Jimmy Kimmel
It's Friday afternoon, September 26, 2025, 16:52, and this Web page is finished. I've fleshed out the segment about the Trump administration's attack on free speech, and I've added a short piece about the Russian violations of countries in eastern Europe. Previously I'd updated this Web page with the story that Pickles of the North had told about a New York Moment on the IRT last week. The previous update had included a resized graphic, a new graphic, the link to the program on the WBAI Archives, and a small piece about Summer ending on Monday, which we talked about on this program. There's more to come. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ I am once again sleep deprived. Here is a bare bones Web page. I will flesh this page out later on. I'll note that the last program's Web page has been completed. This one will be too.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday September 10, 2025, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday night of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display,
and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO
and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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So the Trump Administration is continuing it's attempt to silence those who are critical of its often comical and always meretricious behavior.
Trump and the rest of the American right-wing are trying to shut up everyone else so they can get their message out and make it the only one that anyone can hear.
That they want to turn a political profit from the assassination of one of their closely aligned hate mongers is very evident with people being fired from jobs for speaking the truth and in other ways being silenced. This chilling effect could smooth the way to more vengeance from Trump and his allies on those whom the right-wing has disliked all along.
And then they came for Jimmy Kimmel. During his monologue on Monday night he commented about the assassination of that Kirk person and said, We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
Yes, they have been trying to score political points from the murder of Kirk. I interpreted Kimmel's remark to mean that the alleged killer had decided to murder someone with whom he disagreed because of what his target had said. That's exactly the way the right-wing in this country, and especially Trump himself act.
Two days later Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, went on a right-wing podcast and complained about Kimmel's remarks and then suggested that his FCC might go after ABC because of those remarks, saying We can do this the easy way or the hard way.
Carr also suggested that companies that own local television stations push back
and pre-empt coverage that does not serve, their local communities.
Commissioner Carr's comments leveraged some groups that own way too many TV stations, Nexstar Media Group, Inc. and Sinclair Broadcast Group, to further pressure Disney/ABC to do something to Kimmel. Nexstar released a statement that said, Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets,
and FCC head Carr liked that and thanked the company in a post on Twitter, aka X, for doing the right thing.
He also said, I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar's lead.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Nexstar has announced a deal to acquire Tegna, one of its biggest rivals, for $6.2 billion. Of course they need FCC approval to acquire that media company with its broadcast TV stations.
And then Sinclair released an official statement saying that it also objected to Kimmel's comments and was pre-empting his show and adding that it would, Not lift the suspension of
Sinclair instructed its affiliated stations to fill the Jimmy Kimmel Live! time slot with other programming. In what looks to me like an attempt to really pile on in order to suck up to Trump and Carr Sinclair demanded that Kimmel issue a direct apology to Kirk's family and make a personal donation both to the family and to Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA. And at that point ABC and Disney, which owns ABC, caved and essentially fired Jimmy Kimmel calling it a suspension of his program Jimmy Kimmel Live!
on our stations until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network's commitment to professionalism and accountability.indefinitely.
Donnie Bonespur
Trump has applauded this move by the other rich guys, as he did for the cancelling of Stephen Colbert's show, and Trump is now threatening Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers. Make no mistake, Free Speech is under attack.
One of the things to note is that all of these TV stations and networks are owned by rich guys. And they are mostly right-wing billionaires. And they have more mergers and acquisitions going on and they need approval from the FCC for them. This is so incestuous!
And then Donnie Bonespur
Trump has weighed in and said that regulators should consider revoking the licenses of broadcasters that air negative coverage or commentary of him, indicating that his assault on critics' language is motivated at least in part by personal animus.
Trump also claimed that the networks are, an arm of the Democrat party
and that they're out to get him.
Stephen Colbert made some good remarks in support of Jimmy Kimmel, he also had reporter Jake Tapper on his program. Tapper said that once you give a president a new power all future presidents have that power. He said that the next Democratic president could take the same liberties with the office that Trump is. What people don't seem to understand is that the goal of Trump and the rest of the right-wing is that there will never be another Democratic president! Either through voter suppression or an outright coup they plan to remain in power from now on.
Meanwhile Trump has killed another boatload of people with no trial and no proof that they were even engaged in criminal activity, much less that they were international terrorists on a mission against the United States. And now some of the right-wing members of Congress want to pass a law that will allow him to murder anyone he wants whenever he feels like it. No proof of anything, not even a reason for further killing, will be required.
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Russia isn't satisfied with bombing the hell out of the civilian population of Ukraine, it's apparently looking to prepare some future attacks.
This past week three Soviet-era MiG-31 fighter jets violated Estonian air space. They lingered for about 12 minutes, which is an extraordinarily long time for such an incident. Estonia is a NATO ally. Speculation is that the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is testing both the resolve and and the technical capabilities of the countries to Russia's west. Recently Russia had sent a bunch of drones into Poland. Those were mostly shot down by Polish air defense forces. The Mig-31s were escorted out of Estonian air space by F-35 fighter jets from Finland and Italy.
I think it is not a coincidence that Putin is playing this potentially dangerous game now. The United States of America is obviously in disarray with Putin's pal Trump in office and with a Secretary of Defense in office who is an amateur in these matters. Putin may see a way to split up or at least weaken NATO and maybe even make Donnie Bonespur
Trump abandon the alliance that has kept the world out of a global thermonuclear war for more than 7½ decades.
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Pickles here to tell you about a curious incident that happened on the # 5 train on Tuesday.
I was going to meet our friend Mis to visit the Temple of Dendur at the Met. The train was chugging along, people were mostly sitting scrolling through their phones. I was reading a book. Express trains really zip you to where you want to go, especially when they are delay-free. We pulled into the 59th Street Lexington Avenue stop. Now when it is in between rush hours, the time between when the subway car doors open and then close is about 11 seconds. The car doors opened and in rushed a group of people all wearing dark clothing. From what I could tell they weren't wearing uniforms, just dark clothing. They rushed in using all of the open doors and converged on one of the two seaters that are at the other end of the car from where I was sitting. It looked like a ball of people struggling over and covering that seat. Passengers immediately panicked; some ran out of the car, some ran down to the opposite end of the car. I froze, I didn't know what to do or if I should do anything. I didn't want to get knocked over by the people racing by, so I just sat there. Then just as the doors were closing the ball of bodies threw itself onto the platform. The doors closed and the train pulled out of the station. It may be that the conductor didn't see what had happened, it all took place during those 11 seconds. The train continued on to the next stop with those of us left in the car just staring at each other. What the hell had just happened? Was it undercover cops or gang related? Nothing about anything violent happening at or around the 59th Street station has show up in the news or online. It all happened so fast. We may never know.
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Summer ends on Monday September 22, at 2:19 in the afternoon. The Sun has already setting before seven o'clock in the evening for a while now. Sad to see the Summer go. I talked on the program about Summer being my favorite season, with brighter days, longer daylight and warmer weather. We'll miss Summer, as usual. Maybe Autumn won't be so bad this year.
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The Web page for our previous program a week ago is finished. It's here.
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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.
One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board
during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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