The Last Laugh?

Comedy, Dissent, and the Far Right’s Campaign to Silence Satire

We’re still laughing. For now. 

American politics has long been divided along emotional lines: Republicans evoke fear, while Democrats respond with humor. The right energizes followers with grievance-filled slogans like “Take Our Country Back,” “Stop the Steal.” The most impactful responses from the left often come through late-night monologues, sketches, and stand-up routines.

Ask yourself: how many hard-right comedians with mainstream audiences can you name? Talk radio features conservative stars, and primetime opinion shows can rage for hours. However, the current lineup of popular political comedy mostly includes people like Bee, Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers, Noah, Oliver, and Stewart.

That imbalance matters. Humor is a strength of democracy. It punctures pomposity and invites self-correction. Fear narrows; comedy opens. Today, the far right isn’t trying to out-joke comedy – it’s trying to silence it through economic, political, and legal pressure.

Silencing the jesters

On September 17th, Disney’s ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live after Kimmel made a remark about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and then joked about Donald Trump’s reaction to a question about how he was dealing with the loss. (“I think very good,” Trump said. “And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they’ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it’s going to be a beauty.”).

The action followed public warnings from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr that affiliates airing “distorted” content could face penalties; Nexstar, which owns many ABC affiliates and is seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion acquisition of TEGNA, preemptively removed the show.

Donald Trump publicly celebrated the suspension and called on other networks to cancel more late-night shows, signaling retaliation instead of debate.

The network returned Kimmel to his show on September 23rd after public outrage and a rash of cancellations of Disney-owned streaming services. But Nexstar and Sinclair, owners of local ABC affiliates, kept him off the air. That is, until September 26th, when they caved to the backlash and, more importantly, faced lower ratings without Jimmy.

Weeks earlier, in July, CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, officially citing financial reasons related to the Paramount–Skydance deal. Since Colbert had criticized that very merger, the move raised questions – fair or not – about whether corporate and political interests were aligned against a prominent satirist.

These examples reveal a larger pattern: dissent expressed through comedy is being labeled as distortion, punished as indecency, or viewed as a regulatory liability. Some critics argue that these recent cancellations are no different from ABC’s 2018 decision to cancel “Roseanne” after Roseanne Barr tweeted a racist insult about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. However, that comparison is misleading. Barr’s case involved a private employer enforcing conduct standards after an openly racist outburst. The attacks on Colbert and Kimmel today are about political revenge and corporate caution in response to satire targeting those in power. One concerns accountability for hate speech; the other aims to intimidate dissent. Conflating them is a false equivalency that hides the real danger.

Lessons from the past

The recent threats by the FCC to revoke broadcast licenses are new, but individual comedians facing government pressure and legal threats are not. Lenny Bruce, a pioneering comic of the 1950s and 60s, was repeatedly arrested on obscenity charges for routines that challenged religious and political authorities. His prosecutions discouraged performers and sparked national debates about free speech. George Carlin, another legend of political comedy, was arrested in 1972 for performing his 'Seven Dirty Words' routine. The case, FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, reached the Supreme Court, which upheld the FCC’s authority to regulate 'indecent' broadcasts. Both Bruce and Carlin show that even in a democracy, government institutions have tried to punish comedians when their words challenged prevailing norms or threatened those in power.

Historians note that autocrats have always feared humor. In 1930s Nazi Germany, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels reacted angrily to satire, considering it as a threat to morale and authority. He shut down the Berlin cabaret Die Katakombe, and its host Werner Finck was detained in a camp; later, Finck was banned by the Reichskulturkammer. Performers like Fritz Grünbaum and Paul O’Montis faced persecution or death.

Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly imprisoned satirists, from the 2016 prosecution of German comedian Jan Böhmermann to the 2025 arrest of staff at the satirical magazine LeMan. In North Korea, humor is tightly controlled by the state; in 2016, Kim Jong Un even banned sarcasm, fearing it was used to mock him. Remember the death threats he made after the release of “The Interview”? China fined comedian Li Haoshi’s company $2 million in 2023 for a joke about the military, and censors foreign sitcoms that cross political red lines. In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s government canceled the satirical puppet show Kukly in 2002, called dissenting comedians 'foreign agents,' and has jailed or exiled performers who mocked the war in Ukraine.

They understood what modern cognitive science confirms: emotion influences people more than facts. Comedy, however, has always been a remedy for fear. No wonder authoritarian regimes want to eliminate the jokes. Laughter exposes their fears and threatens their hold on power.

Why this matters

Comedy is not trivial. It’s one of democracy’s pressure valves – a way for ordinary citizens to laugh at the powerful and prevent fear from swallowing the public square.

Lyndon Johnson, of all people – the powerful, driven, bullying, visionary president – understood the importance of humor and free speech. Though the Smothers Brothers (popular back in the day) performed a controversial satire of him and his Vietnam War policy on their TV show, LBJ said:

“It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”

Contrast this with Trump’s vindictiveness – gloating over Kimmel’s removal and publicly urging other networks to cancel shows. The difference isn’t about taste in comedy; it’s about whether satire is recognized as part of the democratic bargain.

