They say the secret to comedy is… timing.
Last week, I had some incredible timing, but it wasn’t all that funny.
I was in New York City for The Atlantic Festival, a yearly get together for the magazine of the same name. I was there to be interviewed live in front of an audience by the fearless writer for The Atlantic,
. Our interview was on the very first day of the festival. I was in every comedian’s favorite slot—10am—between Trump’s former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Trump’s former Vice President and former target Mike Pence. My career never ceases to confuse me.The night before the festival there was a VIP party. Honestly, I probably would not have gone if not for my awesome publicist, Heather Brown, insisting that I did. I actually ran into Jemele while I was waiting outside, talking myself into going into the party. (She agreed that I should go in.) I’ll never be comfortable in rooms filled with… people. This room was filled with both the glitterati and the literati. I mixed and/or mingled with Noah Hawley (the creator of the shows Fargo and Alien: Earth), CNN’s Abby Phillip, Alison Roman (bestselling cookbook author), Jelani Cobb (head of the Columbia School of Journalism), and many more. In other words, this was the usual Wednesday night WKB crew. Even the owner of The Atlantic, Laurene Powell Jobs was there. But we didn’t talk. We had an awkward meeting several years ago. I’m sure she has forgotten, but I didn’t want to take any chances that talking to her would jog her memory. Needless to say, nights like that make my butt clench so tight that my teeth hurt. But I actually had a good time, until…
About an hour into the festival festivities, my phone started buzzing over and over. And it kept buzzing. I really wanted to check it, but I am learning how to not always be an only child. Shortly after the buzzing stopped, word started going around the room.
“Did you see this Kimmel thing?”
That’s why my phone–and everybody’s phone–was buzzing.
As we were standing in that room, drinking themed cocktails, Rome was burning down one of its own. ABC late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel had been suspended immediately and (most troublingly) indefinitely by ABC. Out of the box, it was a story that only the writers of Succession would love.
Two right-wing corporations that own a bunch of ABC affiliates complained about a joke that Kimmel made. The joke included Kimmel’s opinions related to Charlie Kirk’s murder. As if that wasn’t galling enough, the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, put his MAGA thumb on the scale to make sure it happened. Also, this all seemed related to a merger of one of these corporations was in the middle of negotiating that the FCC would have changge its rules to approve. To say it felt like a mob deal would seem like a hyperbolic exaggeration, until soon enough, a quote emerged from Brendan Carr that sounded like something actor Joe Pesci would say.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
- Brendan Carr, FCC Chair & Sonny Corleone fan
As I looked up from my phone in the middle of the VIP party, I scanned around the room. Everyone was either looking at their phone or huddled with people in a quiet but semi-panicked conversation. I have never seen so many nervous rich, white people in my life. It was like that scene at the end of the The Big Short, where Steve Carell’s character has just announced to a room full of business assholes that the housing bubble has burst as the economy starts tanking in real time.
The big question on everybody’s lips was some form of, “What does this mean” For some folks in the room the question meant, “What does this mean for Jimmy?” For others, the question meant, “WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY?” I counted myself in the second group. As much as what happened sucked for Kimmel, let’s be real. He was always gonna be fine. He’s JIMMY KIMMEL, not Jimmy Ábrego García or Jimmy Khalil.
After I left the party, I was eating at a diner, and I decided to post something about Kimmel’s suspension.
I just couldn’t stop thinking about how visibly shook everyone at the party was, and I was seeing a similarly shook reaction online. In the short time that Donald Trump had been back in office, Trump and his 1960’s era Batman TV show goons had kidnapped people off the streets, illegally invaded America’s capitol, tried to kill PBS and NPR, tanked the economy (unemploying over 300,000 Black women in the process), watched as his minion forced Oklahoma public schools to put Trump brand Bibles in every classroom, launched nuisance lawsuits against institutions of higher learning and network television stations. But ironically (or canonically) the straw that broke mainstream America’s back is the “suspension” of Jimmy Kimmel. Who knew that for regular Americans, rich white guys would be the canary in the coal mine of the American Empire?
10am the next day, I was onstage with Jemele for our conversation. The title of our session was The Politics of Comedy. According to the festival’s website I was there to, “examine the role of comedians in political discourse and how humor evolves to reflect changing societal norms.” Remember this was the topic selected mooooooooonths before Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension.
Remember what the secret to comedy is?
.
.
.
Timing.
