Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel didn't deserve what happened to him.

What Kimmel said on his ABC late-night talk show was perfectly accurate.  In lamenting Charlie Kirk's assassination, Kimmel said that MAGA supporters were doing all they could to deflect blame for Kirk's killing to others even as the murderer - who is now believed to have shot Kirk for his transphobic comments at a time when the murderer was falling in love with a woman making a transition from the male sex - came from a pro-gun, pro-MAGA family.   But Kimmel likely wasn't suspended from his show for saying that.  More likely, ABC suspended him for joking about Trump's nonchalant response to Kirk's death, pivoting from that topic to the subject of the obscene White House ballroom, the construction of which is getting underway.

When Kimmel made fun of Trump, Trump and his minions overreacted accordingly.  TV station owners Sinclair and Nexstar, right-wing media companies that own many ABC affiliates between them, demanded that ABC pay for Kimmel's arrogance, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr let Disney, which owns ABC, know that their ABC affiliates were ready to revolt and hold ABC accountable for Kimmel.  This was because Sinclair and Nexstar were discussing a merger and Carr planned raise the limits on the number of stations a single company can own in so many markets to allow the merger to happen.  And Sinclair and Nexstar didn't want ABC to nix this deal.

Disney chairman Bob Iger could have stood up to the threats from the ABC-affiliate owners and to Carr.  Now in his seventies, Iger doesn't even have to be in charge of Disney.  He has a comfortable life, lots of money, and a beautiful wife - former model Willow Bay, a one-time spokesmodel for Estée Lauder (did I happen to mention that the Lauder family is part of the American conservative establishment?) and a journalist who is now the dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California.  Iger, as one of the most innovative and most respected entertainment moguls of the past fifty years, cemented his legacy when he retired a few years ago but just had to come back to run Disney again because he missed the power.  So, instead of standing up to Uncle Charlie (the old truckers' term for the FCC) and doing the right thing, Iger went ahead and suspended Kimmel.  Kimmel is on indefinite leave and, given that the owners of the ABC affiliates are trying to force him into an apology for what he said about Kirk (he said nothing about Kirk) and making a donation to Kirk's organization (though it would make far more sense for them to make Kimmel donate to Trump's ballroom, which would make him one of several donors, I'm led to understand), he will likely be fired altogether.

If you wondered when the right to free speech would be nullified, we've reached that point - at least in broadcast media, anyway.  The only question now is when all free speech will be curtailed and when Trump will make dissent against his regime a capital crime.

In the meantime, people are already expressing their displeasure with Kimmel's suspension-cum-dismissal with their wallets.  Folks are canceling their subscriptions to Disney-owned Hulu and Disney+.  They've already stopped watching ABC programs like "The View," so even if Whoopi Goldberg says anything critical of Trump, no one will ever hear it because no one will be tuning in.  Me?  I actually found a present-day sitcom I actually like - "Shifting Gears," starring Tim Allen, which, like previous Allen sitcoms, airs on ABC.  Tim Allen is an American comedic icon, not unlike Jimmy Kimmel, but I can't watch his new sitcom now, because it's on ABC, and it kills me to have to do this to Allen.  (Allen himself is reported to be pro-Trump, but I have a feeling that his support for Trump may be lukewarm at best.)   By the way, with Jeff Bezos kissing Trump's' posterior more frequently, I have to cancel my subscription to Amazon Prime, especially when I can't think of anything else I want that I can't find anywhere else.

And then there's CBS, which bent the knee to Trump to allow its parent company Paramount to merge with Skydance.  The network's news division, the TV news department that gave us Murrow, Cronkite, Moyers, Rather and Kuralt, now has an ombudsman to make sure that nothing that offends Trump gets on the airwaves.  Meanwhile, the fifty-eighth season of "60 Minutes" begins soon.  Will I tune in?  If I do, it will be the only CBS show I watch.  I'll keep an open mind about "60 Minutes," the season premiere of which airs a week from tomorrow, but if, after a couple of weeks, it turns out that it's all celebrity interviews and Anderson Cooper travelogues, that will likely be it for me.

P.S.  Please note that I never said anything derogatory about Charlie Kirk in this post.  (Yes, I heard what Vance said about going after people who disparage Kirk's memory.)

P.P.S.  I posted the following comment on Willow Bay's Instagram page: "Your husband is a coward.  There, I said it."

"Work It" Out

You know a TV show is spectacularly bad when it airs on ABC for only one or two episodes, because even NBC, which no one watches, has aired shows that have lasted longer than that. But, as it happens, "Work It," a sitcom about guys who dress as gals to get jobs in a bad economy, was canceled after two episodes, ironically putting everyone involved with that show on unemployment.

An attempt at reworking the formula that produced "Bosom Buddies," the cross-dressing sitcom that introduced us to Tom Hanks, "Work It" turned out to be the most offensive sitcom in recent memory, with many critics finding it too broad (no pun intended) and aiming too much for cheap laughs. As someone who remembers "Bosom Buddies," I don't recall that show being either broad or cheap. And in these more sensitive times, the sensitivity and relative subtlety of the earlier show could have come in handy for the producers and writers of "Work It." The show offended homosexual and transgender activists as well as Puerto Ricans, when one Puerto Rican character said that his ethnic background gave him a natural ability to "sell drugs" for a pharmaceutical sales job. It also offended the unemployed by making fun of jobless folks who have to humiliate and degrade themselves just to put food on the table if they're even lucky enough to work.

The funniest thing about "Work It," apparently, was that ABC was promoting it as a "new hit comedy" after its initial airing. So much for truth in advertising - there was nothing accurate about that claim.

ABC attempted to present sitcoms that explored (explored? explored? a pretentious word) men holding on to their masculinity in a feminized America, but the network's efforts with three such shows fell far short of the mark. Tim Allen's "Last Man Standing," according to Star-Ledger TV critic Alan Sepinwall, has morphed into a clone of his earlier (and inoffensive) sitcom "Home Improvement" after it tried to be a latter-day "All In the Family," with Allen's character very misogynistic and mildly racist. But anyone who's seen Tim Allen knows that he has more in common with Archie Andrews than Archie Bunker. "Man Up!" was canceled. (I covered that show already.) And now "Work It" is gone. It all makes sense. Pussy-whipped men are not funny, and the idea of men complaining about being pussy-whipped (especially when they're really not) isn't funny either.

Anyway, ABC, having inexplicably shelved "Cougar Town" despite its solid and solidly loyal audience, is bringing it back and inserting it in the 8:30 PM Eastern time slot on Tuesdays, in place of the two failed sitcoms "Man Up!" and "Work It" and following the now appropriately titled "Last Man Standing," beginning February 14. Meanwhile, it appears that the alphabet network finally has a solid Wednesday night lineup. I'll comment on that in another post.