My neighbor Swamp Rabbit was in a fighting mood after hearing that Jimmy Kimmel had been booted off late-night TV. It seems Donald Trump and his MAGA goons are using the murder of rightwing influencer Charlie Kirk to silence their critics and advance Trump’s authoritarian agenda.
“I ain’t surprised,” Swamp Rabbit said, “but what’s pissing me off is them weasels that run the media. They’re firing peeps left and right. They’re falling all over each other to kiss Trump’s ass.”
No surprise there either, I told him. “The “quislings of corporate media” — Andy Borowitz’s phrase — have been showcasing their cowardice and greed since before Trump’s second term began. This time a media company called Nexstar, which owns more than 200 TV stations around the country, wants to gobble up a rival company in a $6.2 billion deal that would make Nexstar the largest provider of local TV in the country.
But there’s a catch: The merger won’t happen unless it’s approved by the FCC, which is supposed to be independent but actually answers to our criminal president.
Swamp Rabbit tugged his feeble goatee. “So what do you call this — bribery? Extortion?”
“Call it what you want. I call it fascism.”
I spelled it out for him: ABC-TV — owned by the Disney Company, more weasels — carries Kimmel’s show, and Nexstar owns 32 ABC stations. Pressured by Nexstar and anticipating the wrath of FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, Disney/ABC axed Kimmel.
“Okay, I get it. The Kirk thing was just an excuse. Kimmel got pretty much the same treatment as Stephen Colbert got from CBS.”
Bottom line: Corporate media execs will be quick to censor programming in the wake of Trump’s assertion that the FCC should consider revoking the licenses of TV broadcasters that “give him too much bad publicity.”
This calls to mind historian Timothy Snyder’s prophetic warning — “Do not obey in advance” — issued last year after the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post killed its endorsement of Kamala Harris for president. His point being that compliant media make it much easier for demagogues like Trump to take power.
Swamp Rabbit reached for his whisky bottle. “You’re pulling me too far into the weeds, Odd Man. I still don’t know anything about them corporate weasels that own everything. Not even their names.”
“We’re not supposed to know,” I said. “How do you think they got to own everything?”
Footnote: Here are the words that got Jimmy Kimmel “suspended indefinitely“: “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 with everything they can to score political points from it.”
Not exactly incendiary, are they? What used to be called free speech might cost you a lot these days.
Odd Man Out 