Jimmy Kimmel and the strongman’s fear of comedians

First they came for Puppets The weekly Russian satire known as Kukly or Puppets in English lampooned Russian leaders by rendering them as giant latex caricatures Not long after its launch the show and its producing channel NTV flourished At the height of its popularity more than half of Russia s TV viewers tuned in to its episodes multiple of which featured a puppet version of former KGB officer turned politician Vladimir Putin In one sketch described in a Salon story Kukly shows Putin s puppet double as a Japanese robe-wearing playboy being serviced by a bevy of painted-up prostitutes i e his political cronies The show s head writer Viktor Shenderovich claimed Lenin as his inspiration since it was he who dubbed politicians political prostitutes It s just been a long time since we last witnessed such a great illustration of the metaphor Shenderovich claimed at the time Oleg Nikishin Newsmakers Getty Images Puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin left whispers a word to Moscow s mayor Yuri Luzhkov June on the set of a popular satirical television show called Kukly in Moscow Russia Putin was not tickled Following the thin-skinned leader s polling to the presidency in his armed operatives raided the offices of NTV s parent company and had its owner Vladimir Gusinsky jailed on embezzlement charges Shortly after that NTV s ownership was transferred to a Kremlin-allied oligarch and Kukly went off the air in Satirists pose a danger to the likes of Putin and Donald Trump because they expose that their states to greatness are illusions and validate that the people oppressed by their governance aren t crazy Astute punchlines can be potent taking on a life of their own spreading faster and farther from their origin than nearly any official comment Unless say that message tees up a joke The Monday monologue joke that led to Jimmy Kimmel Live being pulled from ABC indefinitely whatever that means wasn t one of the host s best Neither was it the sickest conduct realizable as Trump s appointed Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr described it to far-right podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday What it constitutes is a sufficient excuse to censor someone else who Trump has long desired to silence Related Jimmy Kimmel is the latest casualty in Trump s war on the media Kimmel s relentless hammering on Trump has been the centerpiece of nearly every single monologue that s topped Jimmy Kimmel Live since the first Trump administration The only fresh addition to Monday s show opener is that Kimmel performed it in the wake of a nationwide censuring campaign designed to punish anyone speaking ill of right-wing activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk in the days following his murder To be clear Kimmel did not malign Kirk in any way Here s what he mentioned We hit a few 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 sum political points from it In between the finger-pointing there was grieving Disney Randy Holmes Jimmy Kimmel Live Satirists pose a danger to the likes of Putin and Donald Trump because they expose that their states to greatness are illusions and validate that the people oppressed by their governance aren t crazy Citing Trump s order to fly flags at half-staff he continued But on a human level you can see how hard the president is taking this Cut to a gaggle outside the White House where a reporter acknowledged that Kirk was the president s good friend and petitioned how he was holding up Trump responds I think very good And by the way right there you see all the trucks They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House which is something they ve been trying to get as you know for about years and it s gonna be a beauty Yes Kimmel deadpans he s at the fourth stage of grief construction A Rolling Stone assessment cited sources that revealed multiple ABC execs felt that Kimmel hadn t crossed any lines but the threat of Trump administration retaliation loomed They were p sing themselves all day the magazine quoted an unnamed insider as saying Trump obsessively raged at late-night hosts and unflattering Saturday Night Live parodies throughout his first presidency but lacked the political machinery to do anything about them Now he has the backing of the federal regime s regulatory apparatus including Carr s FCC and a Republican-controlled Congress Days after CBS paid Trump million to settle his lawsuit alleging vote interference related to a Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris the FCC approved its parent company Paramount Global s merger with Skydance And for good measure it also cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert claiming it was purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night I absolutely love that Colbert got fired Trump posted to Truth Social that week His talent was even less than his ratings I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next And now this Great News for America The ratings-challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday Congratulations to ABC for at last having the courage to do what had to be done That leaves Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers two total losers on Fake News NBC Their ratings are also horrible Do it NBC Don t you dare NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers must be protected at all costs Lloyd Bishop NBC President Joe Biden during an interview with host Seth Meyers on the February episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers I recognize laughter in the age of Trump as though it were a cousin of anti-totalitarian laughter Masha Gessen wrote in It is the reaction to seeing act-based reality as when Saturday Night Live essentially reenacts White House press conferences or when late-night comedians offer up what amounts to straightforward reportage and analysis The hunger for a reflection of reality is so desperate that one can reliably get laughs completely by quoting Trump during a residents talk That is pretty much what Kimmel did The part that Carr discovered offensive I guess is that he implied that Trump s purported despair wasn t genuine One can draw their own conclusions based on that clip as Desi Lydic does on Tuesday s episode of The Daily Show She rolls her eyes shakes her head and observes with a shrug Well we all grieve in our own way Among the first moves in the strongman s playbook is to take control of the media starting with censoring news outlets and humorists Stand-up comics in India who speak out against Prime Minister Narendra Modi s authoritarian overreach face death threats and intimidation from loyalists and police Lydic doesn t have to fear retaliation from the White House for now Comedy Central s new owner Paramount Skydance no longer necessities to appease Carr although if its proposed deal to acquire Warner Bros Discovery goes forward The Daily Show may be in a different situation Other entertainers in Trump s sights aren t taking chances Jimmy Fallon bowed out of a planned appearance at the Fast Company Innovation Festival on Thursday On that same Thursday the co-hosts of The View stated nothing about their late-night colleague s suspension from the configuration s lineup Meanwhile on Thursday s edition of The Scott Jennings Radio Show Carr mused about having the FCC look into whether The View and several of the programs that you