Jimmy Kimmel’s Sad Transformation Is Complete
The former 'Man Show' host is now angry partisan with less time for laughs
Remember Jimmy Kimmel?
Most of us don’t. Not anymore. He’s unrecognizable in his current form, a hard-left comic with little empathy for those who lean to the right. That’s roughly half the country.
What a shame.
The jocular comic shot to fame by hosting “Win Ben Stein’s Money” and palling around with Adam Carolla. The duo created “The Man Show,” a gleefully macho series that wouldn’t be allowed on Comedy Central today.
Gorgeous women jumping on trampolines? Skits mocking the women’s suffrage movement? The online petitions by outraged progressives to shut the show down would break records. Comedy Central would quickly take a knee.
Those were less “woke” times, though.
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He parlayed that Everyman persona into late night fame. His “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” now in its 14th season, never threatened “The Late Show” or “The Tonight Show” in the ratings wars. The ABC show still draws a sizable crowd and occasionally inspires viral gags that crush YouTube.
That was then. Before the rise of Donald Trump and a media landscape that threw away the remaining shreds of its integrity.
Kimmel wants in, apparently. And if his aw, shucks brand has to hit the circular file, so be it. The transformation began with a heartfelt tale tied to his ailing newborn.
FAST FACT: Jimmy Kimmel’s first Oscars hosting gig last year scored a nine-year ratings low. He’s slated to host the gala again March 4.
Last May the comedian shared an update on his young son’s health. The lad required significant medical attention to fix a heart birth defect. A teary-eyed Kimmel shared the latest updates on his son’s condition, slipping in a plea for better health care options for all.
Weeks later, Kimmel got more pointed, and partisan, in his defense of ObamaCare. A quick note: Kimmel never shed a tear, or weighed in in a similar fashion, when we learned President Barack Obama’s pitch for his health care overhaul was riddled with lies.
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro deftly explained the flaws in Kimmel’s baby strategy.
“But the invocation of personal experience in political debate is generally obtuse because it is a soft form of identity politics. It puts those arguing in the position of supposedly rejecting your personal experience, thus impugning your integrity or the veracity of your feelings … The whole point of determining policy is that empathy shouldn’t outweigh reason.”
Shapiro runs a conservative web site where lucid, right-leaning arguments are encouraged. Good luck finding that sensibility across mainstream outlets.
The old Kimmel was fading fast. In recent months he’s cranked up the partisan rhetoric. The Daily Beast reported that he sought out the counsel of Sen. Chuck Schumer, a hard-left Democrat, before one energized monologue.
Kimmel even called out Rep. Paul Ryan in a way the “old” Kimmel never would.
Search all you want, you won’t ever find it https://t.co/jy2fhtoIMT
— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) December 14, 2017
He waded into the gun control debate following the Las Vegas shooting massacre. Naturally he demonized those with whom he disagrees.
“They should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country,” Kimmel said of the GOP.
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Over the weekend Kimmel spoke to the folks at Pod Save America, a liberal chat show. Here’s a tweet sharing one of the comedian’s comments.
“It just so happens that almost every talk show host is a liberal and that’s because it requires a level of intelligence” – @jimmykimmel @PodSaveAmerica live pic.twitter.com/yNKbpzVNUp
— Emily Black Favreau (@ebfavs) February 4, 2018
Fellow late nighter Stephen Colbert once said, “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Even Colbert wouldn’t push the comment as far as Kimmel did.
Kimmel’s hard-left opinions can be seen in many of ABC monologues. Here’s a sample rant from his Feb. 1 telecast. See if you can spot any gut busters in the following:
To call Devin Nunes Donald Trump’s lap dog would be an insult to dogs. And laps …”
He then targeted President Trump and his Fake News assault.
“When a newspaper digs whatever you did up, and publishes a story about it, you don’t just attack the facts, you don’t just attack the story, you attack the newspaper. The newspaper is biased. Even if the newspaper clearly isn’t biased.
“That’s Step 1. Step 2 is when multiple newspapers, and news organizations, and reporters, further an investigation, whatever it is, when they report something you don’t like. If you’re the President now, you don’t just attack the newspapers or the news networks, you attack the media. You say the media is biased. You call them the elite media. They’re all in league together. Everyone except Fox and Friends is plotting to get you. Because they don’t want America to be great again!”
