There’s a conversation making the rounds right now about Sinners and whether it borrows too heavily from earlier works—comics, films, folklore. The usual internet exercise is underway: line up characters, match situations, count the overlaps, and declare victory.

That’s not how I read it.

I’ve been through those gates. NBC. DreamWorks. Disney-adjacent rooms where the work is fast, collaborative, and often built on a foundation no one is particularly interested in auditing too closely. For a long time, screenplays were treated as process material—detritus on the way to a finished product. The film was the asset. The script was scaffolding.

And scaffolding doesn’t get inspected unless it collapses.

So what happens? Writers read—sometimes deeply, often not. They skim. They extract. They remember tones, character types, situations. They pull what works. They recombine. They move forward. And as long as the final structure stands and nobody recognizes the beams, it’s called craft.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it’s just well-dressed theft.

The current conversation around Sinners is interesting not because it proves anything in a legal sense—it doesn’t—but because it reveals something in a structural sense. When you see multiple specific elements align across works—archetypes, dynamics, staging—you’re not necessarily looking at coincidence. You’re looking at shared source material being processed through the same industrial method: extraction, recombination, and presentation.

Hollywood has lived comfortably in that space for decades.

But something has changed.

IP is no longer downstream of the product. IP is the product. And once that shift happens, people start checking receipts. Not just lawyers—audiences. Readers. Communities who recognize when their cultural materials are being handled with care…or stripped for parts.

That’s the distinction I care about. Bronzeville invests in IP. We have since Grandpa Gardner kept the Chicago Daily Defender afloat. I have since How U Like Me Now. I publish authors who trust me with their performance rights value.

We don’t care about influence, homage, or even similarity.

Authorship.

I came up writing something of my own from the kernel to the cob. My character, Elliot Caprice, debuted in the first book in the series, A Negro and an Ofay, began as a college screenplay—Elliot Caprice and the Death of Bernie Mac. It was my take on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, sure, but the voice, the structure, the engine of it—that was mine. I can account for it. Every piece of it.

Most screenwriters can’t say that cleanly. Not because they lack talent, but because the system they’re trained in doesn’t require it. That’s why those you think are better than you sit before an entire wall of books they’ve opened once and put back.

They don’t have to originate. They have to assemble convincingly.

That model worked when nobody was looking too closely.

It won’t hold much longer.

So when I look at something like Sinners, I’m not asking, “Is this plagiarism?” That’s a courtroom question.

I’m asking, “Does this clear the bar of authorship?”

Because not every influence is theft.

But not every homage is honest either.

And in the era we’re entering, that difference is going to matter more than it ever has.

VTY, dg

They brought Jimmy Kimmel back last night — tears, an apology, and performative redemption. But none of those tears were for Black people. None of that contrition was for the lives crushed by the same systems he now bows to.

Kimmel’s return monologue was a spectacle of self-pity. He opened by insisting he “never intended to make light of the murder” of Charlie Kirk. He praised Kirk’s widow, leveraging her forgiveness as a moral high ground to redeem himself. He invoked faith, forgiveness, and unity. He thanked “people who I know aren’t fans” — even naming Ted Cruz by name. He apologized, but by emphasizing his own hurt, he minimized the hurt of the communities he has long offended.

What struck me: Kimmel cried for the man who promoted white supremacy, but has rarely cried for Black bodies lost to injustice. He aligned himself fully with the ruling apparatus, bending to the same forces he once mocked. His tears weren’t for Charlie Kirk — they were for himself, for having been stripped down, humiliated, and forced back into line. And in line with values that saw fit to demean and subjugate interest in Black American ideals and values. Kirk and Kimmel. Rhymes with “Ach Himmel.”

Let’s not be fooled. This is day one of a new chapter: The Man Show host turned Left supporter, now turned corporate tool. He’s being reset as the “safe liberal” who can be forgiven. The powers that once punished him now welcome him back — as long as he plays by their rules.