In my interview with Jemele, I repeated the message from my video, but with a more sober tone, maybe because it was 10am. I expanded my point to say that if Trump and his kind don’t even care about rich white men, what hope do the rest of us have? They have already proven that they don’t care about the people at the lowest rung on America’s caste system: undocumented Latino immigrants (or even documented Latino immigrants). The rest of us are just going to be squeezed in the middle if we don’t fight back.
You can watch the whole conversation with Jemele here.
When it was over, I walked backstage, and Mike Pence was right in front of me waiting to be announced onstage. Editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg stopped Jemele and me and introduced us to Pence. Pence asked, “How’s the crowd?” I looked him in the eye and responded blankly, “I warmed them up for you.” I was wearing a brand new Mahogany Mommies sweatshirt that read, “34 FELONIES IS NOT PRESIDENTIAL”. I saw him look at it, but he didn’t say anything. MY CAREER NEVER CEASES TO CONFUSE ME!
By that afternoon, my appearance with Jemele had gotten some traction, and I was booked for that evening’s episode of Abby Phillip’s CNN show. Weirdly, I have written about her show a couple times on this very Substack. And yes, I had the experience of being on Abby Phillip’s show and watching Trump apologist Scott Jennings make ridiculous faces while making up ridiculous facts. At one point I even yelled out, “YOU LIE!” The rest of the time I just made silly faces when he talked. I also spent significant time cheering on the other two Black people on the panel, lawyers Tezlyn Figaro and Ashley Allison.
But throughout the day, after my clip made the rounds, something interesting kept happening. I kept hearing the same message from the people in my life. To be honest, I have been hearing this since Charlie Kirk’s killing. Friends, family, acquaintances, people I work with… they all say the same thing.
“Be careful out there.” - Everybody, to Me
I know what they mean. They mean, “I always want you, Kamau, to be careful out there, but right now, specifically, BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!”
These people all know what I do for a living. They all know what I am writing about on Substack. That clip of me from The Atlantic festival talking about rich, white canaries wasn’t even inflammatory, but it was just another way of me calling out the system. People know that when you call out the system, especially as a Black person, you are putting yourself in harm’s way, even if like Martin Luther King Jr., you are basically arguing for hugs.
Have you ever heard of Alberta Odell Jones? I am ashamed to say that I had not heard of her until my friend, Will Calhoun, the drummer from Living Colour, sent her story to me. Jones was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1930. Although she was a Black woman living in the Jim Crow south, she was a high achiever academically. She eventually (and somewhat shockingly because of the times) earned her law degree from Howard University. Jones was one of the first Black women admitted to the Kentucky bar. She was Louisville’s first WOMAN (not Black woman, first WOMAN) prosecutor. She eventually found her way to representing a young, brash, but promising boxer named Cassius Clay. She was pivotal in his early career, before he became Muhammad Ali. In whatever spare time she had, Jones was also an activist who attended the March on Washington. She was truly a shining light in her community who, at 34, had a big future. Why did I specifically say the age 34?
On August 5, 1965, Jones disappeared, and her body was later discovered in a river. She had been murdered. The murder is unsolved to this day. Alberta Odell Jones was killed for the sin of being a Black woman with liberation on her mind. In her short life, all she did was help people, and she was killed for it.
One of the people who texted me after the Atlantic clip made the rounds is a person who, just like Alberta Odell Jones, is doing the liberation work out loud and in public. If I said their name you would 100% know it. I was stunned when in the back and forth of texting they sent a message that read, “Stay safe, Kamau.” It was sort of like getting a text message from Harriet Tubman that read, “Be careful freeing our people from enslavement.”
LADY, WHO YOU TELLING?! YOU NEED TO BE MORE CAREFUL THAN ME!
I truly appreciate all the concern that people are sending me at this time. And it also feels ridiculous. I’M NOT OUT IN THE WORLD BEING AN ASSHOLE AS A WAY TO ENFORCE WHITE SUPREMACY! WHY DO I NEED TO BE CAREFUL? I’M CLOSER TO THE HUGS GUY!
Oh, yeah.
But trust me. I will be even more careful than I ever was before, even though it doesn’t feel fair. (But when has America ever been about fairness?) So while our president and his Batman stooges make this country less safe for people who weren’t that safe before, I understand where I stand in all this. I’m not Martin Luther King Jr. I’m also not Jimmy Kimmel. Whatever I do, I want to get home to all these children that my wife and I decided to have. America makes that harder than it needs to be whether you are famous for speaking truth to power or not.
