History loves a bad joke – so wouldn’t it be hilarious if the straw that broke the camel’s back was a comic named Kimmel? Victories in the desperate rear-guard campaign to save our democracy are rare enough to be celebrated, even against a backdrop of National Guardsmen goosestepping across the Rubicon. So why did Jimmy Kimmel’s underdog upset over our would-be monarch flare across our screens and instantly disappear? Am I the only one who saw in it a way out of our authoritarian nightmare?
Amid the daily blitzkrieg of assaults on truth, freedom, and the rule of law, I don’t have the time or the attention-span for political comedy. But I did take note of the rapid reversal of Mr. Kimmel’s fate when the millions who do got up off the sofa, or at least picked up their phones, and flexed their collective muscle. This fleeting episode might rank as a footnote in the history books . . . or might kick off a hopeful new chapter: the downfall of fascism in the U.S.A.
After initially bowing to Trump’s royal command – and after capitulating several months earlier to a presidential lawsuit it could have won – ABC/Disney hastily restored the comedian and commentator to his late-night audience, and vice-versa. Even Nexstar and Sinclair, the right-wing chains of ABC stations that had threatened to permanently ditch him, wasted no time giving in to the rule of law. The iron law of supply-and-demand, that is. Why?
For African-Americans in the segregated South, it was the public buses. For 21st-century media consumers, evidently it’s late-night TV. All it took was a 21st-century Rosa Parks – a trigger-point outrageous enough to galvanize an indignant impulse – and within days, millions of outraged customers canceled their subscriptions to ABC/Disney subsidiaries Disney+ and Hulu. Let’s call it what it was: a boycott, lightning-quick compared to the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, but likewise a successful one.
Under the astute leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., the African-American citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, caught the world’s attention with their grit and nobility as they invoked the principle of Mutual Aid to get each other to work for a solid year without the help of the white establishment. ABC/Disney customers only gave up a couple of entertainment channels, a considerably less noble sacrifice. But it was a threat the entertainment megacorporation understood, a blow to its profit margin notable enough to alarm the shareholders.
As Wikipedia recorded it for posterity: “Due to the high volume of customers cancelling their subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu in protest, the cancellation pages of both streaming services crashed multiple times in the days following [Kimmel’s] suspension. Shortly after initial calls for a boycott against the company and its products, shares of Disney stock experienced a 0.67% decline, reflecting an estimated loss of $3.87 billion in the company’s market value.” Senior Bloomberg News columnist Beth Kowit commented, “This shouldn’t be confused for Disney or [CEO Bob] Iger suddenly rediscovering their moral high ground. Instead, it’s a realization that submitting may come with a higher price than pushing back.”
The High Price of Submission
Mussolini himself defined “fascism” as the merger of business and government into one monolithic power structure. The U.S. has been creeping closer and closer to that definition ever since the Reagan Counter-Revolution. But as customers, consumers, and connoisseurs of cool, ordinary Americans hold the power to bring our corporate masters to their knees – and always have.
Despite price-gouging, planned obsolescence, toxic waste, CEO salaries, corporate lobbying, union-busting, tax-funded bailouts, et cetera ad nauseum, as long as the giant corporations served our needs we have eagerly accepted the bargain. It’s telling that we have absorbed so much injury and insult, generation after generation, only to draw the line at late-night comedy. Freedom of speech is still a core American value, it seems, at least if it’s entertaining. But I am encouraged that the political context of Kimmel’s remarks played a key role in the drama.
Do Americans have the grit and nobility to flip that same middle finger to other corporate institutions that cave to the demands of the Trump regime? Would students drop out of Columbia, Brown, and the University of Pennsylvania en masse and seek their education elsewhere? Would consumers snub consumer sanctums like McDonalds, WalMart, Amazon, Starbucks, and Home Depot for dropping their D.E.I. programs to lick the boot of a white-supremacist, homophobic, patriarchal president? Would we quit Coca-Cola, Meta, Uber, Verizon, AirBnb and other popular addictions cold turkey to protest their support for Trump’s presidential campaign and/or inaugural fund? Would we swear off driving and walk to work, as Montgomery’s African-American community did, to punish the fossil fuel industry for conspiring with Trump to kill off renewable energy?