What We Must Hold Firm Today

• Remember the Karl Malone and Oprah blackface sketches. Those acts didn’t vanish. Mercy in 2025 doesn’t erase history. Oprah. You don’t touch god, man.

• Watch who celebrated in silence. Jimmy Fallon, Sarah Silverman, and others with checkered racial pasts rallied to defend him. That unity reveals who’s comfortable with hypocrisy when it suits them.

• Monitor Sinclair’s position. Sinclair refused to carry his return episode, demanding a “direct apology” to the Kirk family and a donation before reinstatement. Their abstention is a signal. They meant to make a point. We must not mistake their power move for ideological purity. They didn’t do that for us, but perhaps they might, if led to. ABC’s disagreement with its largest franchisee is a fissure in the pain apparatus. We of the Black have special immunity. We’re not afraid of them taking anything away from us. What would they take?

• Stay the lens for Black audiences. We are the ones who will see through the spectacle. The tears, the promises, the speeches — none matter unless they change what’s real about our lives. Black folk should not be comfortable on that stage until we’re understood to be as valuable, because only money and market share are their community.

For Tomorrow & Beyond

This is not a one-and-done moment. As the media narrative shifts toward “forgiveness” and “healing,” we will continue to push. We will track:

• The voices raised to rehabilitate Kimmel as a redeemed liberal crusader.

• The entertainers who quietly avoid criticism or who distance themselves.

• Concessions Kimmel was forced to make behind the scenes to earn this return.

• Whether the mainstream media ever reconnects Kimmel’s tearful display with his long history of mocking Black people, or sepulchers that history for a fresh start.

No Veil. No mask. Just pants and pointed angles.

Jimmy Kimmel’s return is not reconciliation with us — it’s a reset of his existence in the service of power. And we will name it, examine it, and hold him accountable.

Stay with me. This will be weekly.

Jimmy Kimmel’s rise from 1990s radio to late-night TV is marred by controversies over his impersonations of Black figures, often in blackface. His dismissive apologies and refusal to engage directly with Black Americans about cultural harms help him portray himself as a free speech defender, masking his anti-Blackness. With ABC reinstating him, his anti-Black views and those of his associates, like Sara Silverman, who has faced similar controversies, warrant examination. This timeline establishes support for such scrutiny.

With his reinstatement and triumphant return, Kimmel’s career stays strong, backed by Hollywood and ABC. This detailed timeline provides context for how Kimmel’s past and present have connected as he’s built his career as a comedian who is supported by the Right while also maintaining support and credibility from the Left as his anti-Black views have been softly yet thoroughly platformed.

Timeline of Jimmy Kimmel’s Blackface & Racial Impersonation Controversies (1998–2025)

Late 1990s — Radio Beginnings

• 1996: As a sidekick on Los Angeles’ KROQ “Kevin & Bean” show, Jimmy Kimmel parodied Snoop Dogg on the novelty album A Family Christmas in Your Ass, rapping in a faux-Snoop voice and using racial slurs.

• Mid-1990s: Kimmel also created a recurring Karl Malone impression on the radio, imitating the NBA star’s dialect and persona. These bits drew little attention at the time, fitting into the shock-jock culture of the era.

1999 — The Man Show Debut

• June 1999: Comedy Central debuts The Man Show, co-hosted by Kimmel and Adam Carolla. The premiere episode (“Oprahization”) satirized Oprah Winfrey’s cultural influence.

2000–2003 — Karl Malone Blackface Sketches

• 2000 onward: On The Man Show, Kimmel began appearing in full costume and makeup as Karl Malone — complete with darkened skin, a bald cap, and muscle padding — delivering comic monologues in an exaggerated dialect. This became a recurring sketch through 2003.

2001 — Oprah Parody

• 2001: Kimmel performed as “Oprah Jimfrey,” donning dark makeup and drag in sketches parodying Oprah’s talk-show persona. The skits exaggerated her wealth and audience rapport, passing on cable with little mainstream critique.

