Jimmy Kimmel is not the first late-night host to get caught up in the media griddle.
Kimmel is the latest in a short line of small time characters to spark controversy with jokes that offend as much as they are tickling. On Monday night, the ABC personality walked the tightrope with a joke tied to Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist whose September 10th assassination drove a wave of “cancellation culture” movements to the right.
Kimmel enjoyed deceiving President Trump’s strange reaction to being asked about his strange response after the death of his allies (Trump spoke about his new White House ballroom). And Kimmel sparked a conservative watchdog, saying that the “Maga Gang” was “trying to characterize this child who murdered Charlie Kirk as something other than them.”
I’ve now found that the host (and Walt Disney Inc.), the owner of ABC, is in an impossible position. FCC Chair Brendan Kerr told a conservative podcaster, “We can do this in an easy or difficult way. These companies will be able to find ways to take action in Kimmel, or there will be additional work beyond the FCC.” With their decision, ABC has struggled to beam Kimmel’s show to a substantial portion of the country, but perhaps Disney could use Hulu and Disney+ Streaming Services to avoid blockade of station owners. Disney said earlier this week that “Jimmy Kimmel Live” would air indefinitely.
Johnny Carson rarely had to deal with such things, but his descendants have been working on it with increasing frequency. It chokes dynamics down to the fact that television has adopted more late night hosts in recent years. Each is keen to not only gain TV acclaim, but also extend a viral pass on social media. To grab that final prize, you need to talk more heatedly, and Carson, a territory of sharp commentary and treadmills, is usually avoidable.
I’m back in Kimmel. Most of the time, listening to the apology notes helped.
David Letterman found himself under scrutiny in 2009 after joking about the daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The line was a reference to Bristol, an unmarried mother at the time. However, her young daughter, Willow, was attending Yankee games in New York with Palin and her husband. The incident became a hot potato of public relations for Letterman, hosting a “Late Show” on CBS.
In the end, Letterman admitted that Liposte was not his best job. “I made a bad joke,” he said during the 2009 broadcast. “I made a joke that went beyond flaws, and my intentions are completely meaningless compared to perceptions, and I feel like I need to do the right thing here and apologize for making that joke.
Bill Maher used racial slur on live television during a “real-time” television broadcast on HBO during a conversation with U.S. Senator Ben Sasse from Nebraska. Within hours, the comedian faced backlash from viewers and was the subject of a very difficult conversation among senior executives at Time Warner, the then-owner of HBO. One day after the show’s Friday night television broadcast, Maher apologised. “Last night was a particularly long night because I regret the words I used in my jokes at the live moment. The words are offensive and I’m very sorry to say that.”
But there was more. On the next broadcast, Maher invited guests like Ice Cube and Michael Eric Dyson, calling him to tasks using epithet to investigate issues relating to the US. MSNBC weekend host in 2018, Joy Reid relied on a similar concept following the discovery of an old blog post she wrote that contained homophobic remarks. Reid apologised, suggesting that the old digital content had been manipulated without her knowledge. In her program “Am Joy,” she spoke with then columnist Jonathan Capehart and Glaad’s vice president of programs, Zeke Stokes, to discuss issues relating to her remarks.
Reid was able to stay at MSNBC until the beginning of the year, and was promoted to weekday hosts in the coveted early evening slot.
Of course, Maher has gone through the same thing. He once held back the late-night host work at ABC at the helm of a roundtable program called “political wrong.” In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, America was “co-ill” in dealing with other parts of the world, unlike criminals who flew to the World Trade Center.
“We were cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away,” he said. “It’s coronavirus.” Two large advertisers, Sears and Fedex, pulled commercials from the show.
Within a day, Maher apologised. His views “should have been expressed differently,” he said. He added: “The men and women who defend our country in uniform weren’t brave and brave, and I offer an apology to those who made it wrong.” In June 2002, “Political Wrong” was cancelled.
Samanthaby, who launched a rave reviewed program called “Full Front” on Warner’s TBS in 2016, sparked controversy after using a charged epithet, which refers to a part of the woman’s anatomy to insult President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka. result? After Bee made his remarks on the 2018 broadcast, TBS lost ads from most sponsors except for film studios, and had to fill in the space with promotions for its own property. The bees offered an apology. “I crossed the line. I regret it and I apologize for it,” she said. “The problem is that many women heard the word at the worst moment of their lives. Many women don’t want to regain the word. “The perfect front” continued until 2022.
In some cases, producers of late-night programs can return a response to self-generated controversy over new reasons to watch the show. When he appeared in the “Weekend Update” segment of 2018’s Saturday Night Live, cast member Pete Davidson urged backlash by ocking the Texas Congressional candidate Dunk Renshaw, who had lost his right eye as a navy seal. “You might be surprised to hear that he is a Texas Congressional candidate and not a porn movie hitman,” Davidson said on the program. “I’m sorry, but I know he lost his eyes in the war.
Davidson apologized to Crenshaw in person on the next episode of the program. The “SNL” comedian admitted that his jokes represent “poor choice of words.” Crenshaw was not only the first responder of the 9/11 attack, but also all the veterans and Davidson’s father after teasing Davidson’s whimsical height.
Kimmel may not feel like she doesn’t need to apologize. His audiences know that they regularly expect such things from him, and certainly ABC executives had time to confer after his Monday taping on the conformity of his monologue that night. But apologizing can help the situation so that others wearing similar shoes can prove – and more people remember the hosts of shows they created rather than glitches that could have happened along the way.
