Did Jimmy Kimmel Deserve To Have A Job In Late Night in the First Place?

 

Ever since Wednesday I've been thinking about something I'm relatively certain anyone who brings up Jimmy Kimmel has dared to ask during this period: was he ever good at his job in late night to begin with?

This may seem like an unimportant question and it certainly is to the loudest voices of either side of the aisle, both of whom find the issue irrelevant compared to what side they're on. This I should add has basically been the same for the people who should be considering it the most: those in Hollywood.

I've argued more than a few times in previous articles that increasingly among Hollywood the films or TV shows you produce are secondary to the issue on how vocally you oppose Donald Trump.  I've theorized in large part that so many of the economic troubles Hollywood has faced during this past decade  - and late night is just the most obvious example of that problem –  may very well be because of that very loud and vocal opposition. Somehow that possibility has never once in the past couple of years been entertained by anyone prominent as a probability: it's very much a literal elephant in the room. And considering that particularly in the last year the loudest voices in Hollywood have chosen to ignore that their message isn't resonating with the electorate –  and indeed many have the same fatalism about their causes as the right does about Trump – it's a question that needs to keep being asked.

As someone who is an expert on everyone in late night today, having watched them for the majority of his life, I've always been able to separate their politics from whether they're good as entertainers. This has become increasingly irrelevant even to those who review the industry at large, which almost makes me wonder if reviewers have given up on being impartial and only care about the politics of those involved.  And when it comes to Jimmy Kimmel I've always found this ironic because in one critical away he does remind me of the President. He's someone who has risen to the top of his profession almost certainly by accident and not with any real qualifications for the job.

Like most of his peers Jimmy Kimmel's career began on Comedy Central though unlike Bill Maher (who he shares a connection with beyond this) it had nothing to do with political comedy. He appeared on two products of the late 1990s and early 200s: Win Ben Stein's Money and The Man Show. On the former he was a straight man (though he did demonstrate skills as a game show host that have served him well). On the latter the bizarre satiric tone was mistaken for misogyny and he and his co-host Adam Corolla were abhorred. In neither did he either strike me as particularly funny or the kind of person who would get a job in late night, much less hold it for twenty years. And I doubt he would have were it not for a different late night comic's fall.

In 1996 Bill Maher had brought Politically Incorrect to ABC. Famously not long after 9/11 he made a statement about America that horrified the neo-conservative bloc and more tellingly, the Hollywood left never made an effort to defend him. Maher began to lose advertisers and his ratings began to plummet and by the end of 2002, Politically Incorrect was cancelled. Maher ended up on Real Time within just a few months but ABC needed time to figure out how to fill the void.

How they ended up with Kimmel as their choice at 12:05 is something I remain unsure of. If I had to guess ABC would looking for someone with an everyman quality who was fundamentally unlikely to offend his viewers in the immediate aftermath of Maher's flaming out. (Another irony that I'm sure most are unaware of.) Kimmel wasn't really qualify for the job the same way that Jon Stewart, who many thought would be the obvious choice, was. He had no gift for political satire in the way that late night was becoming known for on cable and he didn't have the visible appeal of those on NBC or CBS.  For whatever reason Kimmel was chosen.

Of all the people who appeared on late night in my lifetime I have the least personal experience with him. As I've mentioned I was a bigger fan of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central and honestly all of late night on network TV left me cold. The few times I watched Kimmel; he always seemed out of place. Part of it was he'd always worn street clothes when working on Comedy Central and every time he wore a suit, it looked like it never fit him.  He never struck me as good an interview as some of those who came before or afterwards. The one field I did have immense respect for him was his clear love of the medium he worked in.

Few people before have done as much to show their fanboy side when it comes to television then Kimmel. His talking about Lost after every episode became as important to fans of the show as well as his and his late friendship with Norman Lear – as well as the wondrous reenactments of episodes of the latter's iconic shows – was something genuinely moving to be as a fan of both. Kimmel's gratitude to what made him famous was always clear and its something I both admire and really wish more shows would do. It's something I really would have preferred all late night do – but then 2016 came along.

