The Firing of Jimmy Kimmel: The Latest Step on the Road to Fascism

The firing of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC -- which is exactly what his "suspension" is -- is the latest step in the road to fascism being paved by the current President of the United States and his allies.  It began with the hounding out of their jobs of  FBI and other people who lawfully investigated Trump's instigation of the January 2021 attack on the Capitol, the pressure on universities to end DEI and other policies distasteful to MAGA Americans and their theorists, and of course the firing of another late-night host, Stephen Colbert, by another cowardly media operation, CBS.  (William Paley must still be turning over in his grave.)

In the case of Kimmel, rumblings were being made about the FCC doing something about him.  I've thought the FCC was blatantly unconstitutional as soon as I was old enough to think.  It violated the First Amendment's clear proscription on the government "abridging the freedom of speech or of the press" -- what else would any honest person say a late-night comedian, ridiculing Trump and his policies, was doing?  The only crime in that would be how easy it was to make those jokes, because the threat to our democratic way of life was so obviously no joke indeed.

FDR, certainly one of our greatest Presidents, jeopardized our democracy when he signed the Communications Act of 1934 into law.  So did Felix Frankfurter in the 1943 Supreme Court decision "NBC v the US," which he wrote, which ratified the FCC's power to regulate broadcasting.  Ironically, that was in the middle of our war with Nazi Germany which FDR was so instrumental in winning, not to mention that Frankfurter was a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920.

I started teaching at universities in the 1970s, and the danger of the FCC has always been a part of my courses about the media and their impact.  My main point has always been: imagine the FCC under the control of a President bent on willfully superseding our democracy and its protections from dictatorship (see, for example, my 2005 Media Ecology conference Keynote address transcript and video The Flouting of the First Amendment).  I take no satisfaction and indeed am saddened and deeply concerned to see this patent threat to our democracy so vividly realized by this President and the many people who support him.

Note added September 24, 2025:  Last night: Jimmy Kimmel's sage, hilarious opening monologue

 

To the fascist enablers that prevented this show from being aired in 20% of its markets, I hope you go out of business soon; to fascist enabler Paramount/CBS: reverse your decision to end The Late Show w/ Stephen Colbert]; to everyone: I'll be recording a conversation w/ Frank LoBuono about this in a few hours for his Being Frank podcast

Lame CBS Broadcasts Only First Hour of Republican Foreign Policy Debate

So if you were watching the Republican Presidential debate on foreign policy on CBS last night, you were treated to its ending after the first hour, with an announcement that the remaining half hour would be available online.

Now, I'm all in favor of television being available online, but -

What about viewers who may not have been near their computers, or would rather watch the debate on a screen larger than their smartphones?

I'm not a Republican, and I enjoy the jokes about Republicans not having a foreign policy as much as any non-Republican, but CBS's decision not to broadcast the entire 90-minute debate strikes me as a profound disservice to our electoral process.

The truth is, Democrats, Independents, not only Republicans, were disadvantaged by CBS's decision.  It's good for anyone or any political persuasion to see what the person who will likely face Barack Obama in the 2012 thinks about major foreign policy issues.   As Walter Lippmann pointed out way back in the 1920s, democracy is a sham if voters are uninformed.

That's certainly what William Paley thought when he took command of the CBS radio network in the 1920s.   Coverage of all aspects of elections remained first and foremost in his network when it added television to its roster in the 1940s.

I guess it's not surprising that CBS shows so little understanding of current elections and what they require.  Like all the mass media, CBS has shown little understanding of Occupy Wall Street, and the resurgence of direct democracy it embodies.   CBS is an equal opportunity abuser of representative as well as direct democracy.

And what was so important that CBS had to cut short its debate coverage?  A rerun of NCIS - one of my favorite shows on television - but I bet even Gibbs would have given the president of CBS a head-slap on Saturday night if he could.


Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 1

Good for Dan Rather: CBS Deserves To Be Sued

A brief note of support:

Dan Rather is 100% justified in filing a 70 million-dollar lawsuit against CBS. Instead of standing by its reporter, after its own two-member panel could not say for sure that the report Rather went on the air with was false, CBS hung Rather out to dry, and in so doing damaged both his reputation and his potential for future employment.

CBS damaged its own reputation and its legacy even more.

CBS just celebrated its 80th anniversary the other day. William Paley must be turning over in his grave about CBS did to Dan Rather. His law suit is a small way of rectifyng that.