have still qualify as bona fide news programs and therefore exempt from the equal opportunity regime that Congress has put in place He has turned his coup into a media tour including a Wednesday stop by Fox News to complain that late-night hosts went from being court jesters that would make fun of everybody in power to being court clerics and enforcing a very narrow political ideology Comedy Central Jon Stewart on The Daily Show balloting night special Jon Stewart ended Thursday by hosting a special government-approved edition of The Daily Show identifying himself as its patriotically obedient host With a tacky maximalist golden background projected behind him Stewart played that part by referring to Trump as our Great Father and praising the president s verbal gaffes during his U K visit Then the show s correspondents clumsily formed a chorus of praise that collapsed into bickering which halted when Ronny Chieng communicated everyone Calm down God is this your first dictator Among the first moves in the strongman s playbook is to take control of the media starting with censoring news outlets and humorists Stand-up comics in India who speak out against Prime Minister Narendra Modi s authoritarian overreach face death threats and intimidation from loyalists and police Turkey has a law threatening anyone who insults its president with between one and four years in prison That includes minors Around kids between the ages of and stood trial related to such charges over six years according to a Duvar English review Certain of those were between the ages of and Our rights haven t eroded to that degree but Kimmel s indefinite suspension is the the greater part brazen evidence of this administration s willingness to use politicized agencies against his perceived enemies Trump has this in common with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb n who reported in We must embed the political system in a cultural era A scarce months into Trump s second term he launched ideological purges of national arts institutions and directed Congress to defund the Corporation for Residents Broadcasting dealing a crippling blow to NPR and PBS member stations The PBS brand is closely associated with Sesame Street so in a way our regime also came for the puppets first That Kimmel s suspension is the conclusion of a regulatory agent s threat on a podcast is singularly alarming but follows this unit In the past Trump fumed that the FCC should take away broadcast networks licenses but that was an empty threat because broadcasters don t hold FCC licenses Their affiliated stations do and that s who Carr threatened on Wednesday by musing about actions the FCC can take Disney doesn t have pending business with the FCC but Nexstar Media Group does Around of its stations are ABC affiliates part of a portfolio consisting of stations in U S markets Presently it requires the commission s approval to finalize a billion merger with Tegna Thus Nexstar was the first to answer Carr s call to step up and say You know this garbage isn t something that we think serves the requirements of our local communities We can do this the easy way he added or the hard way Andrew Alford president of Nexstar s broadcasting division took the very easy way out Continuing to give Mr Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is solely not in the populace interest at the current time he mentioned in an official announcement A limited months into Trump s second term he launched ideological purges of national arts institutions and directed Congress to defund the Corporation for Masses Broadcasting dealing a crippling blow to NPR and PBS member stations The PBS brand is closely associated with Sesame Street so in a way our ruling body also came for the puppets first Conservative station group Sinclair also pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live from its affiliates line-ups until further notice It followed that by demanding that Kimmel apologize to Kirk s family and make a donation to the right-wing activist organization he founded Turning Point USA Kimmel s brother-in-arms Colbert shared his thoughts on Thursday s episode of The Late Show You know what my public values are Buster Freedom of speech he announced Or as Alexander Hamilton called it Hakuna matata Lots of Americans are appalled including the FCC s lone Democratic commissioner Anna Gomez The FCC is weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel and to really think twice about what they say about this administration Gomez noted Thursday at the Axios Media Trends Live conference That is contrary to the First Amendment It s contrary to the Communications Act which prohibits the FCC from censoring broadcasters So any pressure on these broadcasters to alter their broadcasts because of their content is in fact inappropriate As for what can be done her response wasn t encouraging It s up to the corporations overseeing the newsrooms and performers that are under attack to stand up for free speech Gomez says because every time they capitulate rather than show courage what they are doing is eroding our democracy on our First Amendment freedoms Between CBS and ABC s news and entertainment divisions we re up to at least four inhabitants facing capitulations Start your day with essential news from Salon Sign up for our free morning newsletter Crash Lesson Fear is one of the authoritarian s topmost tools and satire reminds us how brittle it is That s the theory anyway In practice fear has commanded a sizable lead in the race against satire since when ABC cancelled Bill Maher s Politically Incorrect Colbert and Kimmel are merely the latest casualties in this long march toward what s shaping into a darker period than the McCarthy Era That ended in part because President Dwight D Eisenhower worked to undermine Senator Joseph R McCarthy This time the White House is leading the charge against the nebulous left empowering modern McCarthy-equivalents like Carr to do his bidding Ironically this echoes a very Russian tradition Fear is one of the authoritarian s topmost tools and satire reminds us how brittle it is Kukly writer Shenderovich became a prominent Kremlin critic in the years that followed its cancellation before absolutely fleeing Russia in after the administration branded him as a foreign agent Nineteen years before that in he wrote Of subject the challenge isn t Putin and not those whose interests he was appointed to protect in the Kremlin and whose interests he protects at present The issue is us who run to heel at the first shout fussing pettily bought up on the cheap Right now in this land of purported free speech those words hit close to home One quivers at the thought of who the right s war on free expression will claim next but if Russia s post- Kukly landscape is an indicator the hit list may include good humor itself On the same day that ABC suspended Kimmel Media shared that Russia s Ministry of Defense has debuted an AI-generated comedy featuring among other jests deepfake versions of French President Emmanuel Macron and Trump blabbing about golden toilets Whether Putin appears isn t mentioned He ostensibly doesn t since he s the man pulling the strings Read more about this topic The cruel joke of ousting Stephen Colbert Why is it so hard to stop Donald Trump Carlson blasts the Trump administration s assault on free speech The post Jimmy Kimmel and the strongman s fear of comedians appeared first on Salon com