“I feel like what I do best is take a strong stand
against stupid things, like, for instance, pumpkin-spice pizza.”— Late-night
talk show host Jimmy Kimmel quoted in David Marchese, “In Conversation: Jimmy Kimmel,” New
York Magazine, Oct. 30-Nov. 12, 2017
In a recent cover story for New York Magazine, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel—who turned 50 last week—reflected frankly on this
unusual point in his life and in that of the country.
I am ambivalent about comedians wading into
politics. To the extent that they do it at all, I prefer that politics be one
of many subjects tackled and that comics be bipartisan in their targets,
whether in a joshing (Will Rogers) or savage (Mark Twain) spirit. Virtue does
not wholly reside in one party any more than it does in one religion, and
ignoring one group of politicos automatically eliminates incredibly inviting
satiric fodder.
But these times are like none that I have ever
witnessed—nor, in a lifetime devoted to reading history, in any prior American
era that I know of. It’s not just that the human instincts for power, greed and
lust that have always posed obstacles for candidates and officeholders, nor
even the smooth spin cycles that have made the last generation of politicians
often unworthy of being taken at their word.
No, it is the daily meanness and mendacity and the
shredded constitutional protections coming from the Oval Office that make this
moment unprecedented in our history. And the GOP, in firm control of every
branch of the U.S. government, yet fearful of losing congressional seats, has
now gone all in with a President unchastened by political experience and swollen
by the powers of his office.
In this era, it’s no longer poets who are, in
Shelley’s phrase, the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” It’s the
comedians who, by virtue of their large audiences, can speak truth to power,
the electronic era’s counterpart to King Lear’s fool.
nd so, we have Jimmy Kimmel, previously a largely
apolitical late-night host, entering the health-care debate after his baby son
needed open-heart surgery to repair a congenital defect. His remarks that night explaining
his recent absence--“No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford
to save their child’s life”—might not have been funny, but they were
appropriate and genuine.
As a parent, Kimmel has also felt compelled to weigh
in on gun control. (Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, he noted bitingly in his post-Vegas-shooting
monologue, “sent their thoughts and their prayers today, which is good. They
should be praying. They should be praying for God to forgive them for letting
the gun lobby run this country.”)
But looming
over all has been the specter of President Trump.
“I never imagined he [Trump] would actually be elected,”
Kimmel said in his New York interview.
“I remember joking about it: If you tried to think of the most extreme example
of someone who would never be elected president, Trump was a name you’d throw
in there. There was a time when I thought this country was much more likely to
elect Maury [Povich] as president than Donald Trump. His election was shocking. It makes
me question everything.”
Kimmel responded thoughtfully to a wide range of
other topics in his sit-down, including the surprising durability of the late-night
talk-show format.
But what remains most indelibly in the memory, after several
pages, are his deep-bone concern about the direction of America under its new
leadership (“I go to bed worried, and I wake up worried, and I honestly don’t
know if things are going to be okay”) and his sense that he has crossed a comic
Rubicon with his swerve away from his formerly apolitical style (“I think I’ve
alienated more people than I’ve brought onboard. But what I thought was important
was telling the truth.”)
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