Taylor’s Takes: Kimmel’s fight for relevance will be his demise
Jimmy Kimmel realizes that late-night hosts like himself have painted themselves into a corner by being overtly political, and he’s leaning into it.
In an era where late-night television hosts are struggling to stay relevant, Jimmy Kimmel has found a winning formula…for now.
Next month marks a milestone for late-night television: Stephen Colbert is being given the old heave-ho. After years of being nothing but a smarmy, holier-than-thou liberal on The Late Show, CBS decided to cancel his program thanks to tanking ratings.
All network late-night talk shows will soon face the same demise. Rather than appealing to a wider audience with apolitical entertainment and a sprinkling of intelligent, thoughtful conversations with today’s leading minds, the late-night landscape is pumping out nothing other than pop slop and predictable punchlines about Donald Trump.
Other than Colbert, Kimmel is the worst offender of the all-but-extinct hosts. He never misses an opportunity to drag the president in his monologue and virtue signal to the scores of people foolish enough to risk their few remaining brain cells to watch.
Earlier this week, Kimmel commented on the elevation of Oklahoma’s Markwayne Mullin from senator to Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to replace scandal-plagued Kristi Noem. Kimmel, not one to be above delivering a cheap shot, framed Mullin as an ass-scratching, low-IQ plumber who had just been given the keys to the department that controls ICE, CBP, and other agencies devoted to keeping Americans safe on American soil.
“Before he was elected to the Senate, Mullin was a low-level MMA fighter and a plumber,” Kimmel scoffed. “That’s right. We have a plumber protecting us from terrorism now.”
The throwaway joke was an elitist jab, poking fun at someone who had a real blue-collar job that had real-world impacts on people’s day-to-day lives and the economy. Tough talk from a guy who produces no usable product or service to speak of.
Following the throngs of criticism the next day, Kimmel attempted to clean up his comments on his show later that night.
“Of course, they decided to twist that to say it was an insult to plumbers, which it was not. I wouldn’t put a plumber in charge of homeland security for the same reason I wouldn’t call a five-star general to pull a rat out of my toilet, ok?”
What Kimmel doesn’t seem to understand is that it wasn’t just an insult to plumbers, it was an insult to every hard-working American that aspires to something higher. It was an insult to the American dream. Kimmel decided to put down anyone who has a lofty, achievable goal and effectively say, “You don’t belong here. Put your overalls back on.”
But Kimmel’s formula for survival in a dying format is now quite clear. Cultivating controversy through pop culture takes isn’t cutting it anymore. Jimmy Kimmel realizes that late-night hosts like himself have painted themselves into a corner by being overtly political, and he’s leaning into it.
Rather than trying to stay out of the political fray like Jimmy Fallon (for the most part), Kimmel is diving deeper. Kimmel has figured that if he inserts himself into the conversation, as he did with a callous comment about Charlie Kirk’s murder, he becomes part of the news cycle. And if he becomes part of the news cycle without crossing the network line, he’ll get more eyeballs on him the next night as people tune in to see his response to the criticism he received from the night before.
It’s a cheap ploy that will eventually lead to his firing by ABC.
I wonder what his future irrelevant podcast will be called?
