00:00Our next panelist is Bess Kalb. Ms. Kalb is an Emmy-nominated comedy writer and New York Times best-selling
00:08author of Buffalo Fluffalo, a series of children's books, and as well as the memoir Nobody Will Tell You This
00:15But Me, a New York Times book review editor's choice.
00:18She wrote for eight years for Jimmy Kimmel Live, for which she won a Writer's Guild Award. She has written
00:25for the Emmy Awards, the Academy Awards, the Al Smith Dinner, and the 2020 Democratic National Convention. She is a
00:32contributor to The New Yorker and This American Life. Ms. Kalb, you're recognized for five minutes.
00:39Thank you so much, Representative Scanlon, Ranking Member Raskin, the members of Congress here today.
00:44I'm honored to be here representing the millions of Americans who did not go to law school.
00:51So what am I doing here? I'm a comedy writer. I wrote for Jimmy Kimmel Live for eight years, as
00:57Ranking Member Scanlon said, and I'm an author who recently got back from a national tour for my picture book
01:03series, Buffalo Fluffalo.
01:05So the fact that I am sitting here in a navy blue business suit in the Capitol building, surrounded by
01:12my esteemed co-panelists, at a hearing about the First Amendment means something has gone very, very wrong.
01:19I gotta say, I didn't see this coming. I thought we were entering a new golden age of free speech.
01:25On January 20th, 2025, President Trump, on his very first day in office for the second time, announced a presidential
01:33action called, quote,
01:35restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship, which was a big relief because I had some concerns about how
01:42he felt about speech he didn't much like.
01:45My first brush with this president happened in 2017. At the time, I was doing a recurring joke bit on
01:51Twitter before it was owned by the world's richest and most online man, Elon Musk.
01:57Every time the president free associated his feelings in all caps, I would reply as his concerned mom, sweetie, you're
02:04clearly having a lot of big thoughts all at once.
02:06You need to do your five deep breaths, et cetera. It was all fun and games. Until one night, the
02:13president blocked me after I wrote a joke that hurt his feelings.
02:17I was confused at first and thought the account had mercifully been deleted, but it turned out that the man
02:23in the Oval Office couldn't take a joke and wanted to make sure he didn't have to hear one either.
02:29The Knight Foundation sued him to get him to unblock me and several others without my involvement, though I thank
02:34them.
02:35The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ended up having to rule on this, and the
02:40Supreme Court took the issue up, too.
02:43He quite literally made a federal case of a joke.
02:47The problem here is not that jokes bother this president.
02:51It's that he is in the habit of looking for ways to silence the joke tellers.
02:56I should tell you a little bit about one of my former jobs.
02:59When I wrote for Kimmel from 2012 through 2020, I was responsible for pitching about everyone, Democrats, Republicans, Kardashians.
03:08This was never supposed to be a job where I'd have to know anything more about the founding documents than
03:14an off-color joke about John Hancock.
03:16For late-night comedy writers, the president is our best and worst audience.
03:25He is our best audience because, unlike most Americans, he watches late-night television.
03:30He cares about what the network men in suits say about him.
03:33He is our worst audience because his inexplicably bruised skin is very, very thin.
03:40He complained about our jokes frequently, often in real time, on his own social media site he invented so that
03:48nobody could make fun of him on it.
03:50This went far beyond social media tirades when this year, as ranking member Raskin mentioned,
03:55after Stephen Colbert told jokes about that $16 million settlement CBS personally paid to Trump,
04:01the late show with Stephen Colbert was bulldozed like it was the East Wing of the White House.
04:07Then, months later, emboldened by the Colbert precedent, the administration had Jimmy Kimmel live briefly yanked off the air
04:14when the show's monologue displeased the president.
04:17I want to be fair.
04:19The Trump administration denies responsibility for these cancellations,
04:23much as the mafia is continuously surprised that so many people end up in the East River with cement blocks
04:30on their feet.
04:30But what can we say, what we can say for sure is that this president that so prized free speech
04:36and so loathed censorship
04:39was positively giddy on Truth Social about the literal cancellation of these comedians.
04:45He was so excited, he misspelled the word canceled.
04:48The president wrote,
04:51Great news for America.
04:53The ratings challenge Jimmy Kimmel show is canceled.
04:57Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.
05:02Kimmel has zero talent and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that's possible.
