When Richard Nixon, then Vice-President, appeared on the old Tonight Show with Jack Paar, everyone assumed that the spot was intended by Paar to let the public see what Tricky was like in a different setting than what they were used to seeing him in. Paar was an endearing and probing interviewer but always welcomed his guests with equal positive vibes: no one could tell what Jack’s politics were, and no one wanted to know.

For decades, we just assumed that TV entertainment wanted to make us laugh, cry, feel, be excited and happy, not to make us back the entertainers’ political agendas. That may have been naive, but the nation’s ethics and values were less divided then, and that was a good thing. Politically driven leftist playwrights like Arthur Miller would use their works to attack capitalism or Joe McCarthy, and Ed Sullivan might have a scene from “The Crucible” on his Sunday night variety show, but it was not so Ed could take sides in a political controversy.

Today, however, because the political right was lazy, inattentive, apathetic and foolish for so long, entertainment is critical to the Left’s efforts to re-make America. The “Law and Order” franchise has featured its cops treating “good illegal immigrants” as sympathetic martyrs who “just want a better life” for decades. All shows now promote DEI relentlessly: virtually every couple is interracial or some kind of LGBTQ coupling. Inspired by Comedy Central’s rise under John Stewart, every single late night comedy show after Craig Fergusen’s “Late Late Show” ended in 2014 shifted to open hostility to conservatives and Republicans. Colbert and Kimmel were the most aggressive, but as the conservative media watchdog “Newsbusters” has chronicled regularly, Democrats and anti-Trump critics in the news media have been featured and feted on these shows while conservatives have been shunned. NewsBusters’ analysis of five major late-night shows since September 2022 revealed a 97% liberal/Democratic guest rate, and that was just the inevitable result of a long trend. Google, which is an Axis ally, states, “Republicans often cite this data as evidence of systemic bias in late-night television.” Sound familiar? Those silly Republicans! Why would they complain about a 97% to 3% bias favoring the Left? After all, Democrats think this is, as Tony the Tiger would say, “G-R-R-R-REAT!”

The two most egregious examples of attempted election interference in 2024 prove my point. “Entertainment” late night show” “Saturday Night Live”, which barely mocked Barack Obama during his eight years dividing the nation and somehow couldn’t find comedy gold in President Joe Biden doing an extended “Being There” imitation for four years turned its last show before the 2024 election into an extended campaign ad for Kamala Harris. A weekend or two earlier, CBS’s “60 Minutes” set out to deceive its viewers, especially its independent viewers, by using deceptive editing to make Kamala appear to be less of a muddled, DEI-promoted empty suit than she is.

It’s true, cable shows and streaming services provide many alternate landing places for the public if it wants to reject indoctrination by the Left…in theory. In reality, the ideological Left rules those roosts too. Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney are completely woke-dominated.

And, of course, the Mad Left and Democrats love this, just as they love their domination of journalism and education at all levels. To the progressives’ credit, if conservatives had been anywhere near as alert and reactive as the Axis of Unethical Conduct is, we might never have reached the point where popular culture is an almost irresistible leftist propaganda bubble. The Trump Administration taking the minor step of repurposing the “Equal Time” rule to foil at least some of late night TV’s efforts to tilt public opinion isn’t going to have much impact, but if it’s toothless, why are Colbert, MSNOW, anti-Trump pundits and the Washington Post so upset about it?

They are terrified that the jig is up.

Good.