Hollywood, by any rational standard, has less qualification to speak for the people then Trump does. They don't know electoral politics. They don't have the legal degrees that so many elected officials or the academic backgrounds of professors. They're not scientists. They don't have any experience in foreign policy. And they sure as hell have no relation to the working class. For them to rage against the one percent has been a bad joke, at worst they're part of the ten percent.

The only qualification I suspect they have – and it's the only reason I think the Democrats allowed them the seat at the table they did – is an ability to get under Trump's skin.  If there's one thing I've learned in the decade of Trump, it's that the progressive voters that Democrats desperately want to win over value that quality far more than any real policy they could offer. There's always been a mean quality to the left since they took their form during Vietnam but after Trump arrived they basically through out even the pretense of subtlety.

This decision was a disaster for two reasons. The first is purely political. Ever since the 1960s the GOP has been able to take the worst and meanest aspect of the extreme left, say they speak for all Democrats and convince working class voters to vote Republican. Daily Kos and John Oliver alike will phrase it differently, choosing to argue that the Republicans and conservatives have chosen to fully embrace the worst and most bigoted parts of our country. That is both completely accurate but leaves out the most important fact: in the one way it counts – gaining political power – it has always been effective for the Republicans and it was just as true before 2016 as it is now. For the Democrats this is clearly a problem they have to deal with. For the left -  of which Hollywood is overwhelmingly so -  it's America's problem. Hollywood has as little use for the people at Trump's rallies as he likely does, but he can turn them into voters, which is the only thing that matters in his world.

The second issue I have is the idea that getting under the President's skin is something that Democrats needed Hollywood to do. If the last decade have taught us anything, it's that the President seems to live his entire life under a cloud of rage, unhappiness and has the thinnest skin of anyone imaginable. This doesn't involve the effort of training that requires an Academy Award; all you basically have to do is exist.  More importantly, irritating the President has achieved nothing for the American people. It certainly hasn't diminished his hold over the electorate. An argument could be made that the best thing all of Hollywood could have done – particularly after the results of 2016 – was to provide escapism to the people who needed it, of which I was definitely one. But like the left in general, they chose to double down.

For those who argue satire died after 2016, having watched most of late night over this period I could argue that what died was the effort that so many comedians did to make it look good. Say what you will about the attitudes of Carlin and Tomlin and Pryor, at least they were willing to put an effort into their routines. All of late night over this period has essentially become a variation on either showing clips of Trump or Fox News – or in most cases reading the President's tweets with no change at all – and getting laughs from the audience by basically saying how dumb it is.  It's lazy, it grows tiresome and its not really that funny most of the time.

Kimmel, I will argue, was far less suited for this that Colbert or Seth Meyers: they have experience in political comedy where their behavior was more acceptable. For a comedian who prided himself on being the Everyman and was hired to be a nice guy, I'd argue his increasingly mean attitude did the most damage to his brand. It made the argument, even more than most of late night, that Hollywood was just as spiteful and vindictive as everyone else in the Democratic Party.

Take what was the most famous example at last year's Academy Awards. The show was running ahead of schedule and the then former President (as is his want) had tweeted about Kimmel negatively. Kimmel came out and read out the entire tweet verbatim, no inflection, but with the same smug tone of so many people in Hollywood. His 'punch line' if you could call it that was: "Isn't it pass your jail time?"

ABC, it's worth noting, had not wanted Kimmel to do this. More importantly there was no reason for Kimmel to do this, apart from showing a much larger audience then he had in late night how much contempt he held a former President in and getting a huge laugh from an audience who felt the same way.  That it had no real place in an Academy Awards that to that point had basically eschewed politics entirely was irrelevant to Kimmel; that it wasn't particularly funny mattered less. In a sense what Kimmel was doing was a mirror image of what Trump does all the time: using a national audience to air his personal grievances against someone he feels wrongs him. I find tasteless when he does it and I don't see why the same rules shouldn't apply when someone who disagrees with does basically the same thing.

