My early nomination for the Time Person of the Year and the Nobel Peace Prize

Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, and the even more lofty Nobel Peace Prize, are the most prestigious and coveted awards that recognize the endeavors or accomplishments (outside of science) benefiting mankind by a person or a group of people.

As I despair about what is happening, both to our country and the world, where authoritarianism is taking or has taken hold, I wish one or both of these awards could be awarded to the people who are trying to fight it. 

It may not be a universal aspect of human nature, but most people crave or at least appreciate recognition for efforts they’ve expended to achieve, or are trying to achieve. People like Trump lust after it. Most others, from Time’s award to the Nobels, to winners of Oscars, Emmys, or Pullitzers, at least get a rush when they win one.

My nomination for the Time/Nobel can be divided into categories, though this really isn’t necessary. It includes everyone who participated in a demonstration against an authoritarian leader, everyone who shared by talking or writing about what was happening, and in a different way, everyone who risked or gave their lives fighting it in Ukraine.

I wish one or both of these awards could be given now. I have no doubt that millions of us are despairing. We need a boost. 

Thanks for reading Hal Brown's Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

.

Share Hal Brown's Substack

Leave a comment

Previous Substacks

My comments in RawStory

/

Jimmy Kimmel may have his name become a verb. It could be the new word of the year. So far Trump is killing democracy by kimmelling it.

Tue, Aug 26 at 5:23 AM

 

In 2024 the Oxford new word of the year was term, not a word. It was brain rot (click here). Now we have a possible 2025 word of the year thanks to Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel.

Kimmelled, to be kimmelled, and kimmelling arent listed as newly coined words in the Oxford English Dictionary, at least not yet. However, they may very well be added before long. The defintion of “to be kimmelled” barely needs to be spelled out. Starting now Trump has a list of people, TV personalities and shows, and organizations he wants to be kimmelled.

What Trump said on Air Force One as he departed from the UK is making the news:

The word itself sounds ominous. Take out three letters in the middle…

and we see what it spells.

Being kimmelled will end up meaning something short of being literally killed. Trump’s psychopathy (pronounced as "sigh-KOP-uh-thee) isn’t at the level of those of despots who order enemies actually killed whether formally or clandestinely by their agents. He is “merely” content to ruin lives.

If the word gains traction I can see someone who was fired because of their criticizing Trump saying “I’ve been kimmelled” or those involved in a TV show like, for example, The View” saying “we’ve been kimmelled.”

This is far more than an assault on the First Amendment. This is an assault on the entire US Constitution. It makes sense to begin with the amendment the Founders thought important enough to put as number one before moving onto the other nine in The Bill of Rights. 

Above is actually still on this US government website for children called Ben’s Guide. Ben of course, is Ben Franklin.

Trump has used coercion and lawsuits to try to impose his will. Trump has only employed hard force in his anti-immigrant mania. He has used ICE and other armed agents, including soldiers, rather than the equivalent of the Nazi Gestapo. He is wearing velvet gloves to keep the blood of his victims off his hands. He has a sanitized version of a blitzkrieg.

What Trump and his toadie enablers are doing is killing democracy and replacing it incrementally with a dictatorial autocracy. Ben, in Heaven, would not be happy if he could see what was happening.

Thanks for reading Hal Brown's Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Share Hal Brown's Substack

Leave a comment

Previous Substacks

My comments in RawStory

Kimmel may have gotten fired for a telling a joke about Trump, ABC should now stand for Always Bow and Cower.

Most people have heard of the stages of grief even if they aren’t familiar with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (article). Jimmy Kimmel certainly knows about it because he referenced it in his monologue. Playing psychologist, he altered the fourth stage just for Trump and showed how quickly he moved to the final stage of acceptance.

If you haven’t seen or read the portions of the Jimmy Kimmel monologue that led to him being fired click 1 here 1

Sabrina Haake has a great first sentence in her Substack “Jimmy Kimmel has a First Amendment claim against Trump's FCC. (here)” It is “If Trump’s skin gets any thinner the US will have its first translucent president.” 

She goes on to say:

Trump, who relishes belittling people with unpresidential insults, like calling democrats ‘scum’ and ‘the enemy within,’ can’t take it when his slurs boomerang back at him.

