A prophecy of mine has come to pass.
When Stephen Colbert’s Late Show was axed, I wrote that it was a warning. The indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show this week proves there is now a pattern. The sharpest late-night voices on American television are being erased and the US President, who once raged at their jokes, is now gloating over their downfall, making it clear who this new wave of corporate caution really serves.
Kimmel, who was still willing to lob grenades at Trumpism and its cultish aftershocks, has been yanked off air indefinitely by ABC, a network owned by Disney. His crime was saying out loud what millions were thinking about the grotesque political theatre surrounding the killing of right-wing influencer and Trump ally Charlie Kirk.
Within minutes of Kimmel’s show’s suspension, Donald Trump celebrated as though he had personally ordered the hit. He derided Kimmel as “ratings-challenged,” sneered that he had “zero talent,” and egged on other networks to finish the job by sacking his peers Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon. This isn’t just schadenfreude, it’s revenge dressed up as victory. Trump has long fantasised of an American media landscape scrubbed clean of the comics who dared to lampoon him. Now, corporate America is obliging.
Kimmel’s offence was not unlike Colbert’s. He pointed out how Kirk’s killing was being spun into propaganda. He mocked the lowering of flags, ridiculed the President’s stage-managed grief, and reminded viewers that this was political charade, not mourning for a “friend”. Unsurprisingly, the monologue stung politicians and the powerful. And in today’s climate, truth delivered with bite is treated as liability, not public service. That’s exactly what the network called Kimmel’s comments: “not in public interest.”
ABC defended its move with a familiar flourish of corporate jargon, saying the network will “move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.” But what exactly counts as “respectful” in this new order? If and when Kimmel returns, will he be handed a script of what he can and cannot say; his monologue reduced to a corporate-approved press release masquerading as comedy?
Networks hide behind business language, but strip away the euphemisms and the story is the same: Satire that unsettles the powerful is being punished. The Emmys and Hollywood may still applaud Colbert, give a nomination nod to Kimmel, too. Yet in the corporate suites, where advertisers and political alliances dictate decisions, dissent is being strangled slowly.
The deeper irony is that late-night comedy, once dismissed as fluff, has become one of the last bastions of accountability on American television. Jay Leno went after Clinton. Jon Stewart roasted Bush. Colbert torched corporate-political collusion. Satire is supposed to sting, not be safe. To say things polite society won’t, to laugh at emperors with no clothes. To lose these acts of public reckoning is to lose a tradition of dissent that outlived presidents, scandals, and wars.
Hollywood still rewards dissent on stage. But backstage, the purge is well underway. Trump doesn’t need to censor anyone directly. He just needs to jeer from the sidelines while corporations do the silencing for him.
Colbert was the warning shot, Kimmel the confirmation. Others are on Trump’s fantasy firing line. If networks continue down this path, America will lose the very idea that comedy can challenge power and will be left with sanitised programming with applause tracks, stripped of its teeth — exactly the outcome Trump has always dreamed of.
stela.dey@indianexpress.com
