Kimmel Comes Back

This is the left's Bud Light moment.

Or to put it another way, now we've got a game.

You may have seen that Disney kowtowed to DeSantis in Florida. Assuming you care. And most people do not, because they don't live in Florida, never mind Disney's enclave.

But Disney's entertainment tentacles? They seem to reach EVERYBODY! On both sides of the screen, from the producers/actors/talent to the viewers. And can the Mouse House afford to alienate this many of its customers, when it's in a battle for streaming eyeballs with Netflix?

Image is everything. And therefore Bob Iger was caught between a rock and a hard place. Does he satiate the government or the company's customers. Cave to the administration or go its own way. And let's be clear, it's not about right or wrong, but DOLLARS!

You can destroy a venerated enterprise in a minute. Which is what happened at Warner Music. Bob Morgado, who was power drunk and knew nothing about artists, let Interscope go in the wake of complaints about Ice-T and "Cop Killer" and begat a power shift we're still feeling to this day. MCA, an also-ran record company, became a juggernaut with the addition of Interscope, and after Doug Morris got fired at Warner, he ended up at what came to be called Universal too, building it into a monolith! I won't say that the record division was sold for peanuts, but the $2.6 billion Warner received for the assets was far below true market value. This is not tech, where what you have today might be worthless tomorrow, but a bastion of intellectual property, rights that go on for decades after the death of the creators!

But the soft power element was worse. Mo and Lenny were gone, who wanted to sign with Warner after that?

And there began the long, slow decline of Warner Music, from the tippity-top to an also-ran in the recording world.

What is the future of broadcast television? What is the future of late night television? One thing is for sure, it's declining. To put these assets before the streaming division, to alienate talent and voters to satiate affiliates, would be short-term thinking. Iger HAD to bring Kimmel back.

But it was the anti-Disney blowback that sealed the deal. The cancellations may have been de minimis, but they were not insignificant. I wrote about a movie streaming on Hulu, and readers responded they wouldn't watch it. A Lilith Fair film premiere for Hulu was held in Hollywood last night and the red carpet was canceled, for fear of protests and talent not showing up. Distribution may be king, but if you've got nothing to distribute, you're nowhere.

Meanwhile, Kimmel refused to compromise. That was Disney's first request. Deliver a mea culpa and move on. But Kimmel stood his ground. Put his livelihood at risk. Who else is willing to do this, for what's right? Sure, Jimmy's got a ton of bread, but Jack Paar gave up the "Tonight Show" and his career never recovered. Never underestimate the power of being on television screens five nights a week.

Even Michael Eisner backed Disney.

But the true crack in the armor was Ted Cruz, hated not only by the left, but many Texans, a man who was notoriously on vacation during a natural disaster, came down on the FCC re Kimmel.

As for the Democratic elected officials... They went on record, but they didn't lead. They didn't say to cancel Disney subscriptions, after all, Disney is a donor. And this is why the Democrats lose. They put their finger to the wind, they do the research before they say anything, before they take any action, whereas Trump shoots from the hip and is loved by his acolytes for this.

No, this pro-Kimmel groundswell came from the literal ground, the people, with no lead. They organized online, sent e-mails urging cancellations. Proving the power of the people, something we learned in the sixties and John Lennon even sang about, something that the Democratic party, which refused to tell Biden to go and then foisted Kamala on the public without a primary, still doesn't know.

This is what the denigrated internet has wrought.

Yes, have you been following all the anti-social media screeds in the wake of Charlie Kirk? It's the devil, control it, shut it down... But without the internet, how could the public rally around Kimmel and pull their money from Disney? And this effort and its results were not followed in the mainstream press, but online, that's where you got the story.

In other words, the internet and social media are the left's 2nd Amendment, their gun control. Republicans say they need guns to fight a wayward government...maybe in the eighteenth century, but good luck today. But words? The power of the internet? That's modern technology, that's power, and it was exercised here in support of Jimmy Kimmel.

So finally, someone has stood up and pushed back at Trump's creeping autocracy. And if you're on the right and deny this... I mean Trump goes on record he wants the rest of the late night hosts gone. One thing about Trump is he does exactly what he says he will, why don't' people believe him?

And Trump's Big Beautiful Bill is so despised that they're rebranding it:

"Trump's Tax Cut Is Underwater. Can a 'Refund Boom' Save It? - Republicans are hoping a new name, along with larger refunds for many Americans next year, can buoy an economic agenda that polls show is unpopular."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/us/politics/trump-tax-cuts.html

So the farmers are freaking and the fallout from the rest of Trump's policies is starting to take hold and we we still haven't felt the full effect. Did you see that "Wall Street Journal" article about people resorting to Hamburger Helper to save money? And how cardboard sales are off, because shipping is down?

I don't want to overstate the impact of Kimmel's reinstatement. Let's be clear, it's not about the show itself, but Kimmel's suspension. Yet for the first time in seemingly eons, the left had a rallying cry that was heard by the powers that be, illustrating the power of the pocketbook.

The right should be happy Kimmel is coming back too. Because issues of speech cut both ways, and if you push too hard...

That's the issue here, will there be further reaction to Trump's actions? Is this just the first, or the only one?

We will see.


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