And aside from everything else, what good did it do? Trump won reelection by the biggest number of votes he'd gotten in his entire career, despite – perhaps even because – of Hollywood and late night's virulent and nasty opposition. Most people might try to take this as constructive criticism on the way they do things, or even consider whether this was helping the business they were in. I sincerely hoped at the very least Hollywood might do so.  Just like the Republicans after every election they lost between 2016 and 2022, Hollywood's learned nothing from the results.

Nor I should point on, has the left that so many of them have tried to win. As further evidence that they've lost the narrative thread (if they ever had it which I continue to doubt) I've received dozens of texts and emails, arguing for me to stand with Jimmy Kimmel, boycott Disney and put up a billboard calling out ABC. This comes from the very people who were angry at how many Wall Street billionaires got a break from the government and now think the best thing I can do for the underprivileged American is help support a white, Hollywood millionaire who may or may not lose his job. That's a funnier joke than any I've heard on Kimmel for a while.

This brings me to share a more personal experience. Earlier this week I got into an online dispute with a Facebook associate of mine whose views are frequently virulently progressive about boycotting ABC for suspending Kimmel.  As someone who is concerned with the current administration is doing to those who are underprivileged and the large effects I  pointed out that we as a country should be more concerned about things that matter than things like this that are, for all the implications of it, less important then you'd think. As part of that argument I highlighted something that happened on ABC within hours of Kimmel's suspension on The View which has also been a frequent target for Trump's criticism.

The first major story was about FBI director Kash Patel's testimony to the Senate which had happened earlier in the week. The second story had to do with RFK's handling of HHS and how it has badly been affecting the country. In both cases the panel maintained their usual harsh criticism of the administration.

Yet when the broadcast was over the major threads on sites like Reddit were critical because the show hadn't discussed what they thought was the most important thing happening in the country, if not the world. Kimmel's suspension. Nothing could more accurately sum up to me the complete moral vacuum that the left has towards really everything. They care more about a prominent critic – who is wealthy, famous and a white man – of the administration then what the administration is actually doing to so many poor and underprivileged Americans that they claim to care about so much.

This, I should mention, did not win over the colleague I was arguing with who made it clear all that mattered was the silencing of a multi-millionaire by a multi-billion dollar corporation. That Kimmel has resources that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not and will likely be fine no matter what happens was irrelevant to him as I suspect it is to the majority of the Hollywood establishment he is a part of.  I suspect even that compassion is more because the administration is having an effect on them personally which sadly is pretty much how the progressives view everything.

I can't bring myself to care one way or another about Kimmel's fate any more than Stephen Colbert. As I keep telling everybody, they'll be fine. Worst case scenario, they can use their enormous wealth to leave the country just like their fellow former talk show host Rosie O'Donnell and quite a few of their colleagues did after last November. . I can't find it my heart to speak for them losing their jobs when millions of poorer, less fortunate people, have fewer resources and will actively suffer. To be clear they were all suffering long before Trump came on the scene  and rest assured they will go on long after he leaves. All of it was an abstraction to them and  it still is. It always was. This is just another case of a privileged group unable to read the mood the nation. It's somewhat more excusable for Hollywood then it is a politician but as I said they had less qualifications to try to do so in the first place.

I realize that I've written this entire article and never touched on why Kimmel was suspended. Honestly there will be enough articles about that written and already have been.  That's not the question that matters to me and I'd argue it shouldn't matter to most so called progressives. The issue is to me, is it worth so much time and energy with so much going on in the country to focus it on whether a privileged white man in Hollywood is allowed to have a job in an industry in trouble? This would have been a ridiculous question if it were posed by a late night comedian. That we now have to take it seriously is another one of those jokes that so many people have completely missed.