America’s late-night TV hosts have rallied behind fellow comedian Jimmy Kimmel after he was suspended by ABC in a row over comments he made about the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Stephen Colbert began his show by saying “we are all Jimmy Kimmel”, and said the star’s removal was a “blatant assault on freedom of speech”.
Seth Meyers declared it was “a privilege and honour to call Jimmy Kimmel my friend”, while Jon Stewart and Jimmy Fallon tackled the free speech issue by doing satirical sketches in which they were apparently forced to praise Donald Trump.
Their broadcasts came shortly after the US president said the main networks were overwhelmingly negative about him and could have their licences “taken away”.
That’s all cute, but what good will it do?
The right don’t care. Every minimal pressure they can exert will at minimal, at very minimal make people self censor themselves just a little bit more. That is what they want and they are succeeding marvellously.
You still have to apply pressure. Otherwise you will just bleed out. They are winning the media war by being the loudest, (soon only), not the actual majority of people who agree. Remember this is a class war. They are few with all the money.
That’s true, but I don’t see it working. All these comedians/talk show hosts have been doing this for decades and that did nothing. Nothing. The opposite actually, normalizing abhorrent things by trivializing them for (a lot of times) cheap laughs.
What is going on is not a media matter for multi-millionaires to joke about on the billionaire tv networks.
That’s defeatism.
Your house is falling into disrepair yet you’ve been sweeping the floors and cleaning the dishes for decades.
Yes, it needs major work, and no, it can’t be fixed with brooms and sponges.
Thats not defeatism.
And that’s not sweeping the floor. That’s some weird smugness of being right while the house falls into disrepair. Worth nothing.
It can create a hard place. If the current government is a rock, these late night hosts can create a hard place, to catch the network between. The network cares about money - if the government starts taking away licenses, they can’t make money, so they’ll roll over (as they have done). But they can’t make money without their talent either, so the hosts can push back from the other side to maintain their platform/voice.
Will it work? Maybe not. Will giving up? Definitely not.