www.geekybob.com

The Paradox of Jimmy Kimmel, Charlie Kirk, and Freedom of Speech

01 October 2025 • by Bob • Politics, Opinion

Earlier today I saw an article from the New York Post titled Jimmy Kimmel’s short-lived ratings spike comes to screeching halt, and the article made me want to revisit some ideas that I had jotted down several days ago. At the time, I had neglected to post anything because a great deal had already been said about Disney/ABC infamously dropping Jimmy Kimmel after he behaved badly following the murder of Charlie Kirk, and still more has been said about Disney/ABC infamously reinstating Jimmy Kimmel.

Let me be honest about one thing right up front: I don't watch late night television, but I used to. At the risk of "Too Much Information," I grew up watching Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in the 1970s. Carson was a gracious host who made his guests look like superstars, and a genuinely funny entertainer who largely kept his political views to himself. Two of my favorite comedians during Johnny Carson's reign as the undisputed king of late night were Steve Martin and David Letterman, both of whom were frequent guests on The Tonight Show. When the 1980s rolled around, I was thrilled when David Letterman was rumored to be taking over when Johnny Carson eventually retired. Of course, things didn't go according to plan: Jay Leno infamously took over The Tonight Show, and David Letterman eventually took The Late Show to another network. But sometime during late night television's tenure in the 1990s, a curious thing happened: late night ceased to be funny.

I still watched David Letterman occasionally after hours, but I didn't like Jay Leno's futile attempts at being a late night host - he simply wasn't funny enough. Sadly, things didn't improve when Conan O'Brien took over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno, nor did they improve when Jay Leno infamously stole The Tonight Show back from Conan O'Brien. But the problem with late night television's lack of humor wasn't limited to The Tonight Show and The Late Show; other late night programs like The Late Late Show, The Jon Stewart Show, Politically Incorrect, and a host of other utterly forgettable late night offerings tried and failed to capture the magic that was once late night. Of course, changes in audience preferences had something to do with that. Primetime television in the 1960s and and 1970s were plagued with a never-ending stream of "variety shows," which featured myriad performers getting their 15 minutes of fame. When those shows fell out of fashion around 1980, late night television picked up the slack as late night talk shows of the 1980s and 1990s featured myriad artists getting their 15 minutes of fame. However, the late night television hosts of the 1990s through today could never move past the formulaic monologue followed by guest interviews with the occasional sketch comedy to make things interesting. Of all the late night hosts to come and go - with hosts like Bill Maher, Arsenio Hall, Craig Kilborn, Samantha Bee, Seth Meyers, Craig Ferguson, to name a few - none of them strayed much from Johnny Carson's pattern, meaning that most of everything being aired during late night was redundant drivel. (Though to be fair, James Corden occasionally had some brilliant ideas.)

Jumping to today's late night television programming, the predominant hosts of their respective shows are Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Greg Gutfeld (with the highest-rated late night show), and - of course - Jimmy Kimmel. As I said earlier, however, late night talk shows are in a downward spiral, because none of these shows are funny. Each of those shows pander to their ever-dwindling audiences, and all of them fail to compete with content that's readily-available on YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and a host of other streaming platforms. Audiences no longer need to wait until after hours to be entertained, their favorite content and artists are only a click away at any time of day or night.

Having sufficiently set the stage on the highs and lows of late night television, I will return to my discussion of Jimmy Kimmel. From what few excerpts I've seen that people have posted of Kimmel's whiny, pretentious, inane and unamusing drivel - I'm glad that I've never watched his show. Of all the late night hosts that I have seen - and trust me, I've seen a lot - Kimmel is the least interesting, by far. Not that my opinion means anything to him, of course. I am a relative nobody who isn't a member of one of his target demographics. But as I said before, Kimmel's audience has continued to shrink even within his target demographics. And, let's be honest: are we surprised by Kimmel's demise? Hardly. Kimmel is a pompous, self-aggrandizing  windbag who can neither take nor deliver a joke. Which is, ironically, a joke in itself.

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder on September 10, 2025, liberals across the country were tripping over each other to post and re-post everything they'd come to loathe about Kirk, even though a lot (but not all) of what they were saying was demonstrably false. At first Kimmel seemed to chart a different course when he took to the airwaves to say the following:

This wasn't a bad offering, but it offered neither comfort nor olive branch. Kimmel followed his underwhelming opening statement with a plethora of Trump jokes, which to his credit were largely factual. Trump can be a genuine equine posterior at times. The Trump jokes were followed by several additional minutes of what were supposed to be jokes about politics and other things in the news, but none of it was actually funny, so I have a hard time referring to the words that were coming out of Kimmel's mouth as "jokes."