05:06That leaves Jimmy Fallon and Seth, two total losers on fake news NBC.
05:12The ratings also horrible.
05:13Do it, NBC.
05:15President DJT.
05:16Then he got back to authorizing strikes against ISIS in Syria.
05:20To kill a late night show doesn't just kill an enormous platform for speaking truth to power.
05:27Because late night comedy doesn't just speak truth to power.
05:31It speaks truth to an incredibly large number of people.
05:35I believe late night hosts like Colbert and Kimmel are vital satirists
05:39who shape how millions of Americans absorb the day's news.
05:43At 11.30 every weeknight, millions of people all over the country,
05:47just before their melatonin gummies hit,
05:50listen to what these comedians have to say about what happened in America that day.
05:55And under any administration, they are powerful voices of criticism and dissent.
06:00Network late night hosts like Colbert and Kimmel have used their huge platforms
06:04to make tangible, incremental, ideological change through satire dressed up in a suit
06:11in the hope that maybe someone who stayed up after the evening news on CBS or ABC
06:16will hear the news reflected back at them through a lens that is openly critical of the government,
06:22no matter who is in the Oval Office.
06:24And that can shape an electorate's opinion.
06:27And let's be clear, they're also doing interviews with The Bachelorette.
06:31But these permanent and temporary cancellations aren't just about controlling jokes.
06:36They're about controlling criticism of the administration and its corporate bedfellows.
06:41It is the state using its power to shape what is profitable to say.
06:46And we've learned nothing if not this.
06:48The bottom line comes first, even before the First Amendment.
06:54I have little doubt that CBS was in part compelled to end Colbert's show to avoid regulatory retaliation
07:01by the administration after CBS's parent company, Paramount, merged with Skydance Media,
07:07which I believe is a trust fund for one of the Ellison kids.
07:10And there is no doubt that this September's retribution against Jimmy Kimmel Live
07:14was due entirely to the host's criticism of our current president,
07:19despite the FCC's contention that it was for misinformation and sick jokes,
07:24which really just grabs me by the, I'm not going to say that in congressional testimony.
07:30There is no doubt that the president is so personally bothered by what comedians say
07:35that the FCC is willing to disappear any mouthpieces that might hurt his feelings
07:40in a shocking, and according to people with many more degrees and expertise than I,
07:45unconstitutional way.
07:46And here's how that trickles down.
07:50The censorship of free speech we have witnessed from the highest office in the federal government
07:55has emboldened Americans in sacred positions of power from the state to the local to the school board level,
08:02which is where I found myself just weeks after Kimmel's suspension.
08:07Talking about my brush with censorship this year might affect my broad appeal and livelihood
08:12as a children's book author, and I have not spoken publicly about this experience
08:17until right now in this room.
08:19But I have always said that if something is worth talking about with your family
08:23and closest friends and therapists, it is worth talking about with the ranking members
08:27of the House Judiciary Committee.
08:30The best part of being a children's book author is to actually read my books to children
08:36and to see them react and laugh and scrunch up their noses in delight
08:41and to get the kind of uncensored feedback and questions that no comedy writer's room could possibly contrive.
08:47I was once asked if I thought I would win in a race with a buffalo.
08:52Two years ago, when the first book came out, I was sent basically up and down the Amtrak Northeast Regional
08:58Corridor,
08:58but this year, after the books were a number one New York Times bestseller,
09:02the publisher decided to put me on airplanes and bring Buffalo, Fluffalo, and Puffalo to the country.
09:08This fall, through partnerships between school districts and my publisher,
09:13I read to thousands and thousands of elementary school kids in small towns, in suburbs, in Kansas, Missouri, Texas, and
09:22Montana.
09:24In Montana, the tour hit a snag.
09:28The evening before a scheduled school visit in a rural community in a Title I school,
09:33the wonderful school librarian emailed me and my publisher,
09:36a group of parents who had previously caused a stir at a school board meeting
09:43where they successfully campaigned to ban certain books from the library, decided to ban me.
09:49They emailed the school superintendent en masse with jokes I had written in my life as a political comedy writer
09:55and told the superintendent that if I came to read my book about prairie animals and their feelings to the
10:03kids,
10:03they would show up and make a scene in front of the children until I left.
10:09The visit was canceled.
10:10I should say, the kids they were threatening to do this to are around the same ages as my own
10:16two boys,
10:17who are four and six and a half, and are watching.
