Jimmy Kimmel is not a very funny man. He reminds me of the prep school boys I used to teach in the 1990s. They had a snotty kind of humor, an ironic “I’m so smart, ha ha” affect that stops being cute when you are an adult making millions of dollars mocking people you don’t like.
It is certainly not satire of the classic model, the kind that such disparate but brilliant practitioners like Jack Parr, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Tom Snyder, Charlie Rose, Joan Rivers, Larry King, or even the more caustic David Letterman practiced like Michelangelo behind a mic. The closest we have today to anything approaching that, and he is more Lenny Bruce than Carson, is Bill Maher, who has become my favorite host ever since he realized that he, like so many of us, is a man without a country.
I don’t watch many of the late-night shows now, and in fact, I spend most of my time watching old YouTube videos of Johnny and Dick, and sometimes even Merv Griffin. The past was better.
Unfortunately, we have to deal with the present, and the present is all about Jimmy and the fact ABC is bringing him back after being “suspended” indefinitely.
I have seen the tearing of clothes and the pulling out of hair on the left, and even among some on the right who have a more libertarian bent and think people should be able to act as obnoxiously as possible and not suffer consequences. I am actually surprised at the number of friends on the right who have a rather absolutist idea of free speech. It’s as if they are saying, “I have to be able to say whatever I want, and not only that, you have to listen to me.” No, my friends, I do not have to listen to people I do not like, and neither do the rest of us who think that joking about the assassination of a young father and husband is disgusting.
We can turn off the TV, true. We can change the channel. We can write letters of protest. But we can also do something else, and that is create a society where people become accountable for their words and their actions.
We do not live in a society, or at least we did not used to until Charlie Kirk fell, where our words are used as bullets against us. We are not in danger of being killed or jailed. At most, we lose jobs.
I myself have been fired from a job I loved as a columnist with a newspaper that concluded that my conservative, pro-life views, mixed with my rather feisty way of responding to readers, were not good for their business. And they let me go. I was not happy, and as I mentioned on a radio program about free speech this week, I wish they had given me a little more rope with which to hang myself.
But I understand they had the right to do what they wanted, because they were a private company. Had they been a public or government entity, that’s a different story. The First Amendment protects employees at public institutions. On the other hand, the government cannot force a private institution to do anything against its will, because that amounts to unconstitutional encroachment on the right to free speech. Some of the people who were apoplectic about Kimmel’s suspension are convinced that this is what is happening, but they haven’t come up with any direct proof.
The argument ABC caved because of licensing issues is a nice plot twist, but there hasn’t been any confirmation from the network or the FCC. Chairman Brendan Carr has referenced the fact that Kimmel lied about the Kirk assassin’s ties to MAGA, but ABC acted on its own, just as it has in its decision to bring him back.
While Kimmel is coming back, ponder this: If ABC decided to part ways, Kimmel could find another job. Charlie Kirk’s daughter and son will never be able to find another father.
Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times in Pennsylvania.