“And then, once the media is playing defense, you climb another rung…When the FBI steps in and starts sniffing around and handing out subpoenas…what do you do? Same thing you always do…You discredit the FBI, you discredit the special counsel, you discredit anybody who might possibly come up with information you don’t like.”
Is anyone laughing? What you just read sounds like a Daily Kos diarist, not one of the country’s notable late night comics. Fact checking his comments, an easy effort, is besides the point.
So why the Kimmel transformation? He’s no longer the bratty young comic trying to cut his teeth in comedy. He’s 50. He’s also aware how the media treats comics who lean left.
Hero worship hardly describes it.
RELATED: Kimmel Beclowns Self Defending ObamaCare
Today’s media outlets regularly share Kimmel’s liberal rants … just like they do any “Saturday Night Live” skit attacking the GOP.
What you’re not seeing in the media love fest for Kimmel? Anyone digging into Kimmel’s Comedy Central past. Shouldn’t a woke reporter or two remind us how he ogled bikini women jumping on trampolines? What about Kimmel, in blackface, imitating basketball legend Karl Malone for the same show?
Kimmel is hardly the only late night show leaning to the left. They all do, save Jimmy Fallon. There’s still a big distinction between the “new” Kimmel and his competition.
Colbert has always been politically progressive. His shift from Comedy Central to CBS didn’t change that. HBO’s Bill Maher has been acerbic his entire career. Samantha Bee broke out of the late night gate by calling Sen. Ted Cruz a “fish-faced horsesh** sandwich.” She was never a lovable progressive.
It’s what makes Kimmel’s transformation so jarring.
Arrogant. Self-satisfied. Finger wagging. This isn’t the Jimmy Kimmel we got to know over time. Sadly, Kimmel 2.0 is likely here to stay.
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Just another guy who hates my America – I don’t watch him anymore. When did he give up on the “guess what’s in my pants” routine?
Smug posturing and reciting the Regressive catechism of the moment are not intelligence.
Kimmel only thinks he’s intelligent because he has others write his lines and he interviews idiots like Obama and other Hollywood celebrities. By comparison even a monkey would look smart.
edit: Sorry, didn’t mean to disparage monkeys.
He is not intelligent at all. He is an idiot on intellectual life support via Chuck Schumer and the rest of the idiot leftist clown car.
Jimmie can send his tax cut….back.
It’s a shame. I remember Kimmel well from “Win Ben Stein’s Money.” I always appreciated that he seemed to be laughing with the guests instead of at them, in stark contrast to his replacement, Nancy Pimental.
I can’t really (just) point the finger at either Kimmel or Pimental, though. I’m tired—and I think a broad swath of Americans of all political stripes are tired—of the past few decades of invective standing in for intelligence, of wordsmithing standing in for wisdom, of platitudes standing in for principles. It’s spiritually and psychologically corrosive, and emotionally exhausting.
“It’s spiritually and psychologically corrosive, and emotionally exhausting.”
That right there. Before right now, I’ve never been able to put it this succinctly. Literally and truly perfect; poetic, even.
Thank you.
lol. I smoke liberals in debates in my sleep. They are pure emotion, employ zero logic or reason, and are utterly void of any listening comprehension. They are much like children, with similar level of reasoning ability and an identical penchant for believing what they want to be true. Pure emotionalism.
You “smoke” liberals? I thoroughly doubt that considering that part of your name “Patriot” carries an implication of nationalism, which by definition is a primitive exercise in emotional allegiance to one’s perceived nation or culture. I suspect you’re prone to chanting mindless slogans such as, “USA, USA,” or “Lock her up.” It’s somewhat absurd how easy it is for one to perform a brief yet accurate psychoanalysis on cognitively challenged individuals such as yourself. After all, your limited intelligence capacity burdens your ability to reason within any logical arena, thus you’re likely to support laughing stock candidates like Trump. The most amusing observation is that you seem to actually believe that you are informed, and logically driven.
Is this the guy so ‘smart’ he took a left turn from the right lane and wrecked his car?
I guess there’s an audience for cranky old scolds who are absolutely convinced they’re funny. David Letterman’s departure from late “nite” left a hole that needed filling.
Not a very big audience…and that hole left by that a-hole does not need filling.