A few days later, however, Kimmel dropped the pretense of civility. Rather than moving away from the topic of Kirk's death, or to offer solace to any of his viewers who might have been emotionally wounded by recent events, Kimmel decided to follow the angry, liberal mob taking cheap shots at Charlie Kirk and his followers when he took to the airwaves with the following drivel:

Then the show cut to several scenes in which reporters asked Trump about Charlie Kirk, and in response Trump changed the subject to talk about the ballroom that's being built in Washington DC. Kimmel reacted to those scenes with the following observation about Trump:

The show cut away to several more scenes of Trump behaving like... well, Trump. He's a buffoon, and I make no attempts to justify his buffoonery. But the scenes that were shown were wrapped in a flurry of fatuous verbal diarrhea from Kimmel, for example when he waxed poetically about how Kash Patel was mishandling the investigation:

Kimmel was mocking the fact that the FBI had originally said that they had the shooting suspect in custody, but later corrected themselves to say that they hadn't. Later the news reported that someone had intentionally confessed to the shooting in the moment in order to distract authorities and let the actual killer escape. Kimmel - or his writers - should have known that, but they apparently lack the mental fortitude that is required to type the letters "G - O - O - G - L - E" into a web browser.

The rest of the Kimmel's monologue didn't get any better; he continued to spew vitriol at pretty much everyone whom he detests, and yet - as I've said many times - nothing he said was actually funny, but a lot of what he said was opportunistic and mean-spirited. Kimmel was clearly taking advantage of Charlie Kirk's murder to do the exact thing that he was supposedly upset about: Kimmel was desperately trying to characterize Charlie Kirk's murder as anything other than someone on his side of the political spectrum and doing everything he could to score political points from it.

So to sum up - Jimmy Kimmel was behaving like: an ass for being insensitive, an idiot for failing to look up anything that could easily be disproven, a liar for saying things that he knew to be false, and a hypocrite for acting in the same manner that he was mocking.

Kimmel's behavior was too much for a few of the companies that syndicate ABC/Disney, and they announced that they would be dropping Kimmel's show from their broadcast lineups. To their credit, ABC/Disney did the right thing by suspending Jimmy Kimmel and offering a path back that was very simple: apologize. When faced with the fact that syndicators were dropping his show, Kimmel didn't say he was sorry - he doubled down on his arrogance, and Disney/ABC famously suspended his show. However, the "Hollywood types" didn't take the news of Kimmel's suspension lying down. They were immediately up in arms defending Kimmel from the imaginary villains they perceived were violating Kimmel's "Freedom of Speech," which is a cheap soapbox that Hollywood types like to hide behind whenever anyone calls them out for being the pampered, selfish and vile narcissists that most of them are in real life (e.g. when they're not accepting the scores of self-congratulatory awards that they love to hand out to each other).

But here's the thing: no one was violating Kimmel's freedom of speech. Kimmel wasn't being arrested for the things he said, and unlike other areas of the world, Kimmel had no reason to fear being executed for the things he said. Kimmel's show was suspended, but he was still free to say whatever he wanted to say. Kimmel could have gone on any number of news programs, podcasts and talk shows and said literally whatever he wanted to say - even if it was untrue - about his predicament. And even if Kimmel had been fired, he was still free to offer his services to any competing network that would have him. After all the hoopla that he had caused, Kimmel probably would have had several job offers from sympathetic stooges within the week. The political comedian Bill Maher has spoken in the past about getting fired for something he said and being rehired later, and I am certain that Kimmel would have been able to do the same. In other words - Kimmel wasn't being censored, nor was his freedom of speech being infringed. On the contrary, Kimmel, said some stupid things, and society was holding him accountable.

However, the public pressure was too much for ABC/Disney, so to their discredit, they added insult to injury by doing the wrong thing and reinstating Jimmy Kimmel. No apologies necessary.