2003–2012 — Rise to ABC

• 2003: ABC launches Jimmy Kimmel Live! in January. Despite his history on The Man Show, Disney executives promoted Kimmel as a new late-night star. Bob Iger later confirmed that Disney had handled the blackface issue privately during his hiring process.

• 2004: Kimmel is briefly suspended after joking that Detroit would “burn down” if the Pistons won the NBA Finals. This marked ABC’s first public disciplinary action against him.

• 2005–2010: Kimmel solidifies his presence, avoids overt blackface content, and begins building mainstream credibility.

2013–2019 — Political Voice, Podcast “Black Voice”

• 2013: On Adam Carolla’s podcast, Kimmel adopts a caricature “Black voice” impersonation of comedian George Wallace, with Carolla joking about the “crazy black voice.” This drew no notice at the time but resurfaced later.

• 2017–2018: Kimmel gains attention for emotional monologues on health care and gun violence, making him a target for conservatives. Hannity and others begin dredging up old Man Show bits.

• 2019: At a Disney shareholder meeting, Bob Iger acknowledges Kimmel’s past Karl Malone/Oprah sketches but says they were addressed privately.

2020 — Blackface Resurfaces and Apology

• June 2020: Clips of Kimmel as Karl Malone and Oprah, as well as the 1996 Snoop Dogg parody and 2013 podcast audio, circulate widely.

• June 23, 2020: Kimmel issues a public apology, calling the sketches “embarrassing” and apologizing to “those who were genuinely hurt or offended.” He insists they were intended as impersonations, not racial attacks.

• ABC’s response: The network offers no discipline; Kimmel’s planned summer hiatus proceeds, and he returns in September, hosting both his show and the Emmys.

2025 — Charlie Kirk Remarks and Suspension/Return

• September 10, 2025: Conservative activist Charlie Kirk is assassinated.

• Following week: On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel jokes that “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk” .

• Backlash: Nexstar and Sinclair affiliates refuse to air his show; FCC Chair Brendan Carr calls his comments “truly sick” and warns ABC: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

• Sept. 15, 2025: ABC suspends Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely.

• Sept. 22, 2025: After “thoughtful conversations,” ABC announces that Kimmel will return to the air on Sept. 23. Some affiliates still withhold the show.

Summary

Across nearly three decades, Kimmel’s trajectory shows a pattern:

• 1990s-2003 Racial impersonations aired with little pushback.

• 2020: Outcry during a national reckoning leads to an apology but no real consequence.

• 2025: A political joke about a conservative figure brings swift suspension — but reinstatement follows within a week, leaving Liberal Hollywood to honor both Charlie Kirk and Jimmy Kimmel within the same act.

Yesterday’s killing shook many of us. I condemn political violence, period. My response isn’t more heat; it’s infrastructure: books that teach, supply chains that deliver, safe civic rooms where people read and reason. If you’re tired of outrage cycles, build with me—publish, print, mentor, and move product that lifts communities. Kirk died immediately after he offered a massive crowd his take on (black) gang violence. The work outlasts the noise.

In Ace Boon Coon, I showed us Charlie Kirk, an Illinoisan of passion, as I am by birth and rearing. He was fashioned into “The Cardinal,” a mash-up of Charlie Kirk’s pro-white economic bontons and Donald Trumps peans to racist rhetoric amongst his most influential supporters. I situated him around the same time as Father Charles Coughlin, the racially rabid Midwestern radio star his parents and grandparents and mentors may have been influenced by.

The Cardinal in Ace Boon Coon isn’t a man; it’s a broadcast discipline—a white-lilted “official” voice that anoints panic, laundering theology into certainty, certainty into orders. In the book he even reads the sponsor roll on-air—National Association for the Advancement of White People, National Vanguard, White Circle League—while trucks in the corn belt blare “the Vatican’s Huey P. Long, Cardinal Mahoney,” turning frequency into a riot line: make terror sound pastoral, make violence feel like virtue. Father Charles Coughlin, popular worldwide for his racist speech on the new medium of radio, and Charlie Kirk, the penetrator of elite white spaces who searches for the socially alienated to plant racial nationalism as belonging.

