Ohhhh no! The world is ending!
Or so goes the underlying moaning and groaning from the Left as ABC suspends the namesake host of its late night Jimmy Kimmel Live! show.
And why did this suspension happen? Esquire summed it up this way:
Jimmy Kimmel is off the air—indefinitely. ABC announced Wednesday evening that it would cease airing new episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live! until further notice. The network, and its parent company Disney, acted after complaints from conservative viewers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) accused the late-night host of inaccurate reporting regarding the assassination of right-wing personality Charlie Kirk.
“Inaccurate reporting” would be a decidedly -- make that flagrantly wrong -- description of what Kimmel told his audience. He said this, bold print for emphasis supplied:
We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
The truth that Kimmel quite deliberately ignored?
Charlie Kirk’s killer -- one Tyler Robinson -- was decidedly not a MAGA guy. He was in fact, as had been quickly noted and verified long before Kimmel was on the air, a thoroughgoing leftist who hated Charlie and made it known to those close to him that he was going to do something about it.
He did, shooting and killing Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah in front of a crowd of thousands of students, including children.
Which in turn opened the door for Kimmel to do his decidedly non-comedic bit of joking in front of his TV audience by saying, as noted, that “the MAGA gang” was desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.
And lo and behold millions of Americans who saw this bit of left-wing humor saw Kimmel’s “funny” and were not only not amused, but took offense that Kimmel was making a point of joking about the cold-blooded murder of a kind, decent 31-year old husband and father of two very young kids.
No dummies over there running ABC and parent company Disney, the execs instantly jumped to “cease airing new episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live! until further notice.”
And note: the parent company is Disney - as in founder Walt Disney, or “Uncle Walt” as he was famously dubbed in the day when he created all sorts of childhood favorites from cartoons with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to TV shows featuring famous-in-the-day actor Fess Parker as Davy Crockett. One suspects that wherever “Uncle Walt” is now he is not amused at the so-called “humor” being sponsored by his namesake company.
I am what might be called a “free speech fundamentalist.” But let’s be clear here. “Free speech” does not apply to the employee-employer relationship.
If you’re in a debate and call somebody stupid, the world keeps moving.
But if in fact you take a moment in your job to call your boss stupid, well, need it be said that if your boss takes offense he/she “the boss” has every right to can you from working in the boss’s office. The First Amendment does not apply.
Jimmy Kimmel, in his lust to smear MAGA folks (and reminder, “MAGA” stands for “Make America Great Again”) acted out his far-left politics on his live TV show the other night. To say the least, his bosses at ABC and Disney were not happy, and in a blink they suspended his show. Will it come back? That remains to be seen.
But if there is any lesson to come out of the professional self-immolation of both Kimmel and CBS’s Stephen Colbert it is that they are hell-and-gone from the hilarious late night and decidedly non-political comedy shows that were hosted in the long ago by the inimitable NBC Tonight Show host Johnny Carson. Johnny would come out from behind the curtains on the set to announcer Ed McMahon’s iconic announcement: “Heeeeeerrrrrrrrrres Johnny” and the audience would respond with a thunderous welcome. Millions of Americans happily tuned in five nights a week to watch -- and laugh.
With that Carson was into his opening monologue, a monologue that was almost always hilarious. And when a joke fell flat, he would mock himself and the audience would laugh like crazy.
Notably Johnny Carson was never political in a serious fashion. He was bipartisan, tweaking the prominent Republican or Democrat of the moment, not to mention whomever was President at that time.
In short, late night hosts of today would benefit if they studied Carson. The problem here is that one suspects they have studied him - and their obsession with showcasing their far left politics is infinitely more important to them than making Americans get a non-partisan belly laugh as they end their workday.
Is that too bad? Yes.
But it is now crystal clear that more than being too bad, they are in danger of cancelling themselves out of their jobs, with bosses like ABC/Disney who have that peculiar notion that late night TV is, in fact, a business. A business that is supposed to earn money.
And as this Kimmel Kerfuffle vividly illustrates, that’s no joke.
