Unbowed, unbent / ‘A dark fantasy’ / 100 miles of bikeways

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Unbowed, unbent. If Disney/ABC placed any restrictions on Jimmy Kimmel’s return to late night after a suspension over his remarks about the assassination of reactionary influencer Charlie Kirk, they were nowhere in evidence last night as he struck what Variety’s Michael Schneider calls “the perfect tone.”
■ Angie Han at The Hollywood Reporter: “Kimmel met the moment with his powerful, tightrope-walking monologue.”
■ See it here …
■ … or read highlights here.
■ Politico: Kimmel was close to tears as he praised the words of Kirk’s widow: “Erika Kirk forgave the man who shot her husband. … That is an example we should follow.”
■ This drew a standing ovation: “This show is not important. What’s important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”
■ In a skit that followed the monologue, Robert De Niro played President Trump’s new Federal Communications Commission chief: “It’s just me, Jimmy, the chairman of the FCC, gently suggesting that you gently shut the fuck up.”

Trump rants. The president took to Truth Social to whine about Kimmel’s comeback: “We’re going to test ABC out on this. … Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative.”
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: That fulfilled a Kimmel prediction, providing “another crystal-clear example of the president using his government power to cajole a privately owned media company into changing its content.”
■ Emmy-winning comedy writer Merrill Markoe—David Letterman’s longtime head writer—warns that President Trump’s attacks on the First Amendment aren’t over. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)

Meanwhile, on other channels … Kimmel’s timeslot competitor Jimmy Fallon told viewers last night: “You’re watching the wrong Jimmy.”
■ Stephen Colbert: “Thanks to everybody … watching from home—which might be just my wife, Evie. Because everybody else is probably watching ABC.”
■ But that wouldn’t include ABC affiliates owned by the right-skewing Sinclair and Nexstar station chains …
■ Nexstar’s NewsNation, sprung from the soil of the formerly Tribune Co.-owned WGN, is marking its fifth anniversary.
■ In other programming regression: Apple TV+ has postponed the premiere of a series about an investigator who infiltrates online hate groups with the goal of taking ’em down from the inside.

‘A strongman forced Kimmel off the air. The people brought him back.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link, possible because readers support Chicago Public Square with a buck or two): “Millions of democracy lovers found their voice, and … a renewed belief that we are going to win.”
■ The Big Picture: “On multiple fronts, Trump has been pushed back or forced to dig in and defend.”
■ Economist Paul Krugman sees in the Kimmel saga a sign that the tide’s turning against the president: “We may not be Russia or Hungary.”
■ Chicago-born journalist Terry Moran—fired from ABC after a tweet critical of Trump: “Solidarity works. That’s the lesson.”
■ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin cheers signs The New York Times is “finally getting real about Trump” with some “surprisingly unflinching” articles.

Thanks, Trump. Gov. Pritzker’s ordering state agencies to trim their budgets by 4% as a buffer against federal cuts under the Republican administration …
■ … which is scrambling to rehire hundreds of federal employees laid off under its aborted “Department of Government Efficiency.”

‘A dark fantasy of narcissism and Christian nationalism.’ Historian Heather Cox Richardson reviews Trump’s … oh, let’s say … whackjob speech to the United Nations …
■ … two minutes of “deranged” highlights from which Zeteo provides here …
■ … and in which the president told those nations, “Your countries are going to hell” …
■ … repeatedly complaining about embarrassing escalator and teleprompter malfunctions that the UN later attributed to Trump’s own team.
■ Emily Atkin at Heated calls it the “dumbest climate speech of all time … so stupid and unoriginal, it was actually kind of funny.”
■ He also complained about the UN’s flooring.
■ CNN and PolitFact had their hands full fact-checking Trump.
■ One senior foreign diplomat texted a Washington Post columnist: “This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?”
■ Columnist/lawyer Robert Hubbell: Trump’s destroying a U.S. legacy of goodwill.

‘End your dangerous operations in Illinois.’ The state’s Democratic congressional delegation is demanding Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem call off her deportation efforts here and provide definitive accounts of just what they’ve achieved.
■ Former Illinois Democratic Rep. Marie Newman: “We must … prepare to send a louder and more pervasive economic message: A General Strike.”
■ The TRiiBE surveys Chicago-area doorbell and security cam footage catching ICE agents in the act …
■ … and shares Washington, D.C., organizers’ advice to Chicagoans on what to expect from Trump’s show of military force here.
■ The American Prospect: “While the president howls about crime in liberal cities, he is taking drastic action to make it worse everywhere.”
■ Updating coverage: Three people were shot at a Dallas ICE facility and the shooter’s dead from a self-inflicted wound, according to the agency’s director.

‘Deaths will follow.’ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg condemns Trump’s “lethal advice” to parents on Tylenol.
■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: That news conference “was a historic embarrassment for America.”
■ Coming Friday, Oct. 3, to Chicago’s WTTW-TV: A new Chicago Stories documentary, “Inside the Tylenol Murders.”

100 miles of bikeways. That’s how many more Mayor Johnson says have been built in Chicago since he took office.
■ A Tribune editorial complains: “Teens on e-bikes are having accidents in the suburbs. We need real rules.”

Thanks. Ron Schwartz and Jim Parks made this edition better.

Kimmel’s comeback / The real Tylenol killer / ‘You don’t think the facts matter?’