After returning to the air, Kimmel's opening monologue made a half-hearted and wholly insincere attempt at addressing what happened, which was liberally punctuated with alligator tears and a failed impression of someone being choked up with emotion. Kimmel came nowhere close to admitting that was wrong, of course. On the contrary, he intimated that he simply wanted to clarify that he wouldn't capitalize on someone's murder, although that is exactly what he had done. Of all the things that Kimmel said during his victory lap on his first night back, the following excerpt is the only attempt that Kimmel made with regard to addressing what he had said and done:

These few words from Kimmel stand in direct contradiction to what he said when he was suspended: he did make light of the situation, and he did blame a specific group, and the things he said weren't  the opposite of the point that he was trying to make, and his statements were ill-timed and clearly said, and he did point fingers. Nothing Kimmel asserted in this short quotation was factual, and none of it was anything close to an apology. What Kimmel said, in essence, was: perhaps you misunderstood me. In other words, Kimmel blamed everyone else for being upset with him. The rest of Kimmel's monologue was a rah-rah-rah continuation of the narcissistic blather that others in the media had been spewing about "protecting free speech", etc. All the while failing to take any semblance of ownership for his situation, and attempting with all his might to hide behind the First Amendment - even though it really didn't apply here. As I said before, Kimmel could have been fired and that wouldn't have been a violation of his First Amendment rights. Kimmel has the right to speak his mind, and ABC/Disney has the right to disagree and potentially reprimand him for the things he says - to include terminating his contract if they so desire.

While it is often ill-advised to speak on behalf of the deceased, Charlie Kirk was a big defender of freedom of speech, and in an interesting paradox, I honestly believe that Charlie Kirk would have defended Jimmy Kimmel's constitutionally-guaranteed right to be a jerk. Kirk knew that people who disagreed with him also frequently mocked him, and he showed on more than one occasion that he could take a joke and be a good sport about it. For example: Kirk famously said that he thought South Park's parody of him was a badge of honor. With that in mind, I honestly think that Kirk would have seen the attempts to punish Kimmel as unnecessary, but as I said - it is ill-advised to speak on behalf of the deceased, so I will drop the subject.

The sad part is, Kimmel is too much of a creatively-challenged cretin to step outside his tiny echo chamber long enough to realize that - long before he had said anything stupid - he could have taken advantage of this national tragedy to become the hero of his own saga. What Kimmel could have done (or perhaps should have done), was to use his platform to try to bring the country together, and speak out against the rampant string of politically-motivated violence. David Letterman famously did something like that after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and I sincerely believe that Johnny Carson would have done something similar. Imagine if Kimmel had said something like the following on the day that Charlie Kirk was murdered: "Earlier today, a tragic thing happened here in America: a young, father of two was shot and killed in front of a live audience. We currently do not know the assailant or what his or her motivation was, but this violence has to stop." An empathetic and reasoned approach like this example would have been great. It would have been impactful. It could have touched the hearts of Americans young and old. Instead, what Kimmel did was to try and pin the assassination on the people with whom he disagrees ("the MAGA gang"). After Kirk's killer was caught and his true motivations were revealed, Kimmel's poor choice of words and actions in days following Kirk's murder upped his status from insensitive jackass to blathering ignoramus.

An interesting twist to all this hysteria is that Kimmel's ratings have been in decline for some time, and Kimmel's public-facing faux pas might have been just the thing that ABC/Disney needed to unload Kimmel's show. On the other hand, Kimmel, rather than waiting for the inevitable, could have taken advantage of this situation to leave his show with a public display of feigned disgust and besmirched honor in order to save some modicum of image within the entertainment world. Instead of watching his show continue to crater, Kimmel could have left ABC/Disney while continuing to blather on about how his freedom of speech was being trampled, and then laughed all the way to the bank when a sympathetic network or cable channel offered him a more lucrative contract. It's like Metallica when Napster came along: Metallica didn't have to admit that their declining record sales were due to the fact that they'd ceased being relevant when they could simply blame Napster. (Sorry, Jimmy - when your show inevitably gets canned, you're going to have to come to terms with the uncomfortable truth that... well, it's your show that sucks, not everyone else.)

In the end, this entire affair came down to a staring contest between Jimmy Kimmel and Disney/ABC, and it was Disney/ABC that blinked. If you are someone on Disney/ABC's payroll and you've been chomping at the bit to say something awful, I'd say that now is your chance, because Disney/ABC have collectively proven that they lack the intestinal fortitude to stand their ground when challenged. But that being said, there are some lessons to be learned: just because you do something stupid and get to keep your job, that does not mean that you are free from the ramifications of your bad decisions. And sometimes, such as a situation like Jimmy Kimmel's, you get to keep your job because you're the circus sideshow freak of late night television rather than having any actual talent.

---

Tags: Entertainment, Politics, Opinion