Well, probably not. But carrying sacrifice to such noble extremes may not be necessary. Disney, after all, provides more than just entertainment; as one of the Big Three, ABC News is still a major conduit of information in the format colloquially called “the news.” Authoritarian governments don’t get far without total control of any medium trusted by millions to deliver an objective view of reality. And though packaged as entertainment, mainstream journalism is still an information source trustworthy enough to be condemned as “fake news” by politicians whose only hope of getting elected is to fabricate a universe of lies.
For example, last month’s “No Kings Day II” pried at least seven million pairs of eyeballs away from their TVs to attend approximately 2,500 local protests nationwide. Despite the jeers of nervous Republicans predicting violence and mayhem, the protests were peaceful, even jubilant as we celebrated our First Amendment rights of free speech and association and petitioned for redress of our grievances. The mainstream media duly exercised their freedom of the press in turn to share the words and images of mass dissent with the rest of the nation.
But don’t miss the key significance of that last factor in the equation. If the corporate lenses of the major media had not been focused on our peaceable assemblies, we could not have reached the mass audience out there beyond our social media posts, left-wing blogs and independent news outlets. Our aspiring monarch might even have felt emboldened to order us dispersed by force – or prevented from assembling in the first place – to flaunt his royal powers.
The Low Cost of Pushing Back
Without a compliant media like Hitler’s, like Stalin’s, like Putin’s, like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, absolute dictatorship is simply not possible. As Jefferson put it, “Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light.”
Clicking through the range of options, right to left: Fox News is not merely compliant with Trump’s agenda, but has been actively pushing it far longer than Trump himself. CBS News has apparently defected to the dark side (to Walter Cronkite’s eternal consternation, no doubt). ABC News seemed to be headed that way as well after forking over a $16 million settlement when an interview with Kamala Harris offended a notoriously sore loser who proved an even less gracious winner. CNN has taken some pre-emptive steps toward the right from its center-left stronghold. And MSNBC’s recent purge of almost all anchors of color betrays the deepening stress-fractures in its liberal facade.
But this is where the alarming trend of corporate mergers and acquisitions could unexpectedly come to our rescue. Each of these once-independent and ostensibly neutral news sources has been acquired and incorporated into a media empire. CBS is owned by Paramount Skydance – home of Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Showtime, The Movie Channel, and MTV. CNN is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery, along with HBO, The Discovery Channel, The Cartoon Network, TBS and TNT. MSNBC is owned by Comcast, which also owns Xfinity, Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, and CNBC. Disney owns 21st Century Fox and ESPN, in addition to ABC.
What if we applied the targeted outrage of all those Jimmy Kimmel fans to each of those conglomerates? What if instead of merely turning off a news channel that started blaring propaganda, we turned off its parent company as well? What if every step CNN or MSNBC took toward the right was countered by millions of fans choosing to forgo their favorite programming not only on those channels but on every single one of their sibling subsidiaries? If enough of us react with strategic indignation when our favorite anchorman starts collaborating with the enemy, before long our favorite actors, writers and producers might start seeking contracts elsewhere – and advertisers would obediently follow.
That’s an enormous “if” indeed, which leads to an even bigger question-mark, one that could decide the fate not only of the United States of America but of the entire “Free World.” Are We the People citizens of a democracy, or just compulsive consumers of popular culture? Could we actually set aside our celebrity obsessions and entertainment addictions and, even temporarily, stand up for our democratic principles?
That sounds dubious at best. But the happy ending of Jimmy Kimmel’s stand for freedom, truth, and the First Amendment proves its potential. Taking aim at the profit centers of the billionaires just might split the otherwise unstoppable monolith of business and government at its most vulnerable point. And no one can be charged with terrorism or racketeering for canceling a subscription. With the price of groceries, who can afford HBO?
Note: These are my personal opinions and do not represent any organization I’m involved in. If my words resonate for you, please share widely. You can subscribe (or unsubscribe) at StephenWing.com. Read previous installments of “Wingtips” here.
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“The only silver bullet they use is that TV in your living room and so all you have to do is pull the plug” says Ghost Mice in “The Moon Will Rise”