Instead of accepting that jokes, jabs and insults come with the territory—satirizing presidents is an American tradition— Trump reacts like an enraged teenager when anyone insults him. Whenever the media fail to fawn, or worse, accurately report Trump’s unprecedented corruption or ineptitude, his first instinct is to use federal resources to seek retribution against them.

She then goes on to focus both on legal issues (she’s an attorney) and Trump’s psychology which covers much of what I planned to write about this morning.

My premise is that the real “crime” that led to Kimmel’s dismissal wasn’t what he said about Charlie Kirk. It is what he said about Trump. I am not alone in this. Others commenting on the firing have been expressing this opinion.

We’ll never know whether Trump himself pushed hard to have him fired. It may not matter since ABC knew how he felt about Kimmel and what would make him happy. 

When it comes to Trump unless they keep Kimmel’s show the letters ABC forever will mean Always Bow and Cower.

Unless he’s really thick Trump had to know he waded into the shit when he saw the monologue. If he realized this he’d have been triggered when Kimmel talked about the fourth stage of grief after he played the clip of his bragging about his glorious ballroom. This is where he plans to have Trumpian Big Balls which he can show off to prove how great he is - make of that what you will.

He may have thought “enough is enough” and picked up the phone and called Bob Iger and told him to get rid of that Kimmel guy.

Trump set himself up. Not being the most self-aware person in the room he may not have realized that he made himself the butt of the joke with his own words. We know he boycotts that White House Correspondents Dinner because he had to sit through being mocked there by Barack Obama (see article which has a video). 

Trump made himself the butt of Obama’s jokes by promoting the Obama birth certificate conspiracy (see Wikipedia).

That took some thought and planning. He spontaneously made himself the butt of Kimmel’s joke just by being himself.

In fact, in some ways Trump is the most unfunny joke in American history but if he wasn’t about to destroy democracy we would find his antics hilarious. Now when we hear well crafted jokes about him the saying “that’s so funny it hurts to laugh” applies.

Still, whenever possible those with a platform must keep mocking him. 

Thanks for reading Hal Brown's Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Share Hal Brown's Substack

Leave a comment

Previous Substacks

My comments in RawStory

1

What Jimmy Kimmel said about Charlie Kirk

"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. In between the finger-pointing, there was, uh, grieving on Friday − the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.

Then he showed the clip of what the president said after a reporter asked him how he was holding up after the death of his friend Charlie Kirk and Trump said “I think very good” before going on to brag about the new White House ballroom he was having built:

“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 for about 150 years. And it’s gonna be a beauty. It’ll be an absolutely magnificent structure.”

The this is what Kimmel said:

Yes, he's at the fourth stage of grief: construction. Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend; this is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK? And it didn't just happen once. And then we installed the most beautiful chandelier. Responses you wouldn't believe. Who thinks like that, and why are we building a $200 million chandlier in the White House? Is it possible that he's doing it intentionally so he can be bad about that instead of the (Jeffrey) Epstein list? …

There was more:

“And it didn’t just happen once,” Kimmel continued, throwing to a clip from Fox and Friends, where the President again responded to a question about Kirk’s death by talking about his ballroom.

“Oh, when I heard it? I was in the midst of building a great… for 150 years they’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House, right?” Trump said before going on to reveal that the architects informed him of Kirk’s shooting.

“There’s something wrong with him, there really is,” Kimmel stated. “I mean, who thinks like that?”

More importantly, the late-night host questioned, “Why are we building a $200 million ballroom in the White House? Is it possible that he’s doing it intentionally so we can be mad about that instead of the Epstein list?”

TV Insider has an article about this which incudes his entire 16 minute monologue.

A Black pastor wrote about a "makeshift Confederate army." This one has Black soldiers. By Hal M. Brown

 

I want to be sure my readers don't miss this essay by Rev. Earle J. Fisher, Ph.D., the Senior Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. This is the Blackest Church in Memphis and Shelby County. He’s also the founder of #UPTheVote901, a nonpartisan voter empowerment initiative committed to producing political power and increasing voter turnout in Memphis and Shelby County.

His essay begins:

This is not about crime. This is about control.

The proposed deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis is not a response to public safety. It’s a political stunt engineered by a twice-impeached, multi-indicted president exploiting Black suffering and white fear to reclaim political relevance.

