By David Glenn Cox
There has to be a real reason behind this. It makes little sense any other way. First, they make a show of “suspending” Jimmy Kimmel. Announced it publicly from up on high. “You! Jimmy Kimmel! Are suspended! (Fired! Silenced!).” Like Kimmel had exposed himself to the audience or something. The gods of ABC/Disney have decreed it to be so! Kimmel’s offence is so weak as to be laughable. So, the death penalty for jaywalking is also laughable.
Then 36 hrs. later, Kimmel is declared politically rehabilitated. “He’s Back!” I know that most of you aren’t old enough to remember the Soviet Union in action. But back in the day, Soviet malcontents often disappeared into Soviet mental hospitals. Then, after a few days or a month or six. The malcontent would emerge “cured!” of their political aliments and recanting all of their transgressions. Stone walls do not a prison make, but they work pretty good most of the time.
Kimmel is cornered, it’s him vs. all of his bosses and the United States Government. But the odd orbit is ABC/Disney. What’s up their sleeve? Did the bad press make the ABC/Disney brass recant? Have you seen the latest Disney version of Snow White? They are immune to bad press. Under the dinosaur principle, the larger a beast becomes, the dumber it becomes. A fifty-foot tall Disneysaur has a brain the size of a walnut. “Fire Bad!”
But 36 hrs. is near a snap decision by a television network. Were they wrong at first or are they wrong now? Corporate entities hate indecision and never change course abruptly in 36 hrs. without a damn good reason. Is it financial? Will they owe Kimmel fat stacks of cash in a dump truck for breach of contract?
Did someone speak too soon or speak out of turn? And somebody more important picked up a phone and said, drop it. The damage is already done reversing themselves now, only makes it worse. That Jimmy Kimmel is said to be an abomination! How dare he say those atrocious things, but he’s all better now! It’s like a 48-hour virus. Who is backing down from whom?
Did the lawyers make the Disney executives squirm like night crawlers on the wet pavement or has Jimmy just been released from Electro-shock therapy and rehabilitated? It’s all so very odd. It’s all so 1930s Germany or the Soviet Union. Comrade, if the chairman’s eggs are cold again. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes! A very unstable environment where you can win the order of Lenin today and go before a firing squad tomorrow.
This incident will do for ABC News what masturbation did for Pee Wee Herman. “You’re watching ABC. The You Can’t Say That Here Network!” They also serve who avoid and focus on the trivial. News from Hollywood or faux celebrities or stories from the world of sports. In Brave New World, the speed limit was ninety miles an hour because they didn’t want you to be looking around at what’s going on.
Like monsters under the bed, if the big orange baby could learn to ignore criticism aimed his way which means nothing in the grand scheme of things, it would all go away. The Big Baby will still be the president tomorrow, no matter what Kimmel or Colbert said about him last night. People watch those shows because they agree, not because they’re unsure. They aren’t seeking a fair and balanced appraisal. If they bother you, turn it off.
But Disney has been burned once before in a public dispute with little Ronnie DeSantis in the fascist state of Floriduh . Lots of money, lawyers and bad press pissed away maintaining the status quo. Once burned, twice network executives. Anxious and worried, Jimmy might say something to get them all fired and so hypersensitive. Fearful of what he might say, as the fear grows and grows in anticipation. Sooner or later! He’s gonna do it. The execs suspend Kimmel and then quickly unsuspend him. That’s weird! What’s worse? Caving to fascist self-censorship or being wishy-washy about caving to fascist self-censorship? I’m near certain the White House has said nothing. Just paranoid network executives frightened by their own shadows. They could all be fired someday over a joke they didn’t even understand.
Sinclair, the Reich wing media company, not the gas station company with the cute little dinosaur, was outraged. Now, when Sinclair is upset, that’s not a small affair. Sinclair has twenty something ABC affiliates in their briefcase. And they have chosen to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel and show Wheel of Tacos and Beverly Hillbillies reruns. ABC loses advertising dollars, making Kimmel’s program more expensive to produce for the revenue earned.
That’s weird! Sinclair loses money too! All over a late-night comic’s jokes? Especially over nothing. Is this like when John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus? Bring us all your Jimmy Kimmel records down here to the radio station to burn! Astroturf offenses and artificial outrages against the Reich wing and against the sainted memory of Charlie Kirk martyr for Christianity.
Quick! Do something before the king notices. “We fired him, sir. He popped off about Saint Charlie and it was almost awful. So, I says to myself! I’m going to put an end to this right now! Were we not supposed to do that, sir?”
Let’s see who appears on the stage, the same old Jimmy or the new and improved Jimmy 2.0? For Kimmel, it will be the easiest and most difficult monologue of his life. Be nice and keep it light and be accused of being a preprogrammed Quisling sellout or go for the jugular?
“I just flew in from a CIA black site and boy, are my arm’s tired! All I’m allowed to say is I know why Rickey Ricardo left now. And how about those CIA flights, huh? Wake up drugged and naked on a plane and not even an aspirin or a drink of water. And those electrodes on the genitals really hurt! I’d like to thank ABC/Disney management for this opportunity to win my family’s eventual freedom.”
“That’s it:
The cashless commerce.
The blanket always too short.
The loose connexion.
To search behind the horizon.
To brush fallen leaves with four shoes
and in one’s mind to rub bare feet.
To let and rent hearts;
or in a room with shower and mirror,
in a hired car, bonnet facing the moon,
wherever innocence stops
and burns its programme,
the word in falsetto sounds
different and new each time.
Today, in front of a box office not yet open,
hand in hand crackled
the hangdog old man and the dainty old woman.
The film promised love.”
― Günter Grass
Thank you for reading and supporting “This Carbon-Based Life.” Falling through the universe at the speed of life. And people wonder why the aliens won’t talk to us.
This Carbon Based Life 
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