There was an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where a reverend came to Mr. Carlson to complain about some of the songs they aired, threatening a boycott if they weren’t pulled. Carlson listened to him, and over the objections of his program director, agreed to remove some of the songs to avoid a potential boycott and on account that he also thought the lyrics were offensive. Later on the reverend came back and asked Carlson to remove John Lennon’s *“*Imagine” from the air on account that it said God didn’t exist. Carlson points out that the lyrics don’t say that, it just says imagine there was no God, but the reverend says that’s close enough. Carlson realizes at this point the reverend is just going to keep making demands for what WKRP can air, so he refuses to take the song out of rotation and tells the reverend to boycott if he must.
I feel like Kimmel is in a similar situation. So are a lot of people really. If you capitulate to people like Trump, they’re just going to keep making more and more demands, and eventually you’re going to be so used to caving in that you’re going to have a hard time saying no. (WKRP also taught me that turkeys cannot fly.)
Just an FYI that John Oliver’s show yesterday was about the Jimmy Kimmel cancellation. Hosts like Oliver and Bill Maher seem relatively safe if only because HBO doesn’t depend on broadcast licenses or sponsors.
Oliver then cited news stories that Paramount/Skydance is in talks to buy HBO’s parent company. Followed by a Pit-worthy string of expletives. Oliver ended this show with a plea to Disney CEO to not cave to the Trump administration’s endless demands, and instead say Eff you, make me! That might have registered better with conservatives if he’d said “Molon Labe” with AR-15 emojis for the letter Ls.
This would be an impactful decision by the Trump administration. Shall we opine aloud about the sort of criteria on which they might base such a decision?
Kimmel’s return now also confirmed by CNN. I suspect this will give Kimmel a big popularity boost. Not, of course, among right-wing nutjobs. He may have to be more careful about controversial areas he ventures into, but I hope and trust that the usual Trump-bashing will continue. No one does it better than Kimmel.
I’ve never watched Kimmel or any other late night host since a little bit of Letterman when I was in college in the 80s. I may try to catch this monologue though if it’s on YouTube.
If Disney was able to engineer a path for a Disney deal to go through and also for Kimmel to stay on the air, I think taking 7 days is fine to work through that. 0 days + Fuck Off would be better, but one week is still ok. It was actually a complicated situation from Disney’s perspective.