America has heard that instrument before—Coughlin’s radio priesthood scaled grievance into mass, midwifed the Christian Front, and taught the country how a sermon becomes street muscle; the decade and the medium changed, not the method. Charlie Kirk helped build and ride a modern version of that rail—tours, podcasts, feeds—and his assassination is abhorrent and sobering; the same machine will try to bottle the blood and sell it as sacrament for grievance and counter-grievance. My answer—on the page and in Bronzeville—is unchanged: we answer chaos with competence—books moving, rooms reading, doors opening—starve the Cardinal’s market while we build a country worth inheriting.

Ace Boon Coon is a worthy sequel to A Negro and an Ofay and the opening movement of a cycle that maps the exact mid-century hinge where America rehearsed our present. No amount of silence for the dead equals the truth: since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a cold war on Black civic life has mutated rather than ended, and too many of us missed the mutation while racing one another to the bag. Platforms monetized the teardown; a decade of touring and feeds demonized us to the most impressionable, and those seeds now wear badges, white coats, and bar cards. I won’t whisper.

On 11.11.2025, the 10th Anniversary Edition of A Negro and an Ofay—expanded, re-edited to restore the Black American heart mainstream publishing trimmed—will be available globally through the only Black American–owned supply chain for books. Consider it a field manual for the middle of a war we did not start: read it, teach from it, argue with it. Say Less, Read More—and when you want something to read, make it a Bronzeville book.

Say Less. Read More. Build More.

Join my circle and get the tools we need to win the long game—story + system.
Choose your lane:

Option 1 — Substack Annual ($89.99)

You get:

• Two novels: A Negro and an Ofay and Ace Boon Coon
  (Includes the 10th Anniversary Edition of Ace Boon Coon with expanded material—available Nov 11, 2025.)

• Business Mastermind access: a working room where we apply the Builder-Scholar playbook to real problems.

  • Supply-Chain Mastery: pragmatic playbooks from sourcing → production → fulfillment (apparel/merch/publishing).

  • Historical & Civic Insight: race/class and Chicago history applied to today’s decisions.

  • Equity by Design: models that shift value to creators and communities (Bronzeverse lens).

  • Executive Communication: teach first, receipts second, wit last.

Option 2 — Bronzeville Book Club: Active Member ($199.99)

Everything in the Substack tier plus you help scale the Bronzeverse—our living lab for culture → commerce → community.
If you want to do the work with us—books moving, rooms reading, founders shipping—this is your lane. Read great books and hold space for underserved communities lacking fair and equitable trade books access.

Why now?
If you’re ready to trade outrage for outcomes, join me. We’ll read with purpose, build with receipts, and move product—and people—toward something worth inheriting.

Subscribe now

And Lisa knew.

Lisa knew how my knuckles, but not my face, were scarred. She knew how nasty I was behind the calm exterior in the face of hostile competitors. I got passed up for DL Hughley or some out-of-towner for headlining All Jokes Aside. We couldn’t stand DL in Chicago. On stage, with that mouth, his pants always seemed too short for him. After Ray Lambert had paid me $250 just to shut up about it, Lisa expected to see me perform. Instead, she had Mexican with me at that lil spot next to Ricobene’s under the EL down the street from Columbia College, where I dropped out to do Def Comedy Jam following Bernie Mac and whatever reports from the outside world he brought with him, the Sir Walter Raleigh of the Chitlin Circuit.

She thought a beer might calm me down. I crushed the pint glass in my hand while talking about the indignity. Just another thing since the Old Man died that marked me for the bullshit that was beneath me. With beer and blood on my hand and now pooling on my lap, she just grabbed the other hand.

“You gotta be cool, Dan. You’re going to—“

“Going to what?”

Silence.

“Kill myself, like my father did?” I wiped my hands with napkins. “Not for those bourgeoise muthafukas. I’m alright. I’m sorry.”

