Cancel Culture | The Crocodile and His Goldfish

Jimmy Kimmel was well on his way to becoming a record holder. For 23 consecutive seasons as host of his late-night talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" he had delivered jokes that were sometimes more successful than others, following in the footsteps of talk show legend Jimmy Carson, who had achieved an impressive 30 in this discipline. Jimmy Kimmel, born in New York in 1967, has survived many a storm and some embarrassment on his show since 2003, as well as many mediocre punchlines. For most of his career, he has been fortunate enough to work in a relatively democratic democracy, one where things can sometimes get a little rough: Freedom of speech has traditionally been held in very high esteem there, so highly that it can sometimes be dizzying to think about what was allowed in that country across the pond.

That was then. Whether this land of great freedom still exists, or ever will again, is becoming more questionable by the day. And Jimmy Kimmel, perhaps more than any political opponent, was on the hit list of the current President of the United States, Donald Trump: No one has more to fear from a joke figure who wants to become an autocrat than comedians who point the finger at the ridiculous and the lie. When colleague Stephen Colbert was informed by his network CBS in July that he was about to leave, Trump was already trumpeting: "Kimmel is next!" He would prove right, and Jimmy Kimmel's departure cast a spotlight on the political and media context of a country whose government views dissenting opinions as a hostile act.

Jimmy Kimmel had taken the liberty of pointing out that the suspected murderer of Charlie Kirk might himself have been close to Trump's MAGA movement. And that the MAGA people were now doing everything they could to distract from this possibility. That was understandable speculation, not even particularly funny, unfortunately, and then it was off the air for Jimmy Kimmel. The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, a Trump man, openly threatened the broadcast partners of the producing network ABC: "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. They can take action on Kimmel. Or the FCC will have a little extra work to do..." A short time later, ABC announced that Kimmel was being pulled from the program. One would have wished it had been because of his Trump punchline. It was about the mourning performance the president put on over Charlie Kirk: "This is not what a grown-up mourning someone they call their friend looks like. This is what it looks like when a four-year-old mourns his goldfish." Trump probably hit the nail on the head more than anything else. The next late-night talk show hosts he wants to see go are Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. It's probably only a matter of time.