Does ABC stand for 'Always Be Conceding'?

The network that surrendered to government pressure is now surrendering to public pressure and, thankfully, reinstating Jimmy Kimmel's show

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Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.

ABC/Disney caves again, thank goodness

ABC/Disney’s announcement Monday that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return to the airwaves Tuesday night after a brief suspension appears to be the second significant capitulation in less than a week from the invertebrate team that runs the network.

First they yanked Kimmel off the air last Wednesday after Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr went on a podcast and said that remarks Kimmel had made on Monday’s show constituted “the sickest conduct possible,” “really really sick” and “garbage,” an assessment of several anodyne quips that was wildly divergent from reality (as I outline in an item below). Carr indicated that the FCC could revoke ABC affiliate licenses if the network didn’t punish Kimmel and added “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

There was little sense that anyone aside from Trump and his most fervent loyalists were truly offended by what Kimmel said — indeed it’s hard to imagine that fervent Trump loyalists even watch “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” given his frequent comedic barbs at the president. But appeasing the mercurial, vengeful, petty, thin-skinned Trump is what corporations do these days.

“Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump posted to social media.

But public reaction to the network bending the knee to a heavy-handed threat from the federal government was gratifyingly negative. It wasn’t just hundreds of entertainment-industry figures and lefty pundits who rose up in protest, it was such conservative voices as Tucker Carlson:

You hope that Charlie Kirk's death won't be used by a group we now call bad actors to create a society that was the opposite of the one he worked to build. You hope that. You hope that, a year from now, the turmoil we're seeing in the aftermath of his murder won't be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country. And trust me if it is, if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that ever and there never will be. Because if they can tell you what to say, they're telling you what to think. There is nothing they can't do to you. … A free man has a right to say what he believes, not to hurt other people but to express his views​.

Republican U.S Sen. Ted Cruz:

It is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying. … I like Brendan Carr. He’s a good guy, he’s the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him, but what he said there is dangerous as hell. … It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, yeah, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.

And the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which wrote, “The political cycle of using government to punish opponents is taking the country into dark corners that will result in less freedom, and less free speech, for all sides.”

With their trembling fingers to the wind and fearing punishing boycotts, ABC bosses released a statement Monday saying they’d been “having thoughtful conversations” with Kimmel, and though they continued to think his remarks last week “were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” they would be lifting his suspension.

Whatever. It would have been nice if they’d admitted error and echoed some of the defiant words of conservative critics of the FCC, but I guess it’s a relief to know that some corporations still have some limits when it comes to showing obeisance to Trump.

Now we will see if their local markets will punish or reward ABC affiliates owned by Sinclair and Nexstar, companies which, at this writing late Monday night, are saying they will not bring back Kimmel’s show. Prediction: Money will talk. It always does.

That was a lousy editorial, Chicago Tribune

Under the headline, “That was a lousy bit, Jimmy Kimmel. But there’s no role here for government intervention” (gift link), the Tribune Editorial Board last Friday peed down both legs rather than simply sounding the alarm about the ominous sequence of events that led to ABC/Disney sidelining Jimmy Kimmel.

“The late-night host’s monologue on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ was tasteless, unfair and, frankly, cruel,” said the institutional voice of the newspaper near the top of the commentary.

Let’s stop right there and remember exactly what Kimmel said to his TV audience a week ago Monday:

We had some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and did everything they can to score political points from it.

It was undeniably true that “the MAGA gang” was using the Kirk assassination to score political points by blaming left-wing ideology for inspiring the alleged killer. That finger-pointing began even before Kirk was pronounced dead, and it has continued through Sunday’s highly politicized memorial service and beyond.

The editorial argued that Kimmel's implication “is untrue” that the alleged shooter may be more MAGA aligned than some have said, though there’s still a lot we don’t know about the suspect’s political views and motivations. And those views are of dubious relevance in any case, as the editorial conceded:

History teaches us that criminal assassins of famous Americans such as Kirk are typically alienated, disturbed individuals who are far more like each other than the adherents of one or the other side in this silent but deeply disturbing civil war going on in America at present. Their motivations, if that is even the right word, should not be framed in those binary terms. It’s not only inaccurate but also profoundly dangerous, and it should cease, for the good of the republic

So what was “tasteless, unfair and cruel”? Here’s what Kimmel went on to say that left the Editorial Board in a tizzy:

In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism. But on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.

Kimmel then showed a video clip of an obsequious reporter calling out to President Donald Trump, “My condolences on the loss of your friend, Charlie Kirk. May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and half, sir?”

Trump’s response: "I think very good, and by the way right there you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House. Which is something they’ve been trying get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it’s going to be a beauty."

Back to Kimmel: “Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief. Construction. Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish. … There’s something wrong with him, there really is.”

The editorial said that Kimmel implied "that President Donald Trump cared more about the new ballroom at the White House than the death of a close ally … (when) all the evidence points to Trump’s genuine affection for Kirk and his family; a family and broader community that, needless to say, is in deep pain at present."

Nope.

