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jimmy kimmel

Late-night comedians are useful

You know, I have to admit that watching late-night comedians out of the States is actually pretty useful. I realise that every bit of “news” out of them is exaggerated somehow for effect, but I’m assuming they don’t make shit up. I mean, out of a staid, neutral news reader, the same “news” would be troubling to me, especially when presented as fact, but when it’s presented as, “Can you believe this shit?”, well, it somehow becomes more believable. When you’ve got someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. making the news cutting programmes like the inspection of lettuce, and the US has a resulting epidemic of explosive diarrhoea, well, it’s news, and it just makes you shake your head at how fucked the country is. I thank god every day I don’t live under their government, or lack thereof, and I’m sorry for the people that do.

In addition to the comedians, whose job it is to entertain, there are the talk shows. OK, it’s their job to entertain as well, but when they present the same, “Can you believe this shit?” as well, well, it just confirms what you saw on Jimmy Kimmel (for example) the night before! So the next day you’re not finding out that, oh, everything you watched on the comedy shows was all made-up bullshit, you’re finding out that, yes, it was all actually true!

Free speech in the United States of America

It no longer exists.

As has been predicted by just about everyone, the fascist American trump administration régime has gone after, is going after, and will go after (as trump himself has already made plainly clear) any type of disagreement with trump. It’s a playbook we saw back in the 1930s. It’s not new; it’s shocking in the 2020s, yes, but it’s not new or unexpected.

I don’t know how the American right and their apologists can do this with a straight face. The hypocrisy is galling; it’s the very “cancel culture” of which they accuse the left … or the “radical left” as trump so eloquently keeps putting it. Whether or not there are any mergers in play is irrelevant, the Federal Communications Commission should not be, in a free country, threatening anyone. It’s the very “big government” that the Republican Party claims to be against. But the Republican Party is not in control anymore, we know that. The American Republican Party party in the 2020s has become the National Socialist Party of the 1930s. And the MAGA whiners wonder why we Canadians don’t want to cross the border?!

The crackdown on free speech continues. The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show used to run on the ABC network, and so does “The View”. The next morning, after “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was suspended, the usually talkative current events panel just glossed over the topic as if it never even happened, as if American democracy wasn’t crumbling around their very ears. Whether they didn’t talk about it because they were self-censoring or because they received a sternly worded memo from ABC brass telling them not to, the bottom line is that they didn’t.

I don’t find Kimmel particularly funny. His disappearance from TV won’t affect my daily life one iota (and I’m in another country, thankfully), but I’m not on TV; I’m not on TV because nobody on the planet knows who I am or whether or not I’m funny. But Kimmel is on TV (or was) because he is well-known, and (apparently) some people think he’s funny. It’s called entertainment. If you don’t like the so-called entertainment on one channel, change the bloody channel! I don’t think any one person will find their life not worth living because any one entertainer disappeared from their list of choices, but that “any one person” needs to consider the bigger picture; it’s not just about any one entertainer.

Do I really need to remind everyone of the following admonition:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Apparently there are many cowards in the United States, including and especially among shareholders.


Updated, 2025-09-19: Better characterised the trump régime.