Jimmy Kimmel's Show Suspended

Late night host's collapsing viewership made him a prime target for being canned by his network, which seized the opportunity he presented by making rude remarks about Charlie Kirk.

ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel after he made the following remarks in on his Monday show.

We had 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 with everything they can to score political points from it.

As a free speech advocate, I don’t like “Cancel Culture.” I believe that the marketplace of ideas should be the arbiter of success for people who work in the public forum.

Jimmy Kimmel was already a bore on the downward trajectory to early retirement in 2022, .when the Epoch Times reported:

Popular television host Jimmy Kimmel has revealed that he has lost at least half of his fanbase after cracking jokes against former president Donald Trump.

“I have lost half of my fans—maybe more than that,” Kimmel said in an interview with Stitcher’s “Naked Lunch” podcast. “Ten years ago, among Republicans, I was the most popular talk show host, at least according to the research that they did.” The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show has been airing on ABC since 2003.

I have heard that Kimmel could be quite funny, so I will refrain from making a categorical judgement about his entire comic career. I have only seen one segment of his show—a recording of his routine on the night of September 7, 2021. As can be heard at 2:42 on the recording, he said the following:

Fauci has said that if the hospitals get any more overcrowded, they’re going to have to make some very tough choices about who gets an ICU bed. That choice doesn’t seem so tough to me. Vaccinated person having a heart attack, yes, come right on in, we’ll take care of you. Unvaccinated person who gobbled horse goo, rest in peace, wheezy. We’ve still got a lot of pan-dimwits out there. People are still taking this ivermectin. You know the poison control centers have seen this spike in calls from people taking this livestock medicine to fight the coronavirus. But they won’t take the vaccine, which is crazy.

It was bad enough that a comic would agree to serve as such a crass propagandist for corporate and state interests. It was also a stunningly rude, arrogant, and inhumane thing to say about the sick and dying. Listening to this statement, I wondered what could motivate such an open and gregarious man to be so mean spirited.

And so, while I would have preferred that the network let him go on the grounds that he was no longer funny and was increasingly just talking to himself instead of a real audience, I find it hard to resist feeling a little satisfaction in this turn of events.

Maybe the experience of getting canned will prompt him to do a bit of introspection and try to overcome his ego and obtuse pride.