Jimmy Kimmel is a New York Times bestselling author. In 2019, his children’s book The Serious Goose made the list. If you haven’t read it, you’re not missing much. Kimmel didn’t write Goodnight Moon; he dashed off a gag book for charity. Still, Jimmy Kimmel is a New York Times bestselling author. They can’t take that away.
There’s only one way to get to Carnegie Hall (practice), but there are two ways to get on the Times list: content and distribution. Some authors break through because their work is undeniable. More often, though, success is reverse-engineered by people like Kimmel, who can leverage pre-existing platforms. The Times doesn’t distinguish between the two, which means anyone with reach – or the money to buy it – can acquire the same credential, wave it around, and claim that their work too is undeniable.
Kimmel’s cancellation last week hit hard not just because it was a mask-off moment for the Trump administration, but because his show was (and now is again) one of the last distribution-first platforms still working on behalf of content-first creators – one of the few places where the downwardly mobile cultural elite still get distributed gratis to a truly mass audience. By riffing on headlines and offering his couch to people like Steven Pinker and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Kimmel amplifies the work of journalists and thinkers to the volume of the paid speech that now dominates distribution platforms. Using Disney’s money, he gives the cultural elite stage time in a public square otherwise dominated by the financial elite1.
DISTRIBUTION CIRCA 1879
Much of the Kimmel discourse has been about the importance of free speech, but the specifics of what transpired make it clear that this is really a fight about paid speech – that is, distribution. After Kimmel made remarks related to Charlie Kirk’s death, Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened regulatory action against Disney-owned ABC and its affiliates – fines, license revocation – claiming the comments were “news distortion.” Major ABC affiliate groups Sinclair (right-wing) and Nexstar (waiting on FCC approval for a $6.2B merger) announced they would preempt Kimmel’s program, prompting Disney to put the show on hiatus. Then came protests and a Disney+ boycott. Then Disney CEO Bob Iger1, a financial elite whose entire rep is rooted in his allegiance to cultural elites (his wife is the chair of USC’s journalism school), decided to bring Kimmel back. (TL;DR: The financial elite stuffed the cultural elite in a locker, but the cultural elite came back out swinging.)
The details are confusing, but the contours of the conflict aren’t new. In a country without an entrenched aristocracy, cultural and financial elites are natural enemies. Cultural elites—journalists, academics, comedians—are often downwardly mobile and status conscious. Financial elites are often upwardly mobile and status conscious. The two groups don’t just fight in the public square, they tussle over the microphone. It’s a high-stakes slap fight. As Rob Henderson pointed out in The Free Press last week: “For the masses to bring down a system, they need an individual or organization capable of solving the coordination problem of uniting large numbers of people toward a shared goal. Impoverished or ‘immiserated’ masses remain largely inert unless they are organized and led by disaffected elites.”
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[1] Astute readers like yourself will notice that I’m slightly conflating political and financial capital. There’s a reason for that. Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses are really corporate authoritarian impulses. He wants to tell business leaders how to run their businesses. Many have capitulated. This blurs financial and political power (which is ofc the point).
[2] One of the reasons the sacking and unsacking of Kimmel has been so interesting is that Bob Iger is neither stupid nor devoid of integrity. Decisions made at the top of large orgs are complicated because human consequences can legitimately outweigh moral good. Iger knows stuff – both about his company and the direction of this country. He is behaving accordingly.
[3] Wondering if you can use money to buy a reputation? Consider the life and afterlife of Joseph Pulitzer, a man who had an ummmmm complicated relationship with the truth.
[4] It’s likely Iger decided to bring Kimmel back because he was worried about Disney’s relationships with talent. The weird thing about that is that the value of those relationships isn’t solely the creative output of talent, but talents’ role in distribution, which is considerable. The funny thing about distribution in a social media age is that if you have distribution, you end up accidentally providing other people with distribution and maybe they don’t agree with you about some stuff.