I had a show in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California last Saturday night. Carmel (I know her, so I can use her family name) is most famous for being the city where actor Clint Eastwood was the mayor in the late 80’s. I took a flight directly from my New York City adventures to the show. My wife is from that area of California, so we made it a family trip. It is super fun when my family comes to shows. It’s the best Bring Your Daughter(s) To Work Day ever. They eat all my snacks. They learn what I do. They laugh at (some of) my jokes. It makes the work more joyful for me. And I could use more joy in my life these days.
After the show in Carmel, I needed to eat. The girls needed ice cream. It was getting late. So for the first time in yeeeeeeeeears, I found myself at a Denny’s. When we arrived, I ran inside to get us a table large enough for my giant family. When they eventually joined me inside, I could tell something had happened. I am not going into all the details, but a man had yelled at my kid when she had FUCKING ACCIDENTALLY hit his car door as she exited our car. He had been in his car at the time. The man made enough of a scene that my wife had to get involved to tell him to calm down while she also APOLOGIZED FOR A KID HITTING HIS CAR DOOR AND CAUSING ZERO DAMAGE. At some point in his anger, he called the girls, “third world people.” I hope I don’t have to tell you that he was white: an old white man.
By the time my family finished telling me the story inside Denny’s, I looked outside and the man was still there, staring angrily at us. These are crazy days we live in. My mind was racing. What should I do? He wasn’t making any motion to leave. He was just mean-mugging us. I knew we couldn’t just sit there and eat while he said white trash curses at us. I wasn’t about to call the cops and say, “A man is being mean!” Again, I’m Black. He’s white. Do I complain to the Denny’s staff who are underpaid and overworked? No. I pulled up my dad-pants and walked outside to talk to him. Right as I got to the door, I turned my cellphone video camera on. Here is the entire exchange.
He got into his car and left. I went back inside and, as I do, I worked hard to get my kids laughing again, and also letting them know that they had done nothing wrong. I told them that I had their back, as they had their dessert. I ate some sort of fancy Denny’s chicken dish that normally would have been too sweet for my tastes, but that night it was delicious.
After all the warnings from my people to be careful out there, I couldn’t help but find it funny that this guy wasn’t mad at W. KAMAU BELL. He was just mad at the world. And he decided to take it out on some kids… some kids who happened to be the children of W. Kamau Bell. It was just another reminder that I, W. Kamau Bell, need to be careful out there. And I, Black man in America, need to be careful out there. But both those people (Kamau and Black man) won’t stop standing up for what they believe, and they will definitely get the backs of the people who need them to. And both those guys are showing up if you mess with my kids.
Now that we have saved Jimmy Kimmel, let’s save the rest of us.
Who’s with me?
And also…
Stand-Up Comedy Tour Hits Los Angeles, Oct. 3!
I’m in Los Angeles on Friday, October 3 doing “WHO’S WITH ME?” I havent perfmred in LA for yeeeeeears. It used ot make me so nervous. If you are in the area, please come out. This will be a very special show. I promise.
Then I do my mini red state tour in Tulsa and Oklahoma City and Louisville, KY.
Get your tickets below:
October 3, Los Angeles
November 7, Tulsa, OK
November 8, Oklahoma City, OK
November 20-22, Louisville, KY
I’m in Washington, DC RIGHT NOW!
I’m here with my friend, pastor, and good troublemaker
for Congressional Black Caucus Week. If you are nearby, come to an event. THEY ARE FREE! You just have to register HERE.Thursday, September 25th at 5pm - I’ll be in conversation with Pastor Mike and my fearless representative, Congresswoman Lateefah Simon.
Friday, September 26th at 6pm - I’ll be at The Go-Go Museum for a youth roundtable. I’m pretty sure I won’t be representing “the youth”.
Again, register for FREE here.
Who’s With Me? Merch
Check out the Who’s With Me? merch selection. Another great way to support the work here AND YOU GET MERCH!
I appreciate “Stay safe.” because it inherently understands that I’m doing the work no matter what.
Kamau, this piece hit like a sermon disguised as stand-up. You’re right—saving Kimmel is symbolic, but saving the rest of us is survival. The scary part isn’t that Trump tried to kneecap a comedian. It’s that he did it with the same mob-handshake swagger he’ll use on anyone who doesn’t clap hard enough.
And your Denny’s story? That’s the parable. You didn’t just stand up to some crank at the door—you showed your kids that dignity beats venom every time. The man drove away. The kids laughed again. The kingdom of heaven looks more like that booth at Denny’s than it does any Senate chamber.
Blessed are the ones who say “be careful” and still keep showing up. Who refuse to disappear. Who raise kids who know their worth even when strangers try to subtract it.