On the menu today: Jimmy Kimmel comes back, and Kamala Harris explains that she really wanted to pick Pete Buttigieg as her running mate, but the American people are just too racist, sexist, and homophobic to allow her to do that.
Never Mind, the Censorial Dictatorship Is Reversed
In the end, Jimmy Kimmel got a few days in the time-out chair.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the ABC television network declared in a released statement Monday. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show.”
Variety: “The decision to bring Kimmel back was approved by Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, and Dana Walden, co-chair of Disney Entertainment, according to a person familiar with the matter. The executives acted based on what was best for the company, this person said, and not on external factors.”
If ABC had wanted to cancel Kimmel’s show outright, they could have and would have done so. The fact that the network announced the recording of the show was “suspended indefinitely” was a sign that they wanted the controversy surrounding Kimmel to burn itself out before letting him loose on the airwaves again. No one should be particularly surprised that ABC brought him back after some “thoughtful conversations,” and we will likely see some halfhearted apology or expression of regret from Kimmel tonight.
Kimmel’s $16 million-per-year contract expires in May 2026. In eight months, Kimmel stops being ABC’s problem.
President Trump prematurely spiked the football when he jumped onto Truth Social and gloated, “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.”
So, this means the First Amendment is intact, America is not a dictatorship, and Trump is not ruling over America’s television screens with an iron fist, right?
Kimmel’s comeback will not be complete; Sinclair Broadcast Group announced they will not be airing the show. “Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming. Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return.”
Sinclair is the largest owner of ABC affiliate stations, with 38 across the country, including WJLA, the ABC affiliate that serves the Washington, D.C., metro area. Whatever Kimmel says tonight, it will not be seen by viewers in the nation’s capital, nor Seattle, Portland, Ore., St. Louis, Dayton, Ohio, or Tulsa, Okla., among other markets. (Portions of the show will be on the internet almost immediately, of course.)
When Kimmel was removed from the air, Sinclair sounded like they were not interested in broadcasting his show again unless Kimmel not only apologized, but made “a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA”:
“Mr. Kimmel’s remarks were inappropriate and deeply insensitive at a critical moment for our country,” said Vice Chairman Jason Smith. “We believe broadcasters have a responsibility to educate and elevate respectful, constructive dialogue in our communities. We appreciate FCC Chairman Carr’s remarks today and this incident highlights the critical need for the FCC to take immediate regulatory action to address control held over local broadcasters by the big national networks.” . . .
Sinclair also calls upon Mr. Kimmel to issue a direct apology to the Kirk family. Furthermore, we ask Mr. Kimmel to make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA. . . .
This doesn’t change the censorious implications of Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr, who decreed that the FCC “may ultimately be called to be a judge” Kimmel’s comments. It has been fascinating to watch self-identified conservatives who spent decades celebrating the end of the “Fairness Doctrine” since 1987 argue that we need a federal agency to intervene when enough conservatives think a television network has aired something that is unfair.
And for every commenter who says, “Well, what about Fox News?” or “What about what gets said on MSNBC?” please, for the love of God, learn the difference between broadcast television and cable and what the FCC has the authority to regulate and what it doesn’t. I have appeared on cable news panels where the distinction was apparently unknown:
ASHLEY ALLISON: [For Elon Musk] to buy MSN[BC], he would go under some federal regulations.
GERAGHTY: Who’s regulating CNN right now?
UNKNOWN: The FCC?
GERAGHTY: We’re not a broadcast. It’s cable.
JENNINGS: I mean, I don’t really think, I don’t really think cable stations are under the same regulatory structure that broadcast is.
ALLISON: It’s definitely regulated more than Facebook and Twitter.
Right now, ABC is perfectly within their rights to bring Kimmel back, and Sinclair is perfectly within its rights to declare they’re not interested in broadcasting his show on their affiliates. Everyone is making their decision of their own accord, without the FCC chairman sounding like a mafia boss warning, “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”
A network deciding they’ve had enough with a host’s provocative comments is far from unprecedented.