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Kimmel’s comeback. Yanked from ABC’s airwaves amid criticism of his comments about the assassination of reactionary activist Charlie Kirk, Jimmy Kimmel’s show will return tonight.
■ In a vague statement that failed to explain the terms—if any—of Kimmel’s return, corporate parent Disney credits the decision only to “thoughtful conversations.”
■ Columnist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls that “bulltwat”: “The blowback against Disney has been hurricane level.”
■ After what Poynter’s Tom Jones calls “a week unlike any other in recent history when it comes to …free speech,” lots of questions remain.
■ A source says Kimmel plans to address the controversy head-on in his monologue tonight …
■ … and lawyer/columnist Robert Hubbell cheers: “Let’s give Jimmy Kimmel Super-Bowl-level ratings for his return. Let’s make it impossible for Disney to confuse cause and effect.”
■ Late-night critic Bill Carter: “The country will not be fully restored to sanity, fairness and the values it has lived by for 250 years. But it will have, finally, someone who doesn’t capitulate at the first sign of a bully’s ugly pressure—even when the bully is the president of the United States.”
■ Jon Stewart at The Daily Show: “The campaign that you all launched—pretending that you were going to cancel Hulu while secretly racing through four seasons of Only Murders in the Building—really worked.”
■ Stephen Colbert, whose show is still set for cancellation next spring: “Once more, I am the only martyr in late night!”
■ Contrarian Jennifer Rubin: The whole affair puts the lie to the cliché “liberal Hollywood.”
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: The Kimmel battle’s far from over.
■ At least one of the two broadcast chains that pressed for Kimmel’s dismissal—Sinclair, co-owner of the Cubs’ Marquee Sports Network—says it won’t air Kimmel’s show.
■ Columnist Christopher Armitage: “We brought Kimmel back in six days. Now let’s destroy Sinclair’s censorship machine.”
■ Correction: Contrary to an item in yesterday’s Chicago Public Square, Sinclair didn’t air a Kirk memorial during Kimmel’s slot—instead releasing it just on YouTube.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn rejects a Tribune editorial decrying teachers’ “extremist” social media posts about Kirk: “It … suggests that to get into teaching, one must forfeit one’s right to free expression 24/7.”
■ “Science Guy” Bill Nye says NBC/Comcast-owned Peacock killed an episode about authoritarianism for his series on world-ending disasters, The End is Nye: “I was going to be shot by firing squad.”

The real Tylenol killer. In remarks that one bioethicist calls dangerous, President Trump yesterday told pregnant women a dozen times, “Don’t take Tylenol” …
■ … in the process struggling repeatedly to pronounce the word acetaminophen …
■ … and flying in the face of decades of scientific evidence.
■ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion proprietor Jeff Tiedrich: “Dumbest doofus ever is gonna cure all the autisms.”
■ Columnist and pediatrician Dr. Zachary Rubin explains what Trump got wrong.
■ Wikipedia recaps the unresolved mystery of the 1982 Chicago-area Tylenol murders.
■ A committee of Illinois health leaders has voted unanimously to recommend the latest COVID-19 shots for all adults and many kids.

Trump’s ‘Watergate tapes’? Public Notice columnist Lisa Needham says one of the president’s social media posts over the weekend “made clear that he sees no problem whatsoever with openly calling for the most mind-bendingly corrupt behavior imaginable.”
■ Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein: Trump yesterday “designated Antifa as a ‘domestic terrorist organization’—the first such designation ever, as far as I can tell.”
■ In her first live TV interview since the election, the woman Trump beat—former Vice President Kamala Harris—says she wishes she’d done more sooner to get Joe Biden off the ticket.
■ Variety critic Daniel D’Addario found the sitdown disappointing.

‘I swung my camera forward and saw a man who was carrying an American flag walk into the huge cloud of gas.’ Tribune photographer Stacey Wescott describes how she captured a viral image of Friday’s protest outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding center in Broadview.
■ Video obtained by the Sun-Times shows an immigration officer who the feds reported “seriously injured” before he shot and killed a Mexican immigrant said at the time that his injuries were “nothing major.”

‘So you don’t think the facts matter?’ A Ronald Reagan-appointed federal appeals court judge yesterday challenged the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division on the Trump administration’s unusual decision to enter the legal fight over Illinois’ assault weapons ban …

Chicago’s lead menace lingers. WBEZ, Grist and Inside Climate News report that millions of dollars in loan money to replace lead pipes pumping water into Chicago homes remain unspent.
■ Find out if your home’s affected by searching this city website.
■ Author Cory Doctorow spotlights “the enshittification of solar (and how to stop it).”

AI is transforming reporting. As ChatGPT and its siblings become a staple of higher education, the Reuters Institute surveys the challenges posed to journalism education by plagiarism and fake quotes—and the promise of new opportunities.
■ Popular Information: TikTok’s U.S. operations are set to be acquired by a billionaire surveillance enthusiast.
■ With even kindergartners now using tablets in the classroom, Mother Prompter columnist* Nicole Meyerson rounds up tips and resources for parents hoping to ensure digital safety for kids at every stage of childhood.
■ Sign up now for a special—free—event for Chicago Public Square readers Nov. 3: An online introduction to AI tools and fact-checking help for regular people.

‘One of the best daily emails. … Highly recommend subscribing.’ Those kind words about Square yesterday on Bluesky from former local TV news exec, reporter and producer Jennifer Schulze brought in a few new readers.
■ You can help add a few more by recommending Square to a friend or five.
* And your Square columnist’s daughter-in-law.

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