Just sayin’
Wrong. Dave “Snaggletooth” Loiterman dug a hole so deep, late night TV has never recovered.
It clearly never got filled, since Dave’s lined up to do a new late night show. Of course, Dave was just another filler of the void left by Carson (even though he technically didn’t succeed Carson). The end of Carson was the beginning of the demise of late night TV.
larry nassar has more value to society than kimmel
More high school level humor I’ll never need to watch…
High school? A little generous aren’t you?
In his case that certain level of intelligence is the low level!
There has been no transformation, he’s always been an arsehole.
It’s these d*uchebags with zillions of dollars who lecture us
Because to a Liberal, “You’re Stupid, NO You’re Stupid” qualifies as a debate.
He’s not really a “liberal.”
So much this. Liberty hasn’t really ever been his forte`.
As it’s currently understood, he is.
No. They are not liberals. There is nothing liberal about them.
They are leftists.
Totalitarian leftists.
And that is Jimmy Kimmel.
Agreed. I was referring to “liberals” in the classic sense.
Yes, we are the Totalitarians.
And those wishing to invade the private lives of gay people, using the State Machinery to punish them for their being, and to extract gestation from unwilling people are the “classical liberals”.
Whatever you Fascists need to tell yourself.
The only people infiltrating Gay People are the progressives. No one gives a !@#$ about what people are doing in their own homes.
…but in true Drama Queen fashion…it’s got to be about you doesn’t it?
Believe me no one wants to invade the private lives of gays. As for gestation, the only “unwilling person” is the baby.
Interesting because ‘extracting gestation’ goes both ways. You believe that extratcting gestation is perfectly acceptable until the baby is home from the hospital…or is it the age of 18? The line keeps moving.
We could care less what gays do, but don’t expect (force us) to carry a rainbow banner and fund transgender surgery.
You are such liars.
How can we possibly invade the private lives of gays when gays constantly shove thier lifestyles in our faces 24/7. Btw, homosexuality is a mental disorder. Men who hate women but want to act and talk like them. One day each of you will hopefully finally wake up and see yourselves as you really are…sick in the head.
Homosexuality is not a mental disorder. Transgenderism is a mental disorder. Nobody cares what two consenting adult gay people do in the privacy of their own homes. When the Progressive mafia starts to try to force biological males use the girls bathroom at middle schools and for boys who “identify” to shower with girls after gym class and at the local YMCA, then we start caring. That said, I strongly encourage the Left to continue pushing two things: 1) the amnesty agenda, and, 2) transgender/biological males in girls bathroom agenda. Those are big winners for the Right. If you don’t think those two things factored into Trump’s victory you don’t understand Trump voters. MAGA.
I believe that there are ‘true’ homosexuals (that is people who were born with conflicting sexuality) BuT that number is truly very small, as is most birth ‘disorders’. THE REAL number of too many homosexuals is a result of births that have occurred as a result of casual sex, which has blossomed starting in the late fifties. Male children with no father figure suffer the loss of male love and support and even the necessary ability to see how a male functions in everyday life. They then seek that love when they are old enough to do such seeking. To back my claim, take a look at the numbers of MALE homosexuals compared to female homosexuals. There are FAR FEWER females born with no mother as a model, compared to males born with no male as a model…….
Male homosexuality also occurs when a real father is a person with no love for his children.
Iris – There are no ‘true’ homosexuals. God, our creator, and our Heavenly Parent, is a God of perfection. He doesn’t make mistakes. What is not understood is the spiritual relationship between ourselves and Satan. When someone kills someone for example and says that the devil made me do it, he is not lying. Satan is the enemy of God, he wants to destroy what God values most, His children. Not all our thoughts are ours. Satan can tell us to do evil things and we don’t even know he is speaking to us. Not only that he has the ability to give us feelings of attractiveness to members of the same sex. If someone has give and take with those feelings those feelings grow. And it’s not just homosexuality, road rage, acts of adultery, stealing, looting, murder, these are all things Satan gets us to do and much more. In short – homosexuality is a spiritual problem as well as all the other sins in the world.
Yes, he does not make mistakes, but contrary to your belief, he is not involved in every sex act and there are plenty of people who are sad results of inferior genes…poor children without limbs or worse. These are not PLANNED by God! Read the bible, God gave us autocracy..The very first chapter explains this quite well.
