Jimmy Kimmel has psychic powers, and he's only using his supernatural abilities to insult the right. At least, that's the gist of one argument that surfaced after Rudy Giuiani's health issues opened the door for another "controversy" involving the late-night host.
On Monday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel took aim at a particularly bizarre theory making the rounds. The premise is that one of his recent jokes somehow foreshadowed or even contributed to Rudy Giuliani’s hospitalization.
Kimmel began by acknowledging reports that Giuliani had been hospitalized in critical condition with pneumonia, noting that he appears to be recovering. But he quickly pivoted to the reaction that followed.
“When I read this, I thought, I wonder if they’ll try to blame this on me,” Kimmel joked. Last week, Kimmel played a clip of Giuliani attacking him over his First Lady Melania Trump punchline. Kimmel described the former New York City mayor as "rose from his grave."
Kimmel pointed to commentary from what he described as “podcast bozos,” who attempted to connect Giuliani’s illness to the joke Kimmel made comparing Giuliani to a vampire. The theory was then amplified in part by a segment on Newsmax. The panel suggested Kimmel’s joke was somehow linked to Giuliani’s health issues.
The Newsmax personalities questioned if Kimmel's late-night show can even be considered comedy. They went even further, describing the comedian as "abhorrent" and delivered “under the gauze of comedy.”
He then escalated the bit, joking that his writing process involves waking up each morning, making coffee, and “looking into the future” to determine which events haven’t happened yet. And according to Kimmel, he chooses to only craft jokes designed to “make trouble.”
The timing couldn't have been better, or worse, depending on your perspective. Kimmel still isn't completely out of the woods yet for his mock White House Correspondents' Dinner sketch last week that created another controversy. President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and a few others on the right tied Kimmel's joke to the real-world violence at the WHCD.
Newsmax appears to be following the Trump's lead and drumming up another headline to attack Kimmel. But the network should look around and realize that the Trumps only gave Kimmel a viewership boost and more prominent right-wing voices aren't buying into the hysteria this time.
As for Kimmel, he didn't dwell too long on the segment. It was already buried deep into his monologue on Monday night. But for the record, he did share an honest opinion about Rudy Giuiani.
“For the record, I hope Rudy Giuliani lives another hundred years,” Kimmel said, before explaining his reasoning. The late-night host referenced Giuliani’s most infamous public moment when he appeared outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping, located near an adult store. “That was the funniest thing any person has done this century,” Kimmel joked.
It's one thing to suggest political comedy can vilify people and runs the risk of crossing the line into hate speech. It was a thin argument made against Kimmel over the "expectant widow" joke, but at least there was some semblance of logic there.
But it's something else entirely to try to connect a joke to someone's health issues, especially when it's a medical emergency that no one saw coming. And Kimmel is by no means the first comedian to compare Giuliani to a vampire. Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert have been making similar cracks about the Republican for years.
For Kimmel, it's just his time in the spotlight right now. Thankfully, he has enough experience where he can weather the storm and continue delivering quality comebacks. And if nothing else, he made one thing clear: if he really could predict the future, he probably wouldn’t be using it to write late-night monologues.
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