Over the weekend there was something very unusual: nationwide
protests against Jimmy Kimmel and ABC over racism. The protest that I
saw was on Saturday afternoon in Houston by the jam-packed Galleria, at
the busy intersection of Westheimer and Post Oak Blvd. The protestors
had signs calling for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired and calling for ABC to
stop racism against the Chinese. It was also calling for no fake
apology. This issue has been going on since October, and it seems to be
continuing rather than dissipating.
There were probably a couple of hundred protestors at the Houston
protest at the time. ABC now has a situation that it will have to do
some serious damage control on very soon. Jimmy Kimmel's "Kids Table"
asks kids questions about current events, and it was not actually Kimmel
himself who made the offense.
At issue is that ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company (DIS).
Attacking ABC is one thing. The issue is whether or not this spreads to
attacking the Disney parent company or not. Then you have to wonder
what happens if protests were to start boycotts or advertiser backlash. One of the kids on the live show suggested that the way the U.S.
should deal with its ballooning debt is to kill all the people in China.
Kimmel's apology came over a week ago, and where this gets interesting
is that Kimmel was not the one who made the comments. He also even tried
to defuse the situation after the comments. Where the protests were
pointed is that the entire skit should have not been shown at all.
It has already been shown that ABC is no longer going to air the "Kid
Table" segment. Now the White House has a We The People petition that
has over 103,000 signatures on the petition. Jimmy Kimmel has over 3.2
million followers on Twitter, and the
@JimmyKimmelLive also has 345,000
followers.
How this all plays out is something that remains to be seen. The
calls for "No Fake Apology" and Fire Jimmy Kimmel Now" may grow louder.
This also challenges many aspects about what editors of shows have to
decide on.
Networks are of course
responsible for when their public faces are involved in scandals of this
magnitude, but what about when the scandal is actually caused by one of
the guests on a show? The Walt Disney Company (DIS)
does face issues of this magnitude from time to time. The question is
how this will be dealt with, and then what precedent it sets going
forward. 4951