South Park writer bought Trump-Kennedy Center domain names months ago to troll president; Entertainment Weekly, December 26, 2025

Mekishana Pierre, Entertainment Weekly; South Park writer bought Trump-Kennedy Center domain names months ago to troll president

"It looks like the writers of South Park are following in The Simpsons' footsteps when it comes to predicting future events.

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, writer Toby Morton revealed that not only did he predict that Donald Trump would decide to add his name to the The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he prepared for it. In August, the writer, who regularly buys political domains and turns them into satirical websites as a form of activism, bought the rights to both trumpkennedycenter.org and trumpkennedycenter.com.

"As soon as Trump began gutting the Kennedy Center board earlier this year, I thought, 'Yep, that name's going on the building,'" Morton, a comedy writer who has worked on series such as South Park and Mad TV, told the publication. "The rest followed on schedule."...

"The Kennedy Center has always been a cultural institution meant to outlast any one administration or personality," he asserted. "It's meant to honor culture, not ego. Once it was treated like personal branding, satire became unavoidable."...

The renaming immediately drew the ire of the political family, with the likes of Robert F. Kennedy's grandson Joe Kennedy III and John F. Kennedy's niece Maria Shriver and grandson Jack Schlossberg all speaking out.

Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty also contested Leavitt’s version of events in her own social media post. "For the record. This was not unanimous," she wrote. "I was muted on the call and not allowed to speak or voice my opposition to this move. Also for the record, this was not on the agenda. This was not consensus. This is censorship.""

Jon Stewart Goes Full State TV to Nail Trump on Kimmel; The Daily Beast, September 19, 2025

 Matt Wilstein  , The Daily Beast; Jon Stewart Goes Full State TV to Nail Trump on Kimmel

"Jon Stewart showed the world what it would be like if Donald Trump got his wish to remake all media in his image Thursday night with a 23-minute satirical rebranding of The Daily Show as full-on state TV. 

In a last-minute return to the desk outside of his usual Monday night gig, Stewart introduced the “new government-approved Daily Show.” It was his unique way of commenting on ABC’s decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel from the air following direct threats from Trump’s FCC Chair Brendan Carr. 

“We have another fun, hilarious, administration-compliant show,” Stewart said, surrounded by Trumpian gold flourishes. Throughout a monologue dominated by MAGA talking points, the host repeatedly shushed the laughing crowd, telling them, “You’re gonna blow this for us!”...

Despite the over-the-top MAGA-friendly act, Stewart still managed to use clips to catch Trump and his cohort in all sorts of blatant hypocrisy when it comes to the type of free speech they used to defend when it was targeted at the other side...

The Daily Show closed out its marathon opening segment with all seven co-hosts and correspondents reciting a pro-free speech message in terrified unison."

A Pulitzer winner quits 'Washington Post' after a cartoon on Bezos is killed; NPR, January 4, 2025

David Folkenflik, NPR; A Pulitzer winner quits 'Washington Post' after a cartoon on Bezos is killed

[Kip Currier: Every day, U.S. oligarchs like Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong feel more emboldened to cravenly censor criticism of themselves and impede freedom of expression and access to information.

Thank you, Ann Telnaes, for speaking truth to power with your satirical artistry and standing up for the importance of free and independent presses with your principled resignation decision. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist underscored in explaining her resignation, "Democracy can't function without a free press".

The evidence is now even more clear than one year or a decade ago: Consolidation of ownership of print journalism and broadcast media by a few billionaires and corporate conglomerates chills the ability to dissent and provide access to diverse perspectives.

The diagnosis and ramifications are also clear: Having a handful of oligarchs control America's newspapers is antithetical to well-informed citizenries and healthy democracies. (See here for a prescient 2017 article by veteran journalist and free speech/free press advocate Bill Moyers.)

Potential remedies? It's absolutely imperative that free speech-supporting Americans develop and nurture alternative ways to promote access to information and freedom of expression, as is increasingly being done on Substack accounts (see examples here, and here, and here) and via podcasts.

In the longer term, collaborative trusts (see here, for example) that can purchase newspapers and share ownership among more than one individual offer some potential ways to challenge oligarch newspaper monopolies.]

[Excerpt]

"A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Washington Post has resigned after its editorial page editor rejected a cartoon she created to mock media and tech titans abasing themselves before President-elect Donald Trump.

Among the corporate chiefs depicted by Ann Telnaes was Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos. The episode follows Bezos' decision in October to block publication of a planned endorsement of Vice President Harris over Trump in the waning days of last year's presidential elections.

The inspiration for Telnaes' latest proposed cartoon was the trek by top tech chief executives including Bezos to Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, as well as the seven-figure contributions several promised to make toward his inauguration. She submitted a sketch before Christmas. It was never published."

One more lesson from Charlottesville: Our comedians are more ethical than our president; Salon, August 19, 2017

Sophia A. McClennen, Salon; One more lesson from Charlottesville: Our comedians are more ethical than our president

"This week we have now seen another key feature of satire: It offers ethical responses to unethical actions.

The ethics of satire is often hard to see, especially because comedy can so often be crass and crude...

This is all to say that comedians are unlikely moral leaders. And yet in the Trump era, when literally every value in our nation seems to have been turned upside down, we are now seeing comedians play an increasingly larger role as champions of good versus evil.

This is why as Meyers ended his monologue he directly went after Trump for failing to uphold his moral obligations as president of our nation:

The leader of our country is called the president because he’s supposed to preside over society. His job is to lead, to cajole, to scold, to correct our path, to lift up what is good about us and to absolutely and unequivocally and immediately condemn what is evil in us. And if he does not do that, if he does not preside over our society, then he is not a president. You can stand for a nation or you can stand for a hateful movement. You can’t do both. And if you don’t make the right choice, I am confident that the American voter will.

Meyers wasn’t just scolding Trump for failing at his job; he was also showing his audience what real leadership looks like."