Greetings! Yesterday, late-night hosts rushed to the defense of ABC’s sidelined gabfest star Jimmy Kimmel.  I haven’t watched everything but Jon Stewart’s opening monologue last night on a special Thursday night edition was particularly brilliant and it’s available on YouTube. The NY Post has a good recap of Stewart’s bit as well…Dept. of Surprises: Ben Shapiro, one of the right’s most influential thinkers, argues that while he’s happy that Kimmel is gone for now, he cautions on what he calls overreach.  “The FCC should not be threatening action against ABC or its affiliates or Disney based on Jimmy Kimmel being a jackass,” he wrote in today’s Daily Wire…The shocking murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk on September 10 triggered a massive traffic spike to the 45 mostly right-wing news websites TheRighting monitors.  According to my exclusive analysis of Similarweb data, the tragic event resulted in the largest surge in visits to those websites since the 2024 election of Donald Trump.  For instance, CNN’s visits skyrocketed from 11 million on September 9 to 31 million on September 10. Fox News more than doubled its visits from 7.5 million on September 9 to 16.2 million the day of the shooting. NBC News soared from 2.6 million on September 9 to 16.3 million on September 10…Weekend Watch:  If anyone needs a refresher course in how media companies used to stand up to the federal government, I recommend Steve Spielberg’s 2017 movie The Post, which delves into how the Washington Post defied the Nixon administration at considerable risk to its future, by publishing the Pentagon Papers. The other (obvious) choice is the classic Watergate drama All the President’s Men.  Both are available for rent on Amazon Prime…If you keep reading, I’ll keep Righting. Howard