Last week, ABC announced that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” would be on pause indefinitely following a statement that Kimmel made on air about MAGA benefiting politically from Charlie Kirk’s killing.President Trump took action against a pillar of American broadcasting, merely because Kimmel mocked the President for responding to news of Charlie Kirk’s death with exciting news of his own: the new White House ballroom’s construction updates.
After much backlash from the viewing public, and $5 billion lost in Disney’s market valuation, it was announced on Monday that Kimmel would return to the air. Yet he still won’t be returning to most local TV stations due to his “insensitive comments,” at least for the time being. But the foreboding message of his show’s cancellation still looms large: how quickly will even the tamest of political dissent be struck down under the Trump administration? To what extent are we turning into a society that self-censors to avoid the trouble of potential political reprisal? When the laughter, the music and the public airwaves all go silent for expressing dissenting opinions, we aren’t just losing art. We’re losing democracy.
This is just the latest in a series of sharp, public blows to free speech in the United States. On the line of late-night hosts being censored, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was canceled over the summer under the guise of modern advertising concerns making it financially unfeasible to continue the show. However, his relentless bashing of the Trump administration, paired with the necessity for Paramount and Skydance’s merger to be approved by Trump himself, might be a clue otherwise.
While the cancellations of late-night shows required political leverage and intimidation, cutting funding to public programming is just a matter of votes. PBS and NPR stations across the country had their government funding stripped as a cost-cutting measure, forcing over 500 of them to face the possibility of closing their doors for good. Millions of Americans are faced with losing their sole sources of free public broadcasting, an act that would disproportionately affect rural and underserved audiences nationwide. PBS is not just an entertainment source for shows like “Wild Kratts,” it’s a national, public programming network that produces frontline documentaries, groundbreaking journalism and provides a swathe of educational programming meant to prepare American children for the world they’re growing up in.
Moreover, in February, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ executive board was reorganized to place Trump and his allies into top positions of authority, bypassing any sort of official selection process. The Kennedy Center is our national mainstage for artistic expression, and is being co-opted as a political tool controlled by partisan appointees. Such actions compromise artistic independence and risk making one of the nation’s most prestigious performing arts centers an avenue for the Trump administration to put forth state-approved art and entertainment. Together, these actions are not isolated changes, but are part of a coordinated cultural narrowing, silencing critics of the administration nationwide.
Colbert and Kimmel are more than comedians, they are nightly cultural critiques of our day-to-day lives and shining examples of one of the first forms of parasocial entertainment, shaping how millions understood our modern political landscape. Can you imagine a world where Stephen Colbert never broadcasted “A Late Show with Stephen at Home” during the height of the pandemic, when millions relied on his monologues from the bathtub to laugh through the fears and make sense of a president who suggested bleach injections as medicine. The Trump administration is taking a machete to free speech, wildly cutting free expression in news, satire and art that criticizes the Trump administration’s new status quo.
Looking back in history, it is evident that authoritarian powers don’t start by just targeting the newspapers — even though Trump has already begun this with The Associated Press being temporarily banned from the White House press room in March — but rather these rulers target any creative expression that can be construed as critical, ripping away culture at the seams to protect the ego of the establishment.
These major outlets meant to inform the masses are quickly becoming a direct federal mechanism for subtly controlling us. In the 2000s, under Vladimir Putin, the Russian government would force journalists and satirists critical of his wartime actions in Chechnya to be taken off the air. Or what about Hungary’s takeover of theatre, art boards and art universities in October 2020 under Prime Minister Viktor Orban? See where we are going? The US is following the same playbook of artistic censorship disguised as budgeting with PBS, management reshuffling within the Kennedy Center, so-called “‘economic concerns” with Colbert and now, the silencing of Kimmel for flippant anti-Trump coverage. Fewer voices, fewer diverting opinions, fewer opportunities for the public to see those in power ridiculed and challenged.
Free speech erodes not by a single sweeping blow, but by cutting down each limb of our cultural body of art until it is gone. We must recognize and speak against the deliberate erosion of the cultural institutions which have kept American democracy vibrant and alive, despite centuries of missteps and abuses. PBS provides free access to knowledge in every nook and cranny of the country for everyone, no matter their political stance. The Kennedy Center symbolized our nation’s dedication to artistic freedom and expression, providing a platform for transgressive and socially relevant art. Colbert and Kimmel turned comedy into a nightly accountability meeting, turning cultural and political criticism into a digestible, comedic form for the masses. Stripping them away, one by one, isn’t a coincidence. It’s a strategy.
Thanks primarily to the wealth of public outcry and subsequent boycotting of Disney over the loss of free speech in this country, Kimmel may be back for now, but only because his departure threatened Disney’s bottom line. We must not forget that ABC, in fear of the Trump administration, canceled Jimmy Kimmel’s show simply because the administration didn’t like what Kimmel was saying. Kimmel has undoubtedly received the most support from the public out of all these censorship incidents, but we cannot overlook less obvious forms of censorship that happen everyday on the local level. We should have fought back the administration’s actions when it came to PBS or the Smithsonian Institution, not just when it comes to public celebrities. Nonetheless, the reinstatement of the Jimmy Kimmel show does not reverse the fear that his cancellation incited among artists, entertainers and networks. Whether or not Kimmel is back, this is not a loss for the Trump administration because the fear of retaliation is still here to stay: What broadcasting network will be the next to self-censor in fear of Trump’s backlash?
WSN’s Opinion section strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion section are solely the views of the writer.
Contact Annika Wilewicz at [email protected].
