Late night fights back. The day after Disney-owned ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel under what critic Bill Carter calls “extreme threat from a federal government wielding its unchecked power to kill a business and silence a critic,” the last hosts standing pulled out all the stops in Kimmel’s defense and in service of mocking Donald Trump:
■ Stephen Colbert—his own show now to be canceled at the end of this season—resurrected his old Comedy Central character, “Stephen Colbert,” as his show’s new conservative “ombudsman.” (See it here.)
■ That followed an opening segment reworking the “Be Our Guest” song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast with the lyrics “Shut your trap.”
■ In a special non-Monday night hosting slot, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart took to a Trump-style gilded set for an “all-new, government-approved” episode. (See it here.)
■ Seth Meyers: “If you’ve ever seen me say anything negative about [Trump], that’s just AI”—before getting serious: “There’s a reason free speech is in the very first amendment. It stands above all others.” (See it here.)
■ Jimmy Fallon’s monologue jokes about Trump were overdubbed by a voice praising Trump. (See it here.)
■ David Letterman: “This is misery.”
■ The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson (no relation): “Making jokes has never been this dangerous, except in authoritarian states.”
■ Author and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich is a bit upbeat: “Trump’s war on late-night comedy … could be his undoing.”
Inside ABC. One source tells Rolling Stone that, in the hours leading up to Kimmel’s suspension, multiple executives “were pissing themselves all day.”
■ Reuters: Disney representatives and Kimmel searched for a way to defuse anger over those remarks about Kirk before the program was pulled.
■ Citing FCC chair Brendan Carr’s role in Kimmel’s disappearance, House Democrats are calling for Carr’s ouster.
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones refutes suggestions that Kimmel’s gone because of what he said about assassinated reactionary icon Charlie Kirk: “It would be more accurate to say ABC pulled Kimmel’s show off the air following comments made by … Carr.”
■ Want to understand the business currents that have swept Kimmel away? Self-styled Internet Managing Editor Dave Pell says: “Follow the merger.”
■ A Public Citizen petition demands: “Put Jimmy Kimmel back on air.”
■ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: ABC.
‘Then they came for the comedians.’ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg deflates suggestions that Kimmel said anything offensive about Kirk: “Kirk, in life, could float the ugliest stereotypes, the most extreme rhetoric. But washed clean in the blood of martyrdom, it became a fireable offense to even mention that.”
■ Zack Beauchamp at Vox: “What just happened … shows how far down the authoritarian road the United States has traveled in just eight months.”
■ The New Republic’s Greg Sargent: “Trump’s ouster of Jimmy Kimmel is much worse than you think.”
■ Veteran Chicago journalist and former Better Government Association chief Andy Shaw: “This isn’t politics as usual. It’s not even dirty politics. It’s unacceptable scorched-earth bullying.”
■ Gizmodo’s Matt Novak watched every Kimmel monologue since Kirk was killed: “I was expecting there to be something shocking that would at least warrant legitimate controversy. But there was nothing.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “What if Kimmel stood up during his monologue and said … ’I want to be able to get married, buy a home, have kids … while also not having them have to hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day.’ Would that be the good kind of free speech? If I’m following this all right, I think it would. Because that’s something Charlie Kirk said.”
■ Handbasket columnist Marisa Kabas: “Kimmel’s suspension shows us that nothing will ever satisfy Trump’s unquenchable thirst for power.”
■ Lawyer and columnist Robert Hubbell: “Crybaby Trump says it is illegal to hurt his feelings.”
■ A Northwestern University professor is among experts who tell Time that the Kimmel and Colbert cancellations reveal Trump’s media suppression strategy.
■ Flashback to a 1939 New York Times report: “Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels today ended the professional careers of five ‘Aryan’ actors and cabaret announcers … on the grounds that ‘in their public appearances they displayed a lack of any positive attitude toward National Socialism and therewith caused grave annoyance in public and especially to party comrades.’”
Turning Point’s turning point. Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, is taking over his 1,500-employee Turning Point USA political media organization.
■ WBEZ talked to some of the dozens of Illinois faculty members that Turning Point has labeled “radical professors.”
■ Add to the list of those facing professional sanctions for daring to say something less than glowing about Kirk an Oak Forest High School English teacher who posted, “When Kirk made his comment about the necessity of gun deaths to protect the 2nd Amendment, did he consider Uvalde and the 13 beautiful children and 2 teachers who were killed?”
Chilling talk at a water cooler. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is in the market for office space in hundreds of locations across the country.
■ The Sun-Times documents grieving families’ struggle to get information about those ICE has seized.
■ Keep an eye out for the feds on your next trip to Home Depot.
■ The TRiiBE: During an arrest outside a Bolingbrook Culver’s, a federal agent told a witness recording the event: “Get my good side.”
■ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman: “Friends don’t let friends visit America.”
Oops. Gov. Pritzker on Sept. 5 posed for a smiling photo with a South Side anti-violence worker charged in a Sept. 11 smash-and-grab crime at a Michigan Avenue store.
■ Chicago’s most prominent philanthropic groups are condemning Trump administration threats against philanthropic groups.
‘I’m still confused.’ A member of the Centers for Disease Control Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices wasn’t alone during a vote on national vaccination policies …
■ … recommending new restrictions on the combo shot protecting kids against chickenpox, measles, mumps and rubella.
There’s a metaphor here somewhere. Trump’s golf course in Scotland’s been accused of breaching sewage contamination limits 14 times since 2019.
■ Human beings on Sunday will swim in a Chicago River competition for the first time in almost a century.
A full calendarrr o’ events this here weekend. It begins with today’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day observance, during which Pulitzer-winning columnist Dave Barry says “literally billions of people all over the world—people of all ages; people of many different nationalities and faiths—do not talk like pirates, either because they never heard of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, or because they think it’s stupid.”
■ Time to check the map for fall foliage colors’ peak.
■ Also: Happy birthday to Axios Chicago.
Questionable quiz. In honor of next week’s National Punctuation Day, Conversation quizmaster and past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel has chosen to end each challenge on this week’s news quiz with not one, not two, but three question marks.
Thanks. Rick Kaempfer, Mike Braden and Garry Jaffee made this edition better.