10:21And I love.
10:23These kids who had never had, these kids in the school who had never had an author visit
10:27and had been reading the book with their teachers and making art projects about a buffalo
10:31and preparing very thoughtful questions for me,
10:34would have shown up for a scary event where their parents barged in to the library
10:40and screamed at the lady in the dress, holding up a picture book and doing a buffalo voice.
10:46It isn't some great national tragedy that a story time was canceled,
10:50but it is a harrowing indication of how a joke can be wielded against its writer
10:56by exactly the same movement that railed against cancel culture to defend jokes that punch down.
11:04For the members of the United States Congress who haven't read Buffalo Fluffalo,
11:08someone who went to Kennedy School in your offices should have prepped you,
11:11but I'll summarize.
11:12The book is about a buffalo who is at first tough and blustery and rude
11:17and pushes his friends away.
11:20And then when it is revealed that underneath all his fluff,
11:23he is just a tiny frightened guy who wants to be loved,
11:27his friends support him anyway.
11:28They love him just as he is.
11:31And he gives them gratitude and kindness right back.
11:34It's just left-wing commie propaganda.
11:37I believe that the impulse to censor-free speech comes from exactly the fear in the book,
11:44the fear of being seen as weak or vulnerable,
11:48the fear of being seen as weak or vulnerable,
11:53the desire to project an air of bravado
11:56and to silence and push off anyone who might pull the curtain back
12:01on that image of imperious strongman.
12:03A true leader is only as strong as the joke he can take at his own expense.
12:10And there is nothing funny about the fact that we are living through a time
12:15when a joke about the government is a liability.
12:19In this room, surrounded by so many people who are as outraged and heartbroken
12:24by this administration's culture-shifting attack on free speech,
12:28I have hope.
12:35And I want to say thank you to the school librarians in red and blue and purple states
12:41whom I have had the genuine pleasure of meeting throughout my book tours,
12:46who are at the front lines of these school board fights over book bans with increasing regularity.
12:51They are tired, they are pissed,
12:52and they just want to be able to give a kid a book they're excited to read,
12:56even if the character in that book might have two moms,
12:59which as of this testimony is still a legal amount of moms to have.
13:03Because here's the thing about those kids across America that I met.
13:07From deeply underfunded Title I schools where most students were on free lunch,
13:11to immigrant communities where many of those kids were the first in their families
13:15to learn to read and speak English,
13:17to fancy schools in oil money suburbs where I was offered a choice of flat or sparkling water,
13:23I will tell you this, the kids were the same.
13:26The kids were the same.
13:28When I read my books in auditoriums and gyms and libraries and classrooms,
13:33some fidgeted, some daydreamed into Wonderland,
13:36laughed and awed at the same parts,
13:37and when I asked if they had a question at the end to a school,
13:41they all asked me the same one,
13:43why is Buffalo Fluffalo mad?
13:46Why is he mad?
13:47And they also frequently told me the names of their dogs.
13:54I think we know why the Buffalo Fluffalo in the Oval Office is mad.
14:00But as I was saying before, I am hopeful
14:03because the members of Congress in this room today,
14:07like Representative Raskin and Representative Scanlon,
14:10who don't just posture and complain about this administration on social media,
14:13they are going to fight to stop the president from going unchecked in his vendettas
14:18against those who speak out against him.
14:20As a comedy writer and generally conflict-averse coward,
14:23I do believe that jokes can be an effective tool for speaking truth under authoritarianism.
14:28So I take comfort in the words of my fellow author J.D. Vance
14:33when he spoke last year at the Munich Security Conference,
14:37the funniest of all conferences.
14:40He said,
14:41In Washington, there's a new sheriff in town.
14:44And under Donald Trump's leadership,
14:47we may disagree with your views,
14:49but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square.
14:53Agree or disagree.
14:55I'm not sure if anyone in the room can get the vice president a meeting with his boss,
14:59but that little whippersnapper from Yale has some ideas.
15:02Vance went on to the crowd in Germany.
15:05Now, within living memory of many of you in this room,
15:08the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent.
15:15And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents,
15:20that closed churches, that canceled elections.
15:23Were they the good guys?
15:25Certainly not.
15:26And thank God they lost the Cold War.
15:29Thank God indeed.
15:31And may God continue to bless the United States.
15:35I look forward to your questions.
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