Jimmy Kimmel has been yanked faster than a pitcher who gave up five home runs in a row—and spit on the bat boy. The longtime late-night host who self-identifies as a comedian was pulled off the air “indefinitely†by ABC/Disney after making a horrific slur against the “MAGA gang†in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Specifically, despite mountains of public evidence that the suspect held in connection with Kirk’s killing is an antifa-echoing, trans-loving, MAGA-loathing leftist, Kimmel declared in somber tones Monday night:
“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.â€
He lied to his audience. Period. He explicitly pinned the killing on supporters of President Donald Trump. Period. This was not a poor attempt at a joke. At this point, Kimmel wouldn’t know a joke from a jukebox.
This was not a live, on-the-air slip-up. (Like ABC News reporter Matt Gutman gushing about the “very touching†nature of accused gunman Tyler Robinson’s texts to his live-in transitioning lover.) This was a deliberate, scripted, placed on the cue cards, vicious character assassination against a grieving segment of the population.
It was outrageous, and decent people agree: “No more.†As conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly posted on the social media platform X:
“But what the Left doesn’t seem to understand and needs to hear is that MAGA has f—– HAD IT. We are ANGRY. We are INCENSED watching the [Left] smear us, our [people], literally getting some of our friends killed (not to mention our president shot and nearly assassinated again weeks later) and then LYING about it. (‘Trump faked his injury! He wasn’t actually shot!’ ‘We have no idea what the motives ever are … if they are bad for our side!’)â€
Two major TV station owners of ABC affiliates, Sinclair and Nexstar, also had enough. ABC/Disney finally had it as well. (A decision made easier by the fact that Kimmel’s audience is down to about 12 leftists and whatever tourists and homeless he can drag off Hollywood Boulevard into his studio.)
Faux Outrage
Naturally, Democrats and some in the liberal media are gnashing their teeth over Kimmel’s cancellation. As are those dozen Kimmel viewers. Daily Signal Executive Editor Rob Bluey laid out five of the most egregious examples, from Sen. Chris Murphy to CNN’s Van Jones. Too bad the Emmys were last Sunday night. These performances would have swept the awards.
Even former President Barack Obama, the nation’s Divider Emeritus, weighed in.
They’re the worst breed of hypocrites. As Bluey noted, these sudden champions of free speech were perfectly happy to sit on their pampered rear ends while the Biden administration launched an all-out war on conservative voices. And Obama? He’s the one who unleashed the rabid dogs of the IRS to maul the tea party movement to death. On this, he should on Mount Shushmore.
It’s not just that they’re hypocrites. They’re gaslighters. Again, they’re talking about the oppressive Trump regime (read “fascistsâ€) stamping out dissent, the same basic messaging that got Kirk killed, when Kimmel’s canning was simply a corporate decision.
In recent years, when cancel culture was at its peak, the very same woke ABC/Disney machine:
- Fired Roseanne Barr from her show because of a single Ambien-fueled joke on Twitter about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett that was deemed racist.
- Fired “The Mandalorian†star Gina Carano over some pointed political posts on social media that did not fit their woke view of the world.
- Forced out longtime “Bachelor†host Chris Harrison for showing sympathy for a contestant who got canceled after trolls dug up that she had attended an antebellum plantation-themed party years before in college.
Not a peep from those weeping and gnashing teeth over Kimmel’s ouster.
Let’s go back even further. This same ABC canceled Bill Maher’s show “Politically Incorrect†after 9/11 when he suggested the hijackers were not “cowards†because they undertook a suicide mission—as opposed to the U.S. military lobbing bombs from a thousand miles away.
Nobody’s infringing Kimmel’s free speech. He’s free to launch a podcast tomorrow—free to play the martyr on X—free to do more blackface. Free to hit open mic nights and pretend to, again, be a comedian.
And ABC is free to say they don’t want Kimmel representing the network.
A Return to the Garden
After CBS announced it was canceling Stephen Colbert’s show next spring, I wrote that ultimately the cancellation was a good thing for Colbert, that it would do the comedian good to take time to reconnect with the positive use of his God-given gifts.
Kimmel’s canning leaves me colder. What he said Monday night was not a simple partisan line from a party man. It was malicious. It was cruel. It was meant to injure deeply. As someone who wrote topical humor in Hollywood for a living, including some late-night, what we saw from Kimmel was nothing short of calculated wickedness. Knowing from The Hollywood Reporter that Kimmel had no intention of apologizing only confirms this.
In my Colbert column, I explained how there are two trees of comedy that echo the two trees in the Garden of Eden. One’s fruit is healthy and nourishing, bringing life; the others is poisonous, bringing decay and division. What Kimmel did Monday night—as he has done on so many late nights—was not of either tree, but was of the serpent himself, the “father of lies.â€
Meaning, our response to Kimmel must involve prayer and intercession. We understand something—as Kirk in his approach to those who disagreed with him understood—that the Left does not, that the assassin did not, that Kimmel from his words does not: All are redeemable.
Even late-night TV hosts whose funny bone had long been replaced by bile.
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