It’s a charade rooted in fearmongering, cloaked in the rhetoric of “law and order” but animated by the same authoritarian impulse that called troops to Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. and cages to the border for immigrants. And Memphis, yet again, finds itself on the night shift of American injustice.

I found the following to be a powerful and compelling message under the heading “We’ve been here before:”

In my sermon this past Sunday, I reminded my congregation that some of the most liberating work has always been done during the night shift. My mother — Claudia Mae Fisher — worked the literal night shift for decades on a bridge in Michigan. And in the spiritual and political sense, we are on the night shift right now. Just like Jesus encountering the man born blind in John 9, we are being asked who is to blame. But I contend the better question is: What is God trying to reveal through this misfortune?

As I said in that sermon, we are not called to applaud political stunts or submit to scare tactics. We are called to do the work of liberation—day or night, with or without military presence.

We are not blind. We see what’s happening.

This is the comment I posted:

The chart below is (from the official (now Dept. of War website, though still shown as Defense Department). It shows the ethnicity of National Guard members (click to enlarge).

I don’t know how many members of the Tennessee National Guard aren’t White. It is likely that the national average approximates the percentage. This hardly matters. We can assume that the figure is somewhere near a third. It is possible that for economic reasons more non-Whites join than the national average but this is just speculation. Again, this hardly matters.

Whether or not RawStory decided to use the photo they did is also open to speculation. They are a progressive publication so I wouldn’t be surprised it they decided to highlight the presence of Black soldiers in the photo. It was taken in Los Angeles. They chose it from all the other photos of Naitonal Guard in L.A. and in D.C.

Of course it is likely that some minority group soldiers approve of their assignment. I do not want to single out members of minority groups as being the only ones either appalled over what they are being ordered to do, or having less intense negative feelings about it.. I am sure many White soldiers also think they are being ordered to do something that goes against their beliefs and values.

This is from the website “The Root:”

It is true that the actual Confederate Army did have a few Black soldiers. This is from

The myth of black Confederates is arguably the most controversial subject of the Civil War. Over the past four years, the debate over whether or not blacks fought for the Confederacy has been the most discussed topic on Civil War Memory, a popular website attracting teachers and scholars from around the world, and the Atlantic Monthly and The Root have devoted several articles to it.

You can read more essays by Rev. Fisher here.

Thanks for reading Hal Brown's Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

Leave a comment

Previous Substacks

…

Once again with NY Times lawsuit Trump shows how he's willing to flush the Constitution down his golden toilet

 

This is what Trump said about suing The New York Times:

Today, I have the Great Honor of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times, one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country, becoming a virtual “mouthpiece” for the Radical Left Democrat Party. I view it as the single largest illegal Campaign contribution, EVER. Their Endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF! The “Times” has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole. I am PROUD to hold this once respected “rag” responsible, as we are doing with the Fake News Networks such as our successful litigation against George Slopadopoulos/ABC/Disney, and 60 Minutes/CBS/Paramount, who knew that they were falsely “smearing” me through a highly sophisticated system of document and visual alteration, which was, in effect, a malicious form of defamation, and thus, settled for record amounts. They practiced this longterm INTENT and pattern of abuse, which is both unacceptable and illegal. The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW! The suit is being brought in the Great State of Florida. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

New York Times spokesperson Charles Stadtlander said that the news organization “will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.” 

RawStory found some tellingly accurate pithy and sarcastic reactions to this on social media in their article “Trump makes midnight announcement of 'stunningly pathological' $15B lawsuit.” Check them out. I like George Conway’s the best:

This story is all over the media:

It is being covered in the international press too:

The Guardian reported on the story with a photo that is itself an editorial comment.

Not only did they use that photo as the lead but they also used this one in the article:

Here’s an excerpt:

Different theories abound over the strategy, from creating a chilling effect on the media to feeding an anti-mainstream media sentiment among his most vigorous supporters. One firm conclusion, however, is that the tactic is here to stay.

“I don’t think this is the end of this treatment of the media,” said one executive at a major US news outlet. “We’ll see more.”

Such is the ferocity and readiness with which Trump has turned to legal action – this is now the fourth multibillion suit he has filed against separate media companies since his return to office – some executives have talked about the possibility of displaying some kind of united front, showing solidarity against Trump’s tactics.