I wake up this morning checking my statistics across the internet, preparing for the subscription drive to Bronzeville Book Club I hope preserves my business and saves my chances of ever having a career in something other than hardcore business again. My co-parent is gone. My ex-wife is dead. The person who knew and told me so and loved me good enough for me to compete with Bernie ’nem at 19 years old. The girl who snuck me into her house at night when I couldn’t handle fistfighting at home anymore and made sure I got at least one meal per day who shared with me a high school locker filled with escapist dreams.

She’s gone.

My granddaughter Alice was on the PS5 when I had to commandeer the television. Bronzeville needs as much support as it can get now. I’ve taken too many personal hits since Danny Jr. was in hospital in 2021. I gotta take it to the algorithms, which are a lot kinder about my comedy career than my mother and the other Gardners, basically everyone else but Lisa, who raised our daughters when I performed on a sleepy Thursday after-lunch crowd and realized I likely screwed myself in college just to go to NYC and fight a bunch of grown men for nothing but the misappropriation of my intellectual property.

I asked her to switch to Amazon Freevee and search for her Pop-Pop.

Alice says, “Hey, there’s your name.” Her theater-kid nature perked. “Whoa, you’re first.”

“Yeah,” I said. “A new licensed DVD product is showing up in libraries now. I better call Davis Wright Tremaine. I can’t have everyone eating off my content forever.”

“That’s crazy. So when Goodreads and IMDB were merged—”

“My embarrassing getup on stage now sells copies of A Negro and an Ofay. And probably Devil in a Blue Dress, except Walter Mosley doesn’t like me.”

“Later for that guy.”

“Since these entertainment platforms need content, I’m not aging as fast.”

“Wow, Pop-Pop,” Alice said. “Who knew?”

Lisa knew.

I’m not okay, but I’m good how Chicagoans say it.

“You good?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

That way.

If I weren’t, I wouldn’t say anything.

No one bakes casseroles for the first husband.

My little suburban girlfriend who fought for me, alongside me, and with me; who knew just how hard I took things and somehow kept it together; who knew my darkness enough to teach her children how to love me through it. Who gave me a family that sees it and accepts me.

The one who knew before anyone.

She gone.

God is good. Bronzeville lives.

It was built on what Lisa knew. Before her, everyone forgot I existed. After her, no one would ever forget. Everyone should know that.

Mayor

It was bright on June 29, 1978. It was always shining on that date. Once I had my clothes on, I remembered it was John Gardner’s birthday, which always felt like a holiday. I had a construction paper card my mother corrected for anatomical accuracy before she approved it. I was dressed and prepared to be useful.

“Put it by his plate,” she said, silently and scarily beautiful, and I did. There was always a bit of Daisy Buchanan in my Old G, which is how we said “my moms” back in the Chi.

She was a four-foot-eleven big mouth with tiny bits of uppity betraying her light-skinned Black Boheme thing, such as her in a sun dress and an up-do, 1960s Josie and the Pussycats shit, in front of the stove cooking breakfast for my father. A birthday breakfast we wouldn’t be eating with him, as kids were sent out of the house when adults wanted to be real people back then.

She wasn’t looking at me. She was cold. John and Wally were somewhere arguing and fighting and breaking something—over nothing. In that house, it seemed the walls argued with the floors and the ceiling. Usually, she’d call them into the kitchen and beat them with whatever she used to stir the pot, but she did not react.

“John Gardner is coming over,” she said, sneering. “To see his son on his birthday.”

My parents were raised Black Rich in Washington Heights, where “they don’t even let Negroes live ‘round there,” so you know it was good. Raised as a couple of rebellious Black teenagers in a restrictive covenant neighborhood, they taught us to think of ourselves as poor. Their generational wealth experiences were well hidden from us. Some of those experiences left scars on my pop’s psyche.

“Go get milk. Keep the change. Stay out of the house.” As she finally walked down the hall to beat the snot out of my brothers, I had two options for milk in Washington Heights in the Chi in 1978.

