Who’s after Kimmel?

Corporate-owned media is bending the knee to our dim-witted dictator

Who will it be?

We know it won’t be Fallon because that man knows how to kiss some right-wing buttocks. So probably Jon Stewart? Seth Meyers? South Park? Maybe Bill Maher? No, he’s got that Fallon thing going on. So maybe it’s us. Maybe it’s you.

Because Donald Trump and the empowered army of sycophantic psychos who worship him are not going to stop trying to silence Americans like they did to Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday. Comedians are being censored, suspended, fired, and attacked by their government for mocking a criminal president.

For telling jokes.

For telling the truth.

In the United States of America.

And while Kimmel’s firing sent an arctic chill down our spines, we couldn’t help but wonder when our time will come. Because we really like to make fun of Donald Trump.

We like to make fun of him for being orange and dumb and having cankles and standing weird and walking weird and being seriously dumb and staring at eclipses and claiming to be a genius because his uncle worked at MIT and wearing his tie way too long and for being mad at windmills like an idiot and being seriously fucking dumb. He is a moron who is also a con-artist and a criminal. He has settled fraud lawsuits, a judge called him a rapist, he is currently engaged in untold (and plenty of told) corruption, he’s a convicted felon and he attempted a violent coup against the United States, attacking the U.S. Capitol, when he lost an election.

All of that is true, or at least easy to defend. It’s also very easy to make fun of, which is the American way.

We mock our leaders in this country. It’s a tradition that’s older than baseball. Trump knows that because he has shit-talked every American leader we’ve ever had except for Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon. We all know he saves his kindest words for murderous dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.

It’s their example Trump and his underlings are following as they bully and extort greedy corporations to turn their backs on their missions and the Constitution and do whatever dirty deed the regime demands in exchange for the next big merger. It’s gross and cowardly and really scary. We never expected corporations to do the right thing, but this kind of surrender is just downright un-American.

Things are getting scary. And the only thing we know to do in response is keep making fun of the president of the United States. Keep mocking him. Keep laughing at him. Keep wondering why the fuck his make-up is such a goddamn mess.

That and please continue to support independent media like our cussing newsletter. On social media Wednesday night, after Kimmel’s suspension was announced, The Onion’s Ben Collins wrote: “[it’s] Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love.”

“The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment,” Collins wrote. “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people to build on the rubble of what’s being destroyed before our eyes.”

Collins is right. The legacy media have all either put on the red cap and surrendered or they’re still playing nice hoping to avoid becoming next. Regardless, they’re history. It’s hard to accept, and it will take some time to adjust. But it ain’t coming back. It is long past time people on the left understood that.

We have to build our own channels. We have to support them. If we want truth and beautiful mockery to endure through this era of deep fried fascism, then we’re going to have to be the ones to preserve them.

Thank you for everything you’re doing to create this new media environment. Thank you for protecting truth, and thank you for making fun of our big idiot asshole president.

Because they can do this to Colbert and Kimmel, but they can’t shut us up. Because we’re Americans, and we have the right to free speech. We think.

Let’s find out!