Nearly all the evidence now and going back decades points to the narcissistic, soulless transactional nature of Trump’s “affection.”

Yet the Tribune Editorial Board primly found it "cruel" to chide the famously cruel Trump for his vain, chilly, distracted answer to the reporter in their odious effort to both-sides this issue. (In an earlier editorial the Trib sympathized with Trump, saying he “deserves some consideration" for his rash words since he considered Kirk a friend.)

Kimmel’s remarks were not even close to being a “lousy bit.” They were fair comment directed at Trump and MAGA, not at Kirk or his memory. And his words were actually rather mild in the context of all that was being said those days.

Then came this preposterous bit of supposition in Friday’s editorial:

If you analyze the clip, and those forming an opinion should watch the full clip with its associated video, you can see (Kimmel's) voice wavering as if he was going down a road he didn’t really want to go but had committed to the journey and could not change direction.

That is complete bullshit, which may be why the online version of the editorial doesn't even have a link to the video where you can watch it for yourself. Kimmel's voice isn't "wavering." That's projection. It's like me writing here that I can just see the flop sweat on the brow of editorial page editor Chris Jones as he tries not to get on the wrong side of his Alden Global Capital overlords with a too-direct broadside at the Trump regime’s attempt to muzzle speech.

The editorial said Kimmel's bit "offended many viewers," which helps explain the "judgment call" that ABC made in suspending him.

This is wildly beside the point. Kimmel has been making fun of Trump for years, and this was one of his more tame jabs. Suggesting that Monday's monologue was the last straw for ABC executives is infamously obtuse. The “judgement call” was a pathetic white flag.

Finally, toward the end, the editorial got around to identifying the real issue, which is that ABC didn't just suddenly realize Kimmel offended MAGA viewers, and its execs almost certainly didn't think he crossed any lines a week ago Monday. The network clearly suspended Kimmel in response to pressure and threats from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, and that's a break-glass moment as we see Trump trying to set the Constitution ablaze. That's your headline. That’s your lead paragraph. Not some piteous mewling about the president’s fee-fees during an anodyne riff on a late-night TV talk show.

Trump and his vengeful toadies were trying to use the muscle of government to silence critics in the media. Even with Monday’s reversal by ABC, that threat remains present, and there must be no confusing, minimizing or excusing the portentous nature of that attempt from putatively responsible voices.

What else Jimmy Kimmel had to say about the Kirk assassination

We’re still trying to wrap our heads around the senseless murder of the popular podcaster and conservative activist Charlie Kirk yesterday. His death has amplified our anger, our differences. I've seen a lot of extraordinarily vile responses to this from both sides of the political spectrum. Some people are cheering this, which is something I won't ever understand. We had another school shooting yesterday in Colorado, the 100th one of the year, and with all these terrible things happening you would think that our president would at least make an attempt to bring us together. But he didn't.

President Obama did. President Biden did. Presidents Bush and Clinton did. President Trump did not. Instead he blamed Democrats for their rhetoric. The (same) man who told a crowd of supporters that maybe the Second Amendment people should do something about Hillary Clinton. — Jimmy Kimmel on Sept. 11

Notes and comments from readers — lightly edited — along with my responses

Regarding Jimmy Kimmel

Phillip Seeberg — Late night comics should be trying to be funny. Too many comics spend too much time on decisive issues that could be avoided. It’s like comics who lean hard into excrement and masturbation jokes. They get laughs, but it doesn’t take as much talent as working clean. Johnny Carson didn’t purposely turn off half of his audience.

Skeptic — Taking self-important people down a peg can be funny.

Steven K. — The only one of the successful late night hosts who never succumbed to going overtly partisan was the most gifted one, Conan O’Brien. Conan managed to sustain an impeccable comic genius over close to thirty years on late night, all the while remaining almost completely apolitical. He is a national treasure. Of course, none of this justifies useful idiot FCC Chair Brendan Carr sticking his excrement-covered nose into network programming decisions.

Jay G. — I think the divergence into politics tracked with the Republicans leaving behind science and objective reality to worship the fact-ignoring right ideology. As Republicans (and then especially MAGA) became more and more divorced from fact-based reality, it became easier and easier to lampoon obviously ridiculous positions held by the Right. I blame this primarily on the Koch Brothers' decades-long undermining of science — particularly and especially climate change denialism — but also attribute a great deal of this to Fox News. Their influence on the senior citizens and the Right with respect to devaluing science and scientific expertise has led to vaccine skepticism and now the burgeoning anti-flouridation campaigns.

Garry Spelled Correctly — The wing nuts are the true snowflakes here.

Leegee — I vehemently disagreed with the left's woke police and their burn it all down take no prisoner tactics. I thought it was incredibly destructive and divisive. Those who disagreed were intimidated into silence. Corporations double-down because the Democrats governed and they feared retribution. Now that Trump is in office, the pendulum has swung in the completely opposite direction. The right are now the official "woke" police, but much more frightening. People are again being forced to be silent. Corporations bend their knee in fealty in the hope of not getting in the administration's cross-hairs. Firings happening now shouldn't surprise anyone, as it happened before. I was hoping for when the dust to settle there would be some normalcy in finding common ground in the middle, but when the dust does settle, I fear all we will see is smoldering ash from our charred institutions.

