When best-selling author Bess Kalb traveled to Montana this fall to read from her newest children’s book Buffalo Fluffalo and Puffalo, she expected to answer questions from kids about prairie animals and feelings. Instead, the visit was canceled after a group of parents circulated jokes she’d penned in her life as a political comedy writer.
Kalb, who spent eight years as a writer on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, recounted the incident this week in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, where she described how hostility toward political comedy has spilled beyond late-night television and into schools and libraries.
According to Kalb, the disruption occurred ahead of a scheduled appearance at a rural Title One elementary school. The night before the visit, the school librarian informed her and her publisher that a group of parents had contacted the superintendent en masse, objecting to jokes Kalb had written as a political comedy writer.
The parents warned that if Kalb appeared for the storytime, they would show up and “make a scene” in front of the children—even though Kalb’s Buffalo Fluffalo series has nothing to do with politics. School officials canceled the event.
“It isn’t some great national tragedy that a story time was cancelled,” Kalb told lawmakers. “But it’s a harrowing indication of how a joke can be wielded against its writer.”
The students, she said, had been preparing for the visit—reading the book in class, creating art projects, and drafting questions. Many had never hosted an author before.
Kalb placed the Montana cancellation in the broader context of what she described as escalating efforts to punish or silence political satire. During her years in late night, she said, she saw firsthand how jokes about public officials could provoke outsized reactions. That atmosphere, she argued, has now filtered down to local communities and school boards.
Kalb also pointed to the increasingly fraught relationship between late-night hosts and the White House, describing the president as “our best and worst audience” during her years in late night. She referenced public clashes involving her former boss Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, arguing that the ripple effects of those confrontations extend well beyond television.
“The censorship of free speech we have witnessed from the highest office…has emboldened Americans…to the school board level,” she said.
Kalb’s remarks came during a Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee hearing examining what lawmakers described as growing threats to free expression, featuring testimony from writers, journalists, and civil liberties advocates.
Read the full text of Kalb’s testimony on her Substack, or watch it on YouTube.