There is no doubt that absentee fathers are a leading cause of male homosexuality. Many studies have confirmed this. I even know a man who was head of Human Rights Campaign in Minneapolis/St. Paul who told me shortly after he “had become a member of the gay community” (as he stated to me) that he and his father “never really talked”.
Forcing people to choose between their livelihood and their deeply-held beliefs, as you did with “the Christian baker” is the essence of fascism. Worse, even. Forcing a man to labor when he’d choose not to is slavery.
You are the authoritarian threat to our constitutional republic, not Trump.
Last I checked it was the “LGBTQ community” who had become the new Gestapo, trying to close many of the bakeries and wedding planners in the country. How come you folks don’t go after the Islamic bakeries (of which there are many)? I think we both know the answer to that question.
If the bakery is actually Islamic, which implies a religious connection, most likely it now has extra protections to discriminate, thanks to Trump and the GOP, who sometimes don’t realize that every privilege given to Christianity also accrues to other religions as well. However, if it’s a secular bakery run by Muslims and is discriminating, I would support a suit. Also, while I agree that some of the left are Muslim apologists, and have some of the loudest voices, they are opposed by both atheist and Christian liberals, who tend to be moderate on Islam, which means treating American Muslims as just people with rights, while opposing the Islamicization of society and largescale immigration from Muslim countries. If the right ever learned how to appeal to these people without being so extreme on the issue, a coalition is there to be built.
A coalition with Muslims? They’ve threatened the West for 1000 years and are on the brink of conquering Europe. There’s no common ground. That’s why they naturally ally themselves with radical leftists. Leftists openly want the West destroyed and Islam is happy to help.
If you upped your game in the reading comprehension department, maybe you would understand the world a little better.
I’m confused, Auggie. You say that religious freedom protections that conservatives support protect all religions, then embrace the conservative position on several points which are opposed on the left, and then say we are extreme? How so?
Trump’s Muslim ban is an example of an extremist policy, along with his hateful rhetoric. I favor a nuanced position, differentiating between Muslims, who are just people, and Islam itself, which is an anti-Western and anti-modern ideology. Encouraging a moderate brand of Islam in America that can then be exported abroad should be the goal and that won’t happen if Muslims feel they are under attack from the larger culture.
Because they’ll make a wedding cake? And it’s odd to call LGBT folks Gestapo, given that they were the victims of the Nazis.
There are two new Gestapos in this country: LGBTQ and college students. Intolerant of opposing views, and willing to use violence to silent dissent. That is virtually the definition of Nazism.
Hey moron, progressives go after any “bakery” or establishment that engages in bigotry, regardless of background. Bigot apologists like yourself simply sit on internet forums attempting to think of “clever” false scenarios that exist only in your small brains to satisfy your willful ignorance.
Exactly!
And there are 2 sides, fiscal and social.
Fiscally they are Socialists which I am personally totally against.
Socially I am a liberal. The leftists are nothing like me.
Let me guess, you’re a bigot apologist? You think Trump is a “good President?” It doesn’t matter honestly. Your regressive crowd will be marginalized soon enough. Your little time in the sun is ending soon. Night night fascist.
He is now, big libtard.
Kimmel’s not a leftist liberal???Whoa!! He’s a complete disgrace to the American name.
Not to all, but that lowest common denominator is Kimmel’s audience. He’s not good enough any more to talk to the smarter ones.
This rube “Rodney” likely follows Fox “news,” Infowars, and Breitbart. Rodney’s opinion on what he deems “smart” is not only irrelevant, it’s laughable.
And so are you
You mean like when Trump actually said: “No puppet, no puppet. You’re the puppet,” during an actual presidential debate?
Exactly like that
No, more like when Obama said that in Austria they speak Austrian and corpsman is pronounced like corpse. Or when he talked about the British Embassy and called it the English Embassy. To say nothing of USA has 57 states, and many, many more.
lol at the butthurt republitards
transformation or out-of-the-closet stupid?
Samantha Bee looks like a swamp hag from hell.
And no, intelligence isn’t required to be a late night host. Kimmel needs to get over himself. He’s just a DNC lemming spewing their talking points.
If intelligence is required to be a late night host, why is it that all late night shows go on vacation when there is a writer strike?
and,,,, “swish” its through with nothing but net for a clean three points!
Beautiful shot UNExit, well said.