They reach this conclusion:

While Trump may consider the suits against ABC and 60 Minutes as successes, the terms of the tactic may change once some cases actually reach the courts. Trump’s decision to sue The Wall Street Journal and its media mogul owner, Rupert Murdoch, over its report of his alleged lewd note to the late sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, is expected in court soon. He denies being the author of the note.

That brings with it risks for the president himself, most notably in terms of the divulgence of information relevant to the case. No company has yet discovered how the president and his advisers will react when they have more to lose in the process.

Both Murdoch and the New York Times have the financial muscle – and political stomach – to see such cases through.

Clinical psycholgists John Gartner and Harry Segal make their case for Trump having dementia (see article), but I disagree with their assessment. I think what we see in his behavior is what happens when someone with his malevolent personality and no scruples feels they can say and do anything and get away with it. For example, Trump just responded to a reporter from ABC News who asked him about Pam Bondi going after liberal groups by personally attacking him to his face, in addtion to a typical attack on a station he doesn’t like.

See:

This is what Trump said:

"They should probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly," Trump said. "It's hate, you have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they'll come after ABC. Well, ABC paid me $16 million recentlyfor a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech. So maybe they'll have to go after you."

This was also covered on HUFFPOST:

This is how The NY Times (subscription) reported on the lawsuit.

From the article: A spokesman for The Times responded: “This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”

It concludes:

The complaint also took issue with the endorsement of Kamala Harris by the editorial board of The Times in September 2024, noting that the endorsement had been published on the front page “in a location never seen before.”

The lawsuit repeatedly took umbrage with Ms. Craig and Mr. Buettner’s book. It said the book tried to tarnish one of President Trump’s “most well-known successes” as a reality television star. According to the lawsuit, the book inaccurately stated that Mark Burnett, the executive producer of “The Apprentice,” had discovered Mr. Trump and transformed him into a celebrity. The lawsuit claims that Mr. Trump was already “a mega-celebrity and an enormous success in business” when he was put on the show.

In an effort to prove “malice” against Mr. Trump, the lawsuit cited more than a dozen articles from The Times dating back to his first term in office that it claimed “maliciously and falsely portray him as dishonest, erode public trust in him and tear down his achievements.”

In a social media post on Monday evening, Mr. Trump said he was “proud” to hold The Times responsible for decades of lying about him, his family and business. He referred to the success of his other lawsuits, pointing to the settlements by Paramount and ABC.

If this ever makes it into court, in my non-lawyer opinion, this is nothing less than the First Amendment being on trial. 

Presumably Trump’s lawyers know that in order to win a libel lawsuit, public figures like Trump must show “actual malice.” This means mean the defendants knew the statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for their truth. In other words if The NY Times can prove that what they wrote was true they win. 

Some of the articles cited in the lawsuit (which you can read here) were published as opinions. The right to express an opinion in the media is clearly a First Amendment right.

Something else will also be adjudicated if this goes to court. I think it will be akin to a trial about Trump’s fitness for office combined with a sanity hearing.

In their CNN article Brian Seltzer and Hannah Park opine on the real reason for the lawsuit (article):

Media analysts have asserted that Trump’s real intent, with some of his lawsuits, is to garner PR and publicly embarrass news outlets, with winning or losing in court being a secondary consideration at best.

Hours before Trump announced the lawsuit, Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger spoke publicly about what he called the “anti-press playbook” being deployed by “aspiring strongmen” around the world, including in the US.

Part of the playbook, he said, is to “exploit the civil courts to impose financial pressure” and “punish independent journalists.”

Trump probably doesn’t care whether or not this goes to trial. In addition to getting publicity, I think he is probably hoping for a settlement. He’s seen he can get organizations to pay up to avoid a court case. So far it looks like the defendants are not about to do this.

Still, lamentably Trump has gotten what he’s wanted. He is all over the news.

He can’t stand not to be in the news. Just this morning he announced that the next city he’s going to send federal troops to is Chicago. He saw that announcing that he was going to send them to Memphis garnered a media hohum. With one exception, the bigger the target the more Trump wants to take them on. Thus he’s going after the number one paper in the United States and the third largest city. The target he pays lip service to wanting to go after is Russia. This may be due to his not seeing Russia as an enemy. 

Thanks for reading Hal Brown's Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Share Hal Brown's Substack

Leave a comment

Previous Substacks

My comments in RawStory

Recent: