# ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel show indefinitely because of comments about GOP response to Charlie Kirk death. (Kimmel will be back on air Tuesday 2025-09-23) **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 17, 2025, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-pulls-jimmy-kimmel-show-indefinitely-because-of-comments-about-gop-response-to-charlie-kirk-death-kimmel-will-be-back-on-air-tuesday-2025-09-23/1023138 "2025-09-17T23:27:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 75
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2025, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-pulls-jimmy-kimmel-show-indefinitely-because-of-comments-about-gop-response-to-charlie-kirk-death-kimmel-will-be-back-on-air-tuesday-2025-09-23/1023138/75 "2025-09-18T11:16:08Z")
A friend of mind was expressing astonishment about the blowback to Kimmel’s comments, and the viciousness with which the Right is attacking him and demanding his silence. _He’s just a late-night knucklehead, making dumb jokes,_ my friend said. _I mean, can you imagine Hitler going after the Jay Leno of his day?_ And I said— Yes, I can, because he did. The man’s name was Werner Finck. > **[Werner Finck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Finck)** > > Werner Finck (2 May 1902 – 31 July 1978) was a German Kabarett comedian, actor and author. Not politically motivated by his own admission but just a "convinced individualist", he became one of Germany's leading cabaret artists under the conditions of the Nazi suppression after 1933. > Born in Görlitz in Prussian Silesia, the son of a pharmacist, Finck attended an art school in Dresden and began his career as an itinerant storyteller of fairy tales in the 1920s. He took acting lessons and began a m... Obviously, television was not a thing in the early 1930s. What there was, though, especially in Germany, was cabaret culture. It was The Thing To Do — go to the cabaret, hear some music, listen to comedians poking fun at current events, have some drinks and food. Finck co-founded a venue, _Die Katakombe_ (“the catacombs”), where he acted as host and MC between other acts, and made his own comic remarks. He claimed not to be especially political, but he disliked how the Nazis were compelling obedience and conformity, and their humorless rigidity made them an easy, rich target for someone with a dryly satirical sense of humor like Finck’s. After the establishment of the _[Reichskulturkammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reich_Chamber_of_Culture)_ in 1933, part of the _[Gleichschaltung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung)_ program instigated by Goebbels, Finck was closely monitored by the Gestapo, and his audience was regularly infiltrated by state observers, trying to catch Finck making directly treasonous or subversive remarks. In 1935, Finck was arrested and briefly placed in a concentration camp. When freed, he was barred from performing for an entire year, and eventually had to accept a military assignment during the war to stay out of prison. There’s an even crazier example of a dictatorial regime leaning on a popular comedian, though. This one comes out of Iran. > **[Samad (fictional character)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samad_(fictional_character))** > > Samad (also Samad Agha; in Persian: صمد) is a fictional character created by Iranian director and actor, Parviz Sayyad. Samad was firstly characterized in a famous Iranian television series, Sarkar Ostvar \[fa\] (1967–1970), as a country boy. > In the Iranian Sarkar Ostvar television series there was a naive, country boy character without a name played by Parviz Sayyad. On the show, the country boy was frequently arrested for his ignorance. After a poll done by National Iranian Television (NITV), th... In the late 1960s, the actor Parviz Sayyad created a comic character on a popular TV show, an unnamed kid from a rural village who was simple but kind-hearted. The audience loved the character, so Sayyad gave him a name, Samad Agha, and brought him back in his own TV show and a series of movies. The comedic premise is pretty straightforward: Samad is a country bumpkin, naive and traditional. Whenever the modern world intrudes on his village, or any time Samad needs to go to the big city for some reason, confusion and frustration result. For a rough analog of the style of performance and humor, imagine Samad as a Persian version of Ernest P. Worrell. You wouldn’t think this premise would have political implications, but consider the context. The Pahlavi dynasty was in control of Iran (the Shah who was removed in the 1979 revolution was named Mohammad Reza Pahlavi). This regime had been aggressively pursuing a modernization program since the late 50s, co-opting some of the initiatives advocated by Mohammad Mosaddegh before his removal in the coup of 1953 with the aim of centralizing and stabilizing the Shah’s authority in the uncertainty that followed. His reforms were extensive: undermining the power of the Islamic clergy, granting women the right to vote, promoting literacy, and so on (for more, read about the “White Revolution” **[here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Revolution)**). The irony, of course, is that while these reforms might seem to be superficially Western-minded (the Shah was a Francophile) and were accelerating Iran’s standard of living far ahead of their Middle Eastern neighbors, they were enacted with a heavy, autocratic hand. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi may have claimed to want to make Iran a beacon of progress, and he may even have superficially believed it, but he himself, unquestionably, was a dictator who brooked no personal opposition, using political repression and a brutal **[internal police agency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK)** to force his agenda down the throat of an increasingly restive country. In the middle of this, the character of Samad appears. He’s befuddled by modern “conveniences,” and frequently doesn’t see the point. He argues with local bureaucrats whose implementation of the reform program is incompetent or corrupt. He struggles navigating urban environments and just wants to go back to his village. The character was instantly popular. Samad’s frustrations and annoyances mirrored those of the wider population. Change is difficult, and the Iranian regime was bringing a lot of it. Samad was a symbol of “rural wisdom,” echoing the traditional views of people who were bewildered by and resistant to cultural evolution. Sayyad says he didn’t intend any of this as a deliberately political critique; he just saw the clash between tradition and modernity as fertile ground for comedy. Whatever his intentions, the audience _loved_ Samad. The authorities, though, saw him as dangerous and subversive. The reform effort was being promoted as entirely positive, a program that would make life better for all Iranians. They wanted popular entertainment figures to portray _gratitude_ for the ongoing changes. Samad didn’t do that. He was annoyed. The annoyance was portrayed humorously, but he was still annoyed. As soon as Samad became popular and it was clear the character would stick around, Sayyad began to be visited frequently by political officers who wanted to scrutinize his scripts and emphasize that there should never be even an implication of political messaging or any kind of criticism of the regime’s agenda. Sayyad struggled more and more, and ultimately he left the country shortly before the 1979 revolution. He didn’t bother to go back afterward, either; he recognized the reality of who had taken over, and he permanently relocated himself to the West. (He’s still alive, too. I would love to hear what he makes of current developments.) In short — imagine if George Bush didn’t like the Ernest movies and forced Jim Varney into exile. That’s basically what we’re talking about here. The point of all this? It’s not surprising at all that the Trump cabal has targeted media figures who engage in satirical critique. This has been part and parcel with the authoritarian playbook forever. It’s important that the autocrat not be questioned, but it’s much more important that the autocrat not be _mocked._ He must project authority and invincibility, and laughing at him and his projects punctures his veil and dispels his aura. And Trump himself, being a TV addict and someone with an instinct for mass-media presentation, is probably even more sensitive to this than his predecessors. While it may seem utterly ridiculous for the President to care what comedians are saying about him, it’s imperative for his success that they be muzzled. It’s what leaders like him have always done. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abc-pulls-jimmy-kimmel-show-indefinitely-because-of-comments-about-gop-response-to-charlie-kirk-death-kimmel-will-be-back-on-air-tuesday-2025-09-23/1023138)._