But don’t let my glad expression, Give you the wrong impression
~ S. Wonder/H. Cosby/W. Robinson, Tears of a Clown
Given the cacophony of the Jimmy Kimmel story dominating American news over the past few weeks, it surprises me the media and everyone else, it seems, missed the big reason why the Trump regime[1] wants to shut up comedians and late-night television hosts.
They are often more thorough, honest and truthful as compared to what most Americans consume these days from “news” media. Comedians point out details most of us would rather ignore.
This trend has been worldwide, at least in those parts that still allow free expression. Instead, American press and media seem intent on promoting “both sides” of every topic or, more specifically, “bothsiderism, which is to mistake disagreement on an issue for evidence that either a compromise on, suspension of judgment regarding, or continued discussion of the issue is in order.”
Bothsiderism is a Monty Python sketch come to life, only without the humor. Many topical comedians today bring it back, often bittersweetly. Consider an interview comedian Samantha Bee conducted in 2016 with Russian journalist Masha Gessen just prior to the presidential election. It was broadcast shortly after.
Gessen was a vocal critic of Russian discrimination against the LGBT community before Putin came to power. A constant critic of Putin, Gessen’s move to the United States in 2013 only emboldened more broadly critical stories exposing his thirst for power and graft, leading to a show trial in 2024 sentencing Gessen in absentia to eight years in prison.
The exchange demonstrates why comedians are more often than not some of the most competent, insightful news analysts of our times.
“It feels like we’re staring into an abyss,” Gessen said about the prospect of Trump being elected in 2016. Given their experiences in Russia, the Trump comparison is with Vladimir Putin, not Hitler.
Gessen noted most resistance movements fail. Her greatest fears were nuclear holocaust and the “irreparable harm to the environment that will make the survival of the human species impossible.” She doubted a normal, functioning democracy could survive after Trump. The consistent undermining of the Biden administration supported this view, but to put it bluntly, we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
Gessen summed it up with a Russian joke: “We thought we had hit rock bottom. And then someone knocked from below.” That joke describes something that, all these years later, feels far too familiar.
Gessen began with prediction that hasn’t yet happened, removal of all economic sanctions against Russia. Trump did not lift sanctions. From there on, especially considering these comments were made almost a decade ago, you may have a hard time to keep from gulping incessantly:
Start banning one newspaper after the other from the White House,
Start thinking about wars,
Go to the Putin model of holding one press conference per year [Trump holds regular court on the White House grounds with helicopters making noise in the background or in the Madame’s dream of a 19thcentury bordello that he has made out of the Oval Office, but he very rarely submits to actual controlled press conferences].
Suppose some cities refuse to cooperate with deportation, so he calls on the American people to start reporting on immigrants, and that’s when we start getting into really disgusting territory,
That will be the beginning of the culture of citizen against citizen,
He’s very similar to Putin, he uses language to assert his power over reality,
What he’s saying is “I create the right to say whatever the hell I please and what are you going to do about it?”
It’s instinctual, it’s like a bully in a playground.
Add them all up and it comes to “The point is to render you completely powerless,” continued Gessen, “because everything you know how to do is useless.”
Her advice? It’s not comforting, but I realize that it’s something I’ve internalized and shared. So, obviously, Gessen speaks for me:
The thing to do to resist is to continue panicking, to keep being the hysteric in the room and say, “This is not normal!” [Emphasis added.]
Remember why you’re panicking, write a note to yourself about what you would never do, and when you come to the line, don’t cross it.
In an era when the conservative mantra is citizens are expected to be “informed consumers” on everything from healthcare to K-12 education to distinguishing between daily weather and climate. It’s not any easier when they have to ask themselves what points-of-view news sources have.
One even had to do it with once reputable, authoritative news sources, none more so on display than in a headline in The New York Times – in the space newspaper editors normally reserve for the most important story of day, in their most sold daily edition – on Sunday, March 19, 2025. The headline seemed innocuous at first glance, incompetently sinister at second, Adams Case Is Blueprint for Courting a President: After a Charm Offensive from City Hall, Both Politicians Came Out Ahead.
The story, about how the disgraced current mayor of New York, Eric Adams[2] had corruption charges of taking gifts and flights from Türkiye against him dropped by submitting to Trump regime demands. But not a word about the impropriety, illegality, or nature of Adams’ “Charm Offensive” itself![3]
It’s one thing to see lies spewed nonstop from right-wing news outlets that don’t even pretend to be objective, it’s another when the so-called paper of record does so and gives its rationalizations top placement for news coverage.
From the moment Donald Trump glided down the golden escalator into our public lives in 2015, analogies comparing him and his minions to Hitler and the Third Reich have abounded. Once controversial, considered something of a political third rail,[4] it’s now become almost common to the point that it can be considered to be passé.
Although I’m not a scholar on the history of the Third Reich, I can hold my own in any discussion with one. It’s a vanity that I’ve put on a display a few times already, as with our walk in Berlin and visit to Plötzensee Prison. The White House’s resident fascist ideologues, domestic policy advisor Stephen Miller and counterterrorism czar Sebestian Gorka both know this history well, adapting it a rough guide to advance their agenda of exclusion, hate, and threatened violence.
That’s bothsiderism redefined. Only with targeted, malignant intent to kill democracy. And if some people become collateral damage to the cause, so be it. With power, it now seems, comes unaccountable privilege.
You don’t have to be a comedian to know that’s not funny.
[1] Recently it occurred to me that calling it the Trump administration was incorrect, especially since I have made the argument that the United States is a de facto empire. The Oxford English defines regime as “a government, especially an authoritarian one.” That fits much more precisely than mere administration of laws which, in American government, implies an orderly, fair process. This regime has made a mockery of fairness.
[2] Adams announced on Sunday, September 28 that he would withdraw his candidacy, which was in the low double to high single digits in polling for the mayoral election scheduled this November.
[3] Ironically, on the next page featured questions and answers with various NYT reporters titled, Your Questions on Our Coverage of Trump: Part 1.
[4] According to Godwin’s Law, conceived by an American lawyer in the early 1990s, whichever side invokes Hitler’s name into a political argument will lose every time.