Oh, come on!
It’s no secret to anyone who’s paid even an iota of attention to the news these past eight months that the actions of President Donald Trump and his administration have ranged from ethically dubious to outright authoritarian in nature.
Amongst other things, he allowed Elon Musk and a coterie of his unqualified disciples to eviscerate critical government infrastructure, while drastically increasing the budget for ICE, making them the most funded federal law enforcement agency in the country. His tariff policy has eroded both international trust in the United States and the domestic economy, which he is attempting to cover up, as he is with his friendship with alleged pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
He has put incredibly unqualified sycophants in key executive positions, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a ‘skeptic’ without any medical background who pushes unscientifically backed conspiracy theories into national health policy. He has overseen the deportation of over a quarter million people, sometimes to countries they have never been to, and sometimes in defiance of court orders or the deportee’s legal status.
He has sent the National Guard into Washington, D.C., repeatedly threatened his political opponents, detained and in some cases attempted to deport critics of Israel’s activity in Gaza, spat in the face of the rule of law and common decency, and led America into its most severe democratic backsliding in its nearly 250 year history.
But now he’s really crossed the line with this Jimmy Kimmel stuff.
Kimmel, an inexplicably popular comedian who has hosted the eponymous Jimmy Kimmel Live! since 2003, drew heat from conservatives, as well as Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr, after recent comments on his show about Trump ally Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in Utah on September 10. Five days after Kirk’s death, Kimmel referred to Trump’s response to the event as similar to, “how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish,” referencing Trump’s apparent disinterest in the subject matter when asked about it by reporters. On September 17, ABC announced that in response to these comments, the show would be put on an indefinite hiatus. This comes two months after CBS decided not to renew The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, whose host was another prominent late-night Trump critic.
Backlash to this decision was swift and extreme; the cancellation came to the center of discussions about free speech under the Trump administration, with many on the left viewing it as a dangerous omen of future censorship of those who publicly disagreed with the President. Disney, the parent company of ABC, began to suffer financially for the choice; people cancelled their subscriptions to Disney-owned streaming services in droves, and even acclaimed actors currently in Disney projects urged boycotts of the company. Ultimately, the backlash became too much for the company to stand by, and on September 22, Disney announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be returning to its ABC timeslot, with details on any changes made to its content, such as the possibility of Kimmel having to tone down political rhetoric, unclear.
Now, you could get mad about how major broadcasting corporations are seemingly kowtowing to Trump’s will, pre-emptively pulling everyone he disapproves of off the air and only turning back when they realize it’s still more expensive to bend the knee. That’s an understandable thing to be mad about. But it’s not what I’m mad about right now. Here’s what I’m mad about:
I now have to stand with, of all people, Jimmy motherfucking Kimmel.
Maybe it’s just that I’m not a member of his target demographic of upper middle class neoliberals whose main experience with activism was putting #resist in their social media bios in 2018, but from the myriad clips of his show I’ve seen over the years, I’ve laughed maybe a total of three times. Even the jokes about Kirk that got him pulled off the air fell flat to me, and I have no doubt the jokes upon his return about the past week will fail to get so much as a sharp exhale. Of all the late night hosts who were around when I grew up, like John Oliver, Jon Stewart, or my personal favorite, Trevor Noah, Kimmel always struck me as the most milquetoast of the bunch, like if you put all the others through a blender and a strainer and tried to reconstitute a comic from what was left. He was, to me, like if Jimmy Fallon didn’t have that air of fascinating sadness and despair surrounding him at all times. If there was one late night host I wouldn’t particularly have cared if they went off the air due to normal circumstances, it was him. But now that it happened due to his targeting by Trump, I have to care. And that really pisses me off.
Consistency on my morals and positions is important to me, because if I could pick and choose when they applied, I’d have no actual moral footing to stand on. But here it feels like saying, “Listen here, this is our wet paper bag, and I’ll be with it to the end of the line,” when I very clearly don’t give a shit about the wet paper bag and had more or less forgotten I had one until they came after it. It’s similar to how we had the Cheneys in the big tent during the last election last year: it’s theoretically good that they’re fighting alongside us and not against us, but I’d really just rather not fight alongside them at all. But here, unlike the Cheneys, Kimmel’s victory over censorship has made him a figurehead of political success against the administration. It’s made him a hero to my side, returning to the airwaves three business days later like some kind of corporate Jesus. Jimmy Kimmel is now one of the main people on the national stage leading the way against Trumpism now, and as someone against Trumpism, it’s really, really, really annoying.
This is the root of my current frustration – with the conservative effort to pull the show off the air, being anti-Trump now means having to say, “the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel Live! was a disgusting act of censorship that flies in the face of freedom of expression, and its return to air is a major victory for freedom of speech and enduring resistance to the administration.” I have to have Jimmy Kimmel on my TV again and pretend to be entertained. I have to throw my support behind him, because he was, if even for a moment, a victim of this administration’s overreach, and I can’t stand for Trump silencing his critics and their platforms, no matter how much I probably wouldn’t give a shit if literally anyone else was doing that to him.
So, this is where we as a country are at now. This was not the first time corporations have bent the knee to the Trump administration on silencing criticism, and it definitely won’t be the last, and even though the decision was ultimately reverted, the precedent has been set that the government can, however briefly, threaten its critics into silence. So now, no matter how gritted my teeth are, no matter how uncomfortable I feel putting these words to my name, no matter how much I somewhat wish this had happened to a funnier comedian who I’d throw my support behind in a heartbeat, here is what I have to say on the matter:
I stand with Jimmy Kimmel.
May god forgive me for it.
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