Last night on The Tonight Show, Mario Kart superfan Jimmy Fallon did what Jimmy Fallon does best: chuckle at his own jokes, make funny faces, and shrug his shoulders. While he didn’t shy away from dunking on Donald Trump’s trip to the UK, he did pull his punches when talking about late night TV’s other Jimmy getting bullied off the air by a rogue president, his FCC goon squad, and a complicit c-suite. “To be honest with you all, I don’t know what’s going on, and no one does,” Fallon told viewers. That last part, at least, is an obvious lie. Why Jimmy Kimmel was kicked off the air by ABC is not complicated or confusing. Part of what’s so galling about it is just how stupid, craven, and obvious what happened is, and how none of that stopped it from happening.
Jimmy Kimmel was kicked off the air for making fun of Trump. Not because he joked about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, which he didn’t do, or because he lied about it, which he didn’t do either. Comments about the “MAGA gang” trying to score political points off Kirk’s murder were just the setup to a punchline about how Trump can’t even muster a crocodile tear over the right-wing podcaster’s death before gushing about his White House renovations. You can watch the tape. You can read the transcript. There is no ambiguity in what transpired, even as pundits paid to make hay of the controversy try to hedge by condemning something Kimmel didn’t say while advocating for a First Amendment that wasn’t directly violated.
That’s because ABC, and it’s corporate owner Disney, rushed to comply before it even got to that point. One of the biggest TV operators in the country, Nexstar Media Group, is trying to buy another operator called Tegna in a deal valued at over $6 billion and that would require the approval of Trump’s Justice Department. Along with conservative network affiliate owner Sinclair, Nexstar announced it would stop carrying Jimmy Kimmel Live! (Nexstar denies this was the reason.) FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to investigate ABC and pull its broadcast licenses over Kimmel’s monologue. And then Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Dana Walden and CEO Bob Iger decided to preemptively pull the plug, provoking a celebrity-led boycott in the process.
Trump has been desperately trying to get Kimmel fired for months. Shortly after Paramount sacrificed Stephen Colbert to get its merger approved with Skydance, the president made this as clear as possible. “Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go in the untalented Late Night Sweepstakes and, shortly thereafter, Fallon will be gone,” he posted in July. Anyone who keeps acting surprised by what’s going on, like Fallon, just hasn’t been paying attention or, worse, thinks that they can save themselves by trying to pretend none of it is happening. Even ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner is going, in so many words, “Wait, what the fuck is happening?”
Maybe that’s why it felt strangely nostalgic and refreshing to watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert last night, each tackling Kimmel’s firing in their own ways but in no uncertain terms. Like a lot of people, I watched The Daily Show and The Colbert Report a lot in college. Then I stopped. At some point the formula began to feel not only cringe but aimless. The news was getting grimmer and the stakes less funny. But last night reminded me what worked about them all those years ago. It’s cathartic to watch people call out obvious bullshit, especially when so many others keep running away from it, anxiously looking to their colleagues and bosses to make sure they don’t step out of line, even when the line is drawn by a dangerous buffoon. That’s how the Bush years felt. Nothing’s changed and yet now somehow it’s even worse.
“I do know Jimmy Kimmel, and he’s a decent, funny, and loving guy, and I hope he comes back,” Fallon said last night. It is, of course, not up to him if he comes back. Fallon knows that. He also knows he’s next. And that cynical calculus is what will make sure he’s not the last.
