Bloomberg columnist Ron Brownstein posted this this morning on Twitter.
Disney’s initial surrender over [Jimmy] Kimmel marked another ominous advance in Trump’s campaign to suppress dissent. Kimmel’s restoration shows those willing to resist that campaign can tap into a deep well of public concern. But this fight is hardly over, for any of Trump’s targets.
He’s exactly right. This goes to a topic we’ve frequently discussed: not simply the deep well of public concern but the civic totems that makes American blanch at the idea that the chair of the Federal Communications Commission should act like a Minister of Propaganda or Speech Commissar.
As Ron says, this is far from over. This morning, Nexstar has announced that it won’t resume airing Jimmy Kimmel’s show on the ABC affiliates it owns. I believe Sinclair, a far-right company which also owns a large number of affiliates, says the same.
I’m not sure I’d say I’m happy about this. But I’m not terribly sad about it either. Obviously much will depend on who has more stomach for this fight: ABC/Disney or Nexstar and Sinclair. To my way of thinking, the more visible this is, the more it remains in the news, the more people who don’t really focus on the daily minutiae and obsessions of politics have this shoved in their face, the better.
No one seriously thinks the Kimmel show is some harrowing kind of destabilizing hate speech that threatens public peace and law and order. For hardcore Trumpers, getting him knocked off the air is a win because it’s Trump dominating. We know they love it but not for the reasons claimed. If you’re not in that camp it seems either bad or weird. A lot of people simply don’t care. There are multiple late night shows and not as many people watch linear TV as they used to. But if you do watch it or did you’ll probably be irked that you’re not able to anymore. And it’s a great thing that the saga itself will make clear to a lot of people that it’s a company you’ve never heard of which has decided for it’s own reasons to take the show off the air in your city. Those cities include New Orleans, Nashville and Knoxville, Salt Lake City, Burlington, VT, and a slew of local ABC affiliates in New York state for Nexstar — almost 40 in all. For Sinclair, it’s Portland, Seattle, St Louis, Washington DC and a ton of others, totaling 40 in all. However it plays out, it’s a lot more attention on the fact that what you’re allowed to watch in your town is decided by some corporate suits because they want Trump’s permission for a merger. That’s all to the good as far as I’m concerned.
The kernel at the heart of it is just not a good look. A person in power lashing at a comedian who makes fun of them is just inherently pathetic and cringe. You only need the most passing acquaintance with popular culture and democratic political culture to know this.
I’ve always thought that Sinclair especially gets away with a ton of stuff because it’s mostly under the radar. (Nexstar is new to injecting politics directly into programming decisions. Sinclair’s been at this for more than 20 years.) If you know that Sinclair forces its local affiliates to broadcast chunks of conservative propaganda on its airwaves produced by Sinclair national then you’re definitely not the target. If you’re the kind of person who’s meaningfully impacted by Sinclair bleeding its propaganda into the infosphere in cities across the country, you almost certainly have never heard of Sinclair, its ties to the conservative movement, its history of sleazy behavior and all the rest.
This fight over the Kimmel show makes the whole thing much more visible. It makes it a fairly hot news story. If this goes on, I think ABC will have a hard time stopping Kimmel from making jokes about it; Jimmy Held Hostage, Day 57 just writes itself. If he doesn’t, he’ll look stupid because it will be clear he’s been muzzled. As a general matter, I don’t think people without strong political attachments like the idea of corporate suits censoring what you’re able to see in your town for political or backdoor deal type reasons. So let the fight commence.
