The comedy world is still reeling from the news that Jimmy Kimmel has been suspended by ABC “indefinitely” after his arguably extremely tame statement about the political affiliation of Charlie Kirk’s assassin drew threats from FCC head Brendan Carr.
Along with the prevalence of A.I. and the existence of a mystery food named “Soylent,” an authoritarian administration silencing comedians sure seems like a sign that we’re living in a dystopian future. But this isn’t actually the first time that the White House has pressured a TV network to remove a comedian from the air.
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Back in 1967, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour routinely roasted president Lyndon B. Johnson, and hosts Dick and Tommy Smothers were particularly outspoken in criticizing the Vietnam War.
Needless to say, Johnson wasn’t a fan. But weirdly, according to The Washington Post, what really pushed Johnson over the edge was a “mild skit” that poked fun at LBJ’s barbecue sauce recipe. As a result, in the middle of the night, an enraged Johnson phoned up the head of CBS and demanded that he “get those bastards off my back.” As a result, the folk musician brothers were ordered to “back off.”
Yeah, they didn’t. They later invited folk star Pete Seeger to perform the anti-Vietnam War tune “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on the show. When CBS refused to air the song, they brought Seeger back the following year.
While the Smothers Brothers survived Johnson’s term, in 1969, just three months after Nixon was sworn in, the show was canceled, allegedly due to the late delivery of a tape containing a “sensitive” segment.
According to Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour by David Bianculli, Tommy Smothers later claimed that he was “targeted in a way that both predated and prefigured Nixon’s enemies list.” And Nixon specifically “pushed for greater governmental control of broadcast media at the same time well-placed Nixon allies, from the new CBS programming chief Robert D. Wood to TV Guide publisher Walter Annenberg, adopted hard-line stances against the sort of envelope-pushing content the Smothers Brothers were trying to present in prime time.”
Although Bianculli has said in interviews that the network’s head of standards and practices made the call in order to satisfy skittish affiliates, it seems clear that kowtowing to Nixon’s whims partly informed the decision. “The political climate was changing,” Tommy Smothers told The New York Times. “Nixon, the conservatives were coming in. That was when we became very dispensable to CBS.”
Even after the show ended, Nixon still went after Tommy Smothers after he co-produced a comedy short called Another Nice Mess in 1972. Written and directed by Bob Einstein, the Laurel and Hardy riff starred Rich Little as Nixon.
Smothers was tipped off by an ex-CIA agent that Nixon was planning to hit the comedian with a drug bust as payback, forcing him to keep his car “clean” and always ride with other passengers.
Kimmel may want to do the same for the foreseeable future.