If the far right succeeds in silencing satire – through lawsuits, regulatory threats, and corporate caution – we’ll lose more than just late-night shows. We’ll lose one of the oldest, most humane defenses against authoritarian politics.

Democracy cannot be sustained by fear and force. It requires dissent – even when dissent comes as a joke. The far right understands this. That’s why it’s trying to kill the laughter. The question is whether we will let it.

Calling All Optimists

The canary in the coal mine of free speech has died. We are living in dangerous times for truth. 

The American public square is under attack – not just from misinformation and propaganda, but also from systemic forces that seek to silence dissent, control what we hear, and limit the scope of legitimate debate. 

If optimism means believing change is possible, then today, optimism requires courage. This is a call to those who still believe facts matter, who refuse to give in to despair, and who want to face what is happening honestly. Your ideas and perspectives are needed.

The New Reality: Power, Pressure, and Fear

You probably heard that Disney’s ABC abruptly pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live off the air after his comments about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The decision was made quickly after the FCC chair threatened fines and license reviews for broadcasters who aired what he called “distorted” content. Nexstar, which owns 32 ABC affiliates and is seeking regulatory approval for a multibillion-dollar acquisition, proactively stopped airing the show.

Only weeks earlier, CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, officially citing financial reasons. Yet many pointed out the timing: Reports indicated that political and corporate pressures influenced the decision because of the impending Paramount-Skydance merger.

These are not minor programming changes. These actions go beyond being a pattern or signal. They are the predicted outcomes from the Project 2025 playbook. 

Some will argue that this is no different from ABC’s 2018 decision to cancel “Roseanne” after Roseanne Barr posted a racist tweet about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. But don’t fall for this false equivalency, this form of whataboutism. In Barr’s case, the network acted in direct response to a personal racist outburst from its star, behavior that violated company policy and alienated advertisers. In the current situations with Colbert and Kimmel, comedians are being removed not for violating standards of decency but for satirizing those in power. One involves private accountability for bigotry; the other involves political pressure and corporate leverage to silence dissent. Do not conflate the two; it only serves to erode our ability to discern real threats to free expression.

It’s not new, of course. From the start of his first campaign, Donald Trump has frequently called the mainstream press “the enemy of the people.” He has threatened to revoke licenses, sue outlets into silence, and openly praised actions that remove critical voices from the airwaves. 

This is not just mere bluster; it reflects an ongoing strategy to undermine independent journalism and weaken the institutions that mediate truth. If the President can decide what content is “distorted,” what is “garbage,” or what qualifies as “radical,” and if regulators and corporations act accordingly, then the line between governance and censorship has already begun to disappear.

The Battlegrounds of Truth

If there is a chance to preserve our Constitution, restore democratic values, bridge the deepening chasm between left and right, and combat the increasing incivility infecting our country, we must at a minimum, have plans and commit resources to fight mis/disinformation and propaganda. 

This is where the community of optimists must come together and find some solutions. No one can solve this on their own. Right now, I have four strategic imperatives and a lot of questions.

Invest in education and media literacy. But how can this be done when government is defunding public education, dismantling resources, and actively attempting the elimination of the Department of Education? How can media literacy flourish when the very structures that support critical thinking are being eroded?

Support independent journalism. But how can this be achieved when newsroom employment has dropped by more than a quarter since 2008, when hundreds of local communities have become “news deserts,” and when media ownership is increasingly concentrated in partisan corporations or wealthy individuals? When “both sides” rhetoric or “everyone’s biased” framing dominates (False Equivalencies: The Danger of Treating All Information Equally), lies are elevated to the same plane as facts.

Debunk falsehoods effectively. But how can we do this when the number of professional journalists and fact-checkers has fallen sharply, and when falsehoods travel faster and further online than carefully reported truths? As cognitive linguist George Lakoff argues, what people believe to be true can outweigh what is demonstrably true. 

Increase transparency on social media. But how can this happen when platforms are controlled by highly partisan owners and global corporations, when algorithms are hidden, and when accountability mechanisms are weak or nonexistent?

The Cost of Silence

We are closer than some realize to a media ecosystem defined not by freedom but by fear, not by evidence but by power. The decline of independent journalism, the weaponization of regulatory agencies, the concentration of media ownership, and the replacement of truth with belief all point in one direction: a society where public discourse no longer functions. 

Today’s optimism does not mean ignoring these dangers. It means refusing to look away, confronting the reality before us, and demanding accountability. The question is not whether the crisis is coming. It is already here. The question is what we, the citizens, do in response? 

Please respond.

Scientific Snobbery and Other Acts of Institutional Malpractice

Arthur Caplan’s important new EMBO Reports essay, “How stupid has science been?” serves as a powerful reminder that for decades, much of the scientific community viewed public communication as a career liability – the Sagan Effect, because many regarded the famed astronomer with disdain for trying to explain science in simple, relatable terms.

That cultural snobbery mattered. It left many citizens unprepared to evaluate claims and ceded ground over to the ill-informed, propagandists, and those seeking to manipulate others. Snobbery created a vacuum, but if we only focus on scientists’ failures, we’ll miss the larger structural forces now fueling mistrust and politicization – forces that must be addressed directly if we want science (and our health and global competitiveness) to recover.

Start with the partisan divide in trust. Pew Research Center finds confidence in scientists remains higher among Democrats than Republicans, and the gap widened during and after the pandemic. The pattern shows that party identity influences whether evidence is trusted – regardless of facts or how skillfully scientists explain it.

It’s worth remembering that science wasn’t always a partisan issue. America’s main science agencies were created through mid-century consensus, not by culture-war reactions. The CDC began in 1946 as a malaria-control effort that evolved into the foundation of the nation’s public health system; the NSF was established in 1950 when President Truman created it for “research driven by curiosity and discovery”; the NIH’s history dates back to the 1887 Hygienic Laboratory.

But now, active political interventions have been layered onto the federal science apparatus. Recently, the White House fired CDC Director Susan Monarez weeks after she took office, prompting senior resignations and raising alarms about political control of public health decisions. The administration also proposed slashing NIH’s budget by roughly 40 percent (about $18 billion). Even if Congress moderates these proposals, they signal that federal science has become a partisan battleground.

Performance and integrity are vital for building trust. Americans remember serious ethical and governance failures—like the inhumanity of the Tuskegee syphilis study and the retracted, heavily debunked Wakefield paper linking vaccines to autism—because they shattered the expectation that science self-corrects quickly and transparently.

Finally, our news and information ecosystem supercharges falsehoods. A study of millions of tweets published in Science showed that false news spreads “farther, faster, deeper” than truth – mainly because people share novelty and outrage, and platforms amplify it. That’s a systemic issue; clearer language from scientists helps but can’t, on its own, beat virality.

The trust dividend is pragmatic, not poetic. When evidence prevails, patients receive faster diagnoses and fewer risky detours; businesses scale sooner because regulators trust transparent methods; schools update curricula without culture-war spectacles; and cities act on air and water data before crises metastasize. That’s why the antidote to politicized science isn’t just speeches but a system: clear standards, timely corrections, and public dashboards showing how evidence guides decisions. Consistently doing this doesn’t just reduce tension—it boosts the nation’s ability to solve problems. Communication matters, yes, but performance plus transparency are what turn skeptics into stakeholders.

Certainly, talented public communicators like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, Michio Kaku, Hank Green, and Jessica Knurick, along with training hubs like Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center, have entered the scene. Helpful, but far from enough. These efforts must multiply a thousand, even a million times, reaching every part of the country.

So, yes: some snobbery initially created a vacuum. But now, polarization, policy shocks, long-term under-investment, governance failures, and algorithmic virality cause most of the damage. It’s a monumental problem, and we cannot wait for Congress to take meaningful action.

1. Scientists: make communication a core, even mandatory, part of your role, not just a side activity. Back in 2006, I urged scientists and doctors in Nature Biotech to make science more understandable and accessible to the public. It’s not about dumbing things down; it's about making them simple and relevant. If your research is funded by the public, explaining and justifying it is a service. Include a clear, plain-language summary on every paper and preprint; hold regular public Q&A sessions with schools, libraries, and faith groups; and include communication achievements in promotion and tenure dossiers.

2. Media: stop presenting “both sides” equally; emphasize the strength of evidence. False equivalence turns well-established science into a debate show. Use proportional balance: give more coverage to claims supported by strong evidence and less to fringe assertions unless the story specifically addresses misinformation. As I’ve argued elsewhere in “False Equivalencies: The Danger of Treating All Information Equally,” giving equal time to unequal sides misleads intentionally.

3. Schools: focus on teaching how to think rather than just memorizing facts. We don’t need every student to become a scientist, but every citizen should be able to recognize evidence, uncertainty, and tradeoffs. Make the scientific method a regular part of education from middle school onward, pairing it with statistics, probabilistic reasoning, and media/digital literacy. Balance STEM with the humanities so students can grasp ethics, history, and policy contexts.

4. Politicians: be the local leaders science needs. Establish a standing science advisory group in your office composed of accomplished professionals from nearby universities and health systems. Hold regular evidence briefings on issues important to your constituents (e.g., climate change, mental health, vaccine guidance, opioids, air, water, and soil safety). When guidance shifts, announce it openly and explain why. Leadership isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about showing your process.

The current politicization is (hopefully) temporary, not unavoidable. We can reverse it, but only if we address and invest in all the root causes—not just the easiest or least controversial ones. We must be brave and determined before we become sicker, poorer, and even more vulnerable.