support my show and what I believe, but support my right to share those beliefs anyway” Kimmel added.“I do want to make something clear, because it’s important to me as a human and that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” Kimmel said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”“Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what – it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual” he said. “That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make, but I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way.”Later in the monologue, Kimmel hit out against Trump, saying that the president “did his best to cancel me” but that “instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show.”Kimmel added that “the president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”“One thing I did learn from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern, is that a government threat to silence a comedian the President doesn’t like is anti American” he added.Kimmel closed his monologue by reflecting on remarks made by Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, at her late husband’s memorial service over the weekend.“Erika Kirk forgave the man who shot her husband” Kimmel said. “That is an example we should follow.”“It touched me deeply” he added. “And if there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that, not this.”Kimmel’s comments on the shooting of Kirk angered Trump supporters and officials who have vowed to avenge the death of the conservative activist. Last Wednesday, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, threatened ABC’s affiliate licenses if Disney did not “take action” against the host. Two broadcast groups that own hundreds of affiliate stations – Nexstar, which is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger, and Sinclair – then refused to air the program, leading Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden to suspend production.The move drew intense backlash from the Hollywood community and free speech advocates and prompted boycotts and protests against both ABC and Disney.Around an hour before Kimmel’s return on Tuesday, Trump lashed out at Kimmel and criticized ABC for allowing the comedian’s show back on air.“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back” Trump wrote on Tuesday night. “The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” Trump added.“Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” Trump said, seemingly referring to the settlement he reached with ABC News last year in a defamation lawsuit Trump filed against the network.On Monday, hours before Disney announced Kimmel’s return, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released an open letter signed by over 400 Hollywood stars condemning Disney’s decision as “a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation.” Signees included Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck and Robert De Niro.In a statement on Monday, the company said the decision to pre-empt Kimmel’s show was made “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.”“It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” the statement continued. “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”Although Kimmel’s show returned to ABC on Tuesday, it did not return to ABC affiliate networks owned by Sinclair. The company, which is known to promote conservative talking points, said it would not allow the late-night show to air until Kimmel apologized to Kirk’s family and made a donation to his conservative activist group Turning Point USA.“Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming,” the company said, which has the nation’s largest number of ABC affiliate stations.“Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return,” the group added in a statement late Monday.Nexstar also confirmed that it will continue to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live! on its stations in 22 states. “We made a decision last week to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live! following what ABC referred to as Mr Kimmel’s ‘ill-timed and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse,” the company said. “We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve.”The two companies’ continued pre-emption means that Jimmy Kimmel Live! did not air on almost a quarter of ABC affiliate stations. The show continues to be available online as well as on the streaming services Hulu and Disney+. More