From the corner store, my parents’ corner store growing up, where everyone knew me before I was even born, and they won’t even sell me candy if she doesn’t allow it. “I don’t want Rosalita mad at me, Lil Man.” She grew up terrorizing the neighborhood before I was a thought. That was locked down. I thought of Chicago penny candy and illegal bottle rockets for the 4th. I needed a deal on milk.

Hank’s Liquors, on 95th Street, east of Halsted, down the block from the Road Runner snack shop that dealt those same illegal fireworks, advertised Carnation-brand milk, and on sale. The same milk as in the ads during Saturday Morning cartoons. Looked like a good brand. It made white folks in the commercial happy enough. Hank’s was a hangout for neighborhood denizens in the “packaged goods” days when Washington Heights was Black and Jewish. That was the term for alcoholic beverages when polite people didn’t admit their uncle’s “medicine” wasn’t medicine. A pre-teen could purchase cigarettes and booze for his parents’ backyard BBQ from there, and no one said anything but “How’s ya mama?” Hank had a back door with a sign that read PRIVATE and always some grown-up noises behind. Hank’s was Black-owned since forever.

Hank was my fella who let me purchase the wrong milk.

I get the milk and run back home, and my father is seated at the table, still in his Fire Department uniform. He’s looking at my card. He’s smiling. He always liked my work. Ma is finishing breakfast. I put the milk on the table, as in the commercial with the white folks, just right on the table, where it could get warm, and the Old Man looks incredulous at the carton. He had a bit of a grin and seemed in good humor.

I felt the slap to the back of the head.

“Boy,” she said through gritted, gnashed teeth. “We drink Joe Louis.”

She shoved the milk carton back at me, and I already felt my profit dwindling when I returned the wrong brand to Hank, received my refund, and ran to the corner store. Everyone there was laughing. Rosalita called to ensure I left with the right milk; everyone knew Rosalita. The entire neighborhood laughed; who knew why? My first bit of improv, perhaps.

As I returned to the crib, the nicest Lincoln from the fire department officer’s pool was parked outside the house. Inside was GG, Grandpa Gardner, at the table where I placed the milk. GG hugged me and waited for his cheek kiss. He never waited long. He even smelled like money.

“Ah,” my grandfather, the Feared One, said. “Joe Louis. He was by the other day.”

“Oh,” my father said, dutiful, carrying on conversation.

“Needs money.”

“Don’t we all.”

“Go outside and play,” she said coldly. She didn’t look at me. She was too busy protecting her husband from his big, bad, Black Capitalist daddy. There he was, a kid himself, at the same table, hearing all the same shit again, and on his birthday. I felt so bad I nearly gave back the change from the bone she gave me for the milk.

Instead, I got ten Big Bols, 25 Albers fruit chews, and some of those iced butter cookies in big glass jars from Charlie Wilson’s grandma’s back porch, where she illegally sold candy. And I got those bottle rockets from Road Runner without a Firefighting Gardner aware.

Mr. Williams from the Corner Store—also, always Black owned, sans bottle rockets—explained to me sometime later that Grandpa Gardner was an investor in Joe Louis Milk, a branded milk company created by and for Joe Louis, the National Treasure and enemy of the Internal Revenue Service, to keep him afloat as the United States of America betrayed him. Joe and his folks, which included GG, treated it as Joe Louis’s service to the Black American community. Still, it was really for Joe, who was hounded into poverty by the government, and boxing, and blackness in America. This truth made me proud of my grandfather and made me feel bad for my father, for whom normalcy would be my mother’s most genuine, fleeting gift to him. Imagine that. Did Joe Louis stop by? Oh, how is he? Pip pip, cheerio. Like it’s normal. Needs money. Don’t we all? Those people I was born to. Lordy.

Growing up, I ate my cornflakes in the Black Man’s milk; my GG had everything to do with it. Those moments came with scars and costs. That’s why you’re reading Bronzeville Books, not Simon & Schuster.

Wishing you candy and bottle rockets. Happy New Year.

Mayor

Subscribe now

Subscribe now