You may have read that the CBS determined that Stephen Colbert could not air an interview with Texas State Rep. James Talarico – who is running for the U.S. Senate – so the interview was blocked.
 
The issue has to do with the FCC's Equal Time rule, that if a station had an interview with a political candidate during an election, any opposition candidates were entitled to the same amount of time.  For many years, political interviews on late night talk shows were permitted because those programs got an exemption.  That very recently changed under a running by Trump’s FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
 
Side Note: This is a topic that has long interested me.  Years back (with an emphasis on the "years" part) when I was at the beloved Northwestern, I did an Independent Study in the Medill School of Journalism for a new professor there, Sig Mickelson, who was working on a project about the Equal Time rule and the Fairness Doctrine.  So, I was assigned to do a paper on the subject.  Mickelson, by the way, had been president of CBS News, overlapping with the time when Edward R. Murrow was there.  So, I was additionally thrilled about it all.  I'd been very interested in Murrow and did briefly ask Mickelson about him.  The short version is that he greatly admired Murrow, but working with Murrow, who was often pushing the envelope and challenging the network, made his job difficult at times.  But I digress.
 
Though Colbert didn’t air his intended interview with Talarico, he did talk about it at length, despite CBS telling him not to.  He’s blunt about it and also very funny.  I suspect his perspective was also colored by, "What are they going to do?  Fire me?"  By the way, after putting up a photo of James Talarico even though the network had told Colbert that he couldn’t even do that, much later in the segment Colbert finally let the audience know that it was not a picture of Talarico.  (Though it’s close…)
 
Here is that segment.
​

And here is the interview itself.  Colbert and Talarico did it after his regular show, and the studio audience stayed around.  It was then posted on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert's YouTube page, which is not covered by the FCC.
​

On Friday, Netflix made an $82.7 billion offer to buy Warner Bros./Discovery.  Soon after, Trump said that he would personally get involved with the decision whether or not to approve the sale.  At first, that didn’t mean a whole lot other than it was so Trump, needing to very inappropriately impose himself and put his name on everything, putting his fingers on a decision that is usually left up to unbiased regulatory agencies.
 
Then came the story that Paramount Skydance will try to top Netflix’s offer, and upped their hostile bid to $108 billion.  Okay, not unexpected, but even at a higher number they were considered pretty much the also-ran. 
 
But then came the story that Paramount’s offer turns out to come with a partner -- Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's private equity firm.  But also, unmentioned in Paramount's press release, others would be involved, as well:  sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.  (Shocking, I know, that they were left unmentioned.)
 
In making its case to Warner Bros./Discovery shareholders, Paramount says it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix. For the record, “Smoother path” is such a charming phrase when that path includes the son-in-law of the U.S. president.
 
But it gets worse.
 
Because then comes the story reported by The Guardian that Trump and billionaire Larry Ellison, one of the wealthiest people in the world, and a major supporter of Trump  -- as well as being the main shareholder of Paramount Skydance and father of David Ellison who is the company’s president.  It must be noted here that Warner Bros./Disovery is the parent company of CNN.  And what The Guardian reports the two men discussed is "having CNN anchors Trump doesn't like fired if Paramount Skydance is able to buy Warner Bros./Discovery.
 
With Jared Kusher's private equity firm, of course.  And the unmentioned sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.
 
P.S.  Warner Bros./Discovery also owns HBO.  Which airs Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, that has been relentlessly scathing to the Trump administration.
 
No word yet if Trump and Larry Ellison discussed HBO…
 
Which brings us back to –
 
“Trump said that he would personally get involved with the decision whether or not to approve the sale.   At first, that didn’t mean a whole lot…”
 
Hey, it turns out, it does mean a whole lot.  Go figure.

Who would have imagined that in a Trump fascist world of corruption where controlling the news and media, along with the hiring and firing of personnel, is at the forefront of its most basic voracious needs, it would have come to this?

If you didn't see "Last Week Tonight" with John Oliver last night, the Main Story was on Public Media.  Or more specifically, cutbacks to funding.  It's a very interesting report, focusing in large part on what PBS does that most people aren't aware of, especially as a local service.  It's also prime ground for some wonderful humor, and there's a terrific twist at the end.

If you didn’t see Last Week Tonight with John Oliver last night, the Main Story was on Bari Weiss -- who is the new supposedly-moderate, but actually solidly conservative opinion writer who Paramount just made the editor-in-chief overseeing CBS News.  The report is excellent -- very detailed, damning on why the hiring is troubling, and (through gritted teeth) often very sardonically funny.

At around noon, I updated my article on the far-right reaction to Jimmy Kimmel making a joke, and ABC putting the show on an indeterminate pause.  If anyone read the article before then, I wanted to clarify the change.

In the original version, I'd written that Kimmel's joke was edgy, and had one thing in it that was accurate, but pretty close.  On going back to re-read the joke -- and John Berman on CNN doing a great job pushing back at the excruciatingly unwatchable Scott Jennings to correct the far right's total misinterpretation of Jimmy Kimmel's joke (as well as CNN's Brianna Keilar pushing back on Rep. Barry Moore, MAGOP of Alabama, correcting his total misinterpretation) -- I realized that Jimmy Kimmel's joke was actually spot-on accurate, just not phrased clearly.

This the joke --

"We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize the kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.  In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”'

Jimmy Kimmel did not say that the shooter was MAGA (as the far-right is contending he did) -- but rather that MAGA overreaction before knowing anything at all about the shooter was to do everything possible it could to desperately show that the shooter, whoever he was, WAS NOT "one of them."  And in that effort, make the shooter seem to be far-left.

And given that Trump himself (who had  made a blistering, false attack on the left for the shooting death of Kirk) was later asked on camera how he was doing after the death of his friend and replied that he was doing fine – and immediately began talking about the trucks coming to the White House to build the new ballroom he wants...

...it becomes all the more clear that Jimmy Kimmel had his TV show indeterminately paused for making a joke and point that were 100% accurate.  But the far-right and FCC chairman didn't like the joke, and so, using the power of government to undermine the First Amendment forced ABC to take a cowardly action.