Let me take you back to October 23, 2018, when Megyn Kelly was in the middle of a three-year, $69 million contract with NBC, hosting Megyn Kelly Today, as the 9 a.m. block of the Today show. The host made some comments about Halloween costumes that ran directly into the buzzsaw of the ongoing culture wars:
Ms. Kelly opened the show by announcing: “I have to give you a fair warning. I’m a little fired up over Halloween costumes this morning.”
“But what is racist?” Ms. Kelly said. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.”
NBC decided that was a firing offense, although it’s worth noting Kelly reportedly was “paid the outstanding balance on her contract, a figure that amounts to roughly $30 million.”
To my ears, Kelly’s comments sound far from a career-ender, but then again, I’m Generation X and we grew up with David Alan Grier and Jim Carrey appearing as beating victims Rodney King and Reginald Denny, urging viewers to stay in their car, in a sketch on the comedy program In Living Color. By the standards of the sensitive souls of Generation Z, we 40-somethings and 50-somethings were raised by wolves.
And then let me take you even further back to September 17, 2001, less than a full week after the 9/11 attacks, when Bill Maher suggested that the al-Qaeda hijackers had been brave, and the U.S. military was comparably cowardly:
Politically Incorrect host Bill Maher more than lived up to his show’s title this week with remarks that some of the United States’ past military actions have been “cowardly.”
The frequently sarcastic host made the comment on his ABC show Monday, prompting both Sears and FedEx to pull their ads from the show, citing complaints from angry viewers. A contrite Maher issued an apology yesterday through his publicist, saying that his views “should have been expressed differently.”
“In no way was I intending to say, nor have I ever thought, that the men and women who defend our nation in uniform are anything but courageous and valiant, and I offer my apologies to anyone who took it wrong,” Maher said in his statement.
The televised comments that sparked the controversy: “We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly.”
Maher may have further enraged viewers when he contrasted the action of the U.S. military with the hijackers who died along with their victims when they crashed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11. “Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly,” said the host.
Several ABC affiliates — again, owned by Sinclair — declined to broadcast Maher’s subsequent shows.
While Maher apologized, advertisers were reluctant to return; Maher wrote in 2006 that after the controversy, his show was “struggling for sponsors and referred to, not inaccurately, as ‘Dead Show Walking.’” In June 2002, Politically Incorrect was canceled and ABC replaced it with . . . Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Note that this week, Maher was staunchly supportive of Kimmel:
“It was 24 years to the day that I made comments on ABC that got me canceled from that network, and Jimmy Kimmel took my slot [replacing] Politically Incorrect. Oh yes, I got canceled before cancel even had a culture,” he said. “This s*** ain’t new. It’s worse, we’ll get to that, but you know, ABC, they are steady. ABC stands for ‘Always Be Caving.’”
Maher defended Kimmel, noting, “Jimmy, pal, I am with you, I support you, and on the bright side, you don’t have to pretend anymore that you like Disneyland.” Later in his monologue, he showed him even more support, further referencing the end of his tenure with ABC.
“Jimmy, let me just say, you did a great, funny show for two decades,” Maher said. “You should be proud of that. If this firing goes for you the way it did for me, you’ll get 23 years on a better network.”
Our Jeff Blehar looks at the whole controversy and sees a big, unsatisfying mess. “It is a victory for absolutely nobody, whatsoever. Kimmel will return, with mildly elevated ratings for a few days, and then fade back into the ratings obscurity he already currently occupies. He will then be let go once his contract is complete next summer. Donald Trump and his administration have already moved on to other matters, and they assume you will, too.”
ADDENDUM: Our Kamden Mulder watched former Vice President Kamala Harris on Rachel Maddow’s show so you wouldn’t have to, where Harris explained that it wasn’t that she didn’t pick Pete Buttigieg as a running mate because of his sexual orientation; it was that she didn’t pick Buttigieg as a running mate because America is a deeply racist and homophobic place that would never elect the two of them on the same ticket.