Why is Jimmy Kimmel being held to a higher standard than Donald Trump? | Jesse Hassenger

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The talkshow host has found himself targeted by the president once again but his jokes fail to have the influence or tastelessness that the right like to claim

In an episode of the classic sitcom Arrested Development, dutiful son Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) corrects his wily but not always culture-savvy mother Lucille (Jessica Walter) that she has not actually been confronted and embarrassed by Michael Moore: “That was a Michael Moore impersonator for a bit on Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Lucille, as always, is undeterred: “I don’t know who that is and I don’t care to find out.” It’s a hilariously haughty response, withering in its blithe lack of interest. It also accidentally attains a kind of dignity through ignorance that Donald Trump – who is, like Lucille Bluth, wealthy, elderly and frequently cruel – could only dream of stumbling into.

Or maybe that’s actually our dream. Just imagine a world where Trump and his family (both blood and Maga) don’t know or care what’s going on with Jimmy Kimmel. Alas, we live in a world where Kimmel is directly and repeatedly lambasted by the White House for making a joke that seemed in poorer taste after an assassination attempt on Trump. This is despite the joke itself being written and delivered well before the event in question – the talkshow monologue version of pre-crime, if you can conceive of something that embarrassing.

Here’s the non-story: two days before the White House correspondents’ dinner, an event typically attended by press and the president, and hosted by a comedian, Kimmel made a joke on his show about what he might say were he to serve in that host role. Imagining he was addressing Melania Trump, he said: “Mrs Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.” It was obviously a crack at the president’s advanced age and much-denied rumors of his declining health. In the aftermath of the actual incident, where a gunman attempted to enter the ballroom where the event was held, both Donald and Melania Trump retconned Kimmel’s broadside as a bloodthirsty, hate-filled call to violence. Perhaps the implication is that the more humane reaction would be to wait for Trump’s eventual demise, and then gloat about it, as Trump has about figures as varied as lawyer Robert Mueller and film-maker Rob Reiner. Or maybe Kimmel should have organized a “peaceful” protest where his supporters could violently storm a government building.

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Kimmel is not the first or most harmed victim of intentional bad-faith readings from Trump (though “reading” is always a generous term for a man who seems half-literate). In fact, one of the most notably strange things about Kimmel as a cultural figure is the outsized importance Trump, and therefore Maga, place upon him. In the Maga mind, radical leftwing activists cheer Kimmel’s every move, maybe even, in this ridiculous faux-outrage, take marching orders from him. In reality, few genuine leftwingers watch Kimmel, because few people of any stripe watch Kimmel. By most standards, he is, at best, moderately popular.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! is routinely beaten in ratings by the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which is being cancelled ostensibly for losing money – but most likely, at least in part, at Trump’s behest. Trump’s meddling may actually send Kimmel to the No 1 spot by default, as his show has been doing better than Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show. One of the reasons CBS can get away with cancelling Colbert (which in turn has probably convinced Trump he can get Kimmel vengefully pulled off the air as well) is that the late-night talkshow business has been in decline for years. Saturday Night Live is higher rated than any of the network talkshows; is it simply too popular for Trump to credibly claim its shots at him are “beyond the pale”, as he described Kimmel’s joke?

Kimmel’s popularity shouldn’t affect whether or not he’s “allowed” to make a joke about Trump’s advancing age; late-night programming decisions should generally be well outside the president’s purview. But then, there’s little better proof of Trump’s age than his obsession with traditional broadcast and cable television. Because he got his political career off an NBC television series, Trump can think of no greater medium than linear TV. Despite the fragility that leaves him constitutionally incapable of ignoring any perceived slight, he’s the ideal audience for a network talkshow, because he actually takes monologue jokes both seriously and personally. He may be the last American standing who genuinely cares about their content. (His supporters don’t count, because they only care about what Trump cares about.)

Maybe talkshow comedians owe Trump a perverse debt of gratitude for that serious attention; it certainly allows someone like Kimmel to attain a kind of free-speech-hero status that would otherwise remain well outside his grasp as an ABC employee. But then, the Trumps’ crocodile tears will always be taken too credulously as well, just because some feel an obligation to the office of the president that’s fast appearing as outdated as an allegiance to cable news and late-night talkshows. The Hollywood Reporter’s Steven Zeitchik, for example, has taken the time to whine at length about how maybe Maga’s pretend-hurt feelings have a point, singling out SNL’s Michael Che for a Weekend Update line from a few weeks ago as the kind of joke that is “normalizing violence”. After all, what violent offender hasn’t included in his manifesto a list of his all-time favorite Weekend Update jokes and Jimmy Kimmel bits? (Did Zeitchik suggest that maybe the likes of Theo Von or Joe Rogan should watch what they say when mindlessly endorsing a second Trump regime back in 2024?) Trump’s charges of incitement against Kimmel are laughable, but also clarifying: there will always be people – and not exclusively our thin-skinned president – who insist on holding comedians to greater account than elected leaders.

• Jimmy Kimmel
• US television
• TV comedy
• Comedy
• Television
• Donald Trump
• White House correspondents' dinner shooting
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