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- Kimmel is Typical of Where We Are Now
Disney announced on Monday that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would return to broadcast this Tuesday, after a brief but highly criticized suspension that sparked a national debate on free speech and the muzzling tactics of the Trump administration.
Disney indefinitely suspended Kimmel’s late-night talk show last Wednesday, under pressure from Donald Trump’s chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over comments Kimmel made about Maga and the killing of far-right activist Charlie Kirk. “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the company, which owns the ABC television network, said on Monday. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
Despite Disney’s effort to carve this baby in half, and pretend like a stern talking-to was all that was needed, the proof will be in what Kimmel says tonight.
This dust up seems like a model for the slow decline into fascism of the Trump administration. What’s important is that Disney caved, immediately. Once a bunch of non-MAGAts cancelled their Disney+ subscriptions, they backtracked. We all know that if nothing bad had happened to them, they’d have kept Kimmel off the air immediately. So, it’s a victory, of sorts — the not-very-satisfying sort.
Trump, of course, has moved on, making Disney’s capitulation look stupid in addition to being craven. Today he’s touting the bullshit non-science of RFK Jr’s claim that taking Tylenol during pregnancy is the cause of autism. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) was first synthesized in 1878 and has been widely used as an analgesic since at least the 50’s. So, of course, it’s the obvious reason that more kids are autistic than in the past (supposedly).
MAGA sure makes it tough to be pregnant. On the one hand, you can’t take anything for pain (maybe heroin if Jr has his way). On the other hand, if something happens to your fetus in utero, you better be ready to bleed and/or get a serious infection, because MAGA wants to be sure that the 1/3 of women who have a pregnancy that doesn’t go to term get punished for it. (God is the world’s greatest abortionist, some atheist told me once.)
The MAHA ethos is the stupid idea that everything bad that happens to you, health-wise, is due to something you did, or something you didn’t do. This allows rich fuckers to not feel bad about all the poors who are dying — they did it to themselves, per MAHA.
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