Don McLeese — Threatening the jobs of those who don't see Charlie Kirk as a free-speech martyr is beyond Orwellian.

Joanie Wimmer — If you want to be remembered with love and mourned at the time of your death, maybe try to be a mensch during your lifetime.

Why do we call it ‘football’ when kicking is a relatively minor part of the game?

Mark K. — I just recently learned that the "foot" in football refers to the fact that the game is played on foot, as opposed to on horseback, like polo, not really that the foot gets contact with the ball.

Zorn — I was today years old when I learned this! It’s true. And this same article points out that the word “soccer” derives from how that sport was initially known as “association football” because its rules were governed by the Football Association. “Over time, this was shortened to ‘assoc’ or just ‘soc,’ and slang-ified with an -er.”

Is ‘house mail’ still a thing?

Tidying up my desk drawers over the weekend I came across a trove of these — intramural courier envelopes with which my Tribune colleagues and I used to exchange important documents, urgent articles (or, often, in my case, weird photos and dumb cartoons). As sending such things back and forth within the company became easier via email, text and Slack, seeing envelopes like this in one’s inbox became increasingly rare.

Several a week became several a month until, during my last years at the paper — I left in June, 2021 — several a year would have been a surprise.

Unpopular opinions?

In the “hot takes that needed more time in oven” department today we have Monday’s editorial in the Chicago Tribune, “Teachers’ extremist social media posts don’t do their students any good.” (gift link). The polemic was inspired by reports that teachers have been losing their jobs or otherwise facing discipline over insufficiently respectful online expressions related to the murder of Charlie Kirk.

When educators use their platforms to broadcast political views, the message to students is unmistakable — conform, or be left out. And that’s where the problem lies. …

Teachers argue they’re exercising their right to free speech. True, but they should also worry about whether they are depriving students of theirs.

The reality is that nobody wants their kid walking into a hostile classroom, or an environment that is more about propaganda than critical thinking.

School environments should be open and welcoming. How can you foster a willingness to work through difficult ideas if your students aren’t free to be vulnerable and say what they really think? …

Our kids don’t need to know their teachers’ politics. Indeed, knowing them is a disservice to learning and personal growth.

This is uncomfortably close to arguments used to keep LGBTQ+ teachers out of classrooms or to prevent them from acknowledging their same-sex life partners, and it also suggests that to get into teaching, one must forfeit one’s right to free expression 24/7.

It’s fine to limit teachers’ political expressions in the classroom as a term of employment, but that can be a slippery slope. At a time when the government seems hell bent on erasing unpleasant parts of our history, even factual statements about, say, slavery, could be recategorized as political. And where does the Tribune Editorial Board get the idea that high school students are too timid to challenge authority figures?

Off duty teachers should have the same length of free-speech leash most of us enjoy and not be muzzled by the idea that their pupils will read one of their social media posts expressing a mainstream political opinion and be cowed into fearful silence.

The example alluded to in the editorial was of an Oak Forest High School English teacher who is “under investigation” for this post:

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? Did he care about Pulse Nightclub? How about Virginia Tech or Sandy Hook? He perpetuated and openly encouraged gun violence only to pander to his hard right audience. Words have consequences and actions often have mind-blowing irony. This is the single best example of you reap what you sow.

It’s a common take on the left, but not a good one. Kirk didn’t openly encourage gun violence and the hunting rifle allegedly used to kill him is not one of the weapons that gun-control advocates are particularly concerned about banning or restricting. Further, there’s no suggestion I’m aware of that his alleged killer was animated either way by the gun issue.

“Words have consequences” is often true, but irrelevant when it comes to Kirk’s stance on gun rights. If the teacher preached the words above in the classroom, then yes, it would be inappropriate and corrective measures would be in order (the Tribune did not weigh in on firings or suspensions). Otherwise, she has the same right to bad takes as the rest of us.

Last week’s result

511 votes

This result might have been slightly more in favor of the city if I’d taken the poll after Sunday’s impressive victory over the Dallas Cowboys instead of after the Bears had their butts kicked by the Detroit Lions a week earlier.

This occasional Tuesday feature is intended to highlight opinions that are defensible but may well be unpopular. If you have one to add, leave it in comments or send me an email, but be sure to offer at least a paragraph in defense of your view.

NewsWheel

Inspired by the WordWheel puzzle in the Monday-Friday Chicago Tribune and other papers, this puzzle asks you to identify the missing letter that will make a word or words — possibly proper nouns; reading either clockwise or counterclockwise — related to a story in the news or other current event.

The answer is at the bottom of the newsletter.

The week’s best visual jokes

Here are some funny visual images I've come across recently on social media. Enjoy, then evaluate:

There’s still time to vote in the conventional Quip of the Week poll!

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Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

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Answer to the NewsWheel puzzle

SHUTDOWN