Jimmy Kimmel is no martyr

Jimmy Kimmel is not a very funny man. He reminds me of the prep school boys I used to teach back in the 90s, with their snorty kind of humor, that ironic “I’m so smart, ha ha” type of affect that annoys the heck out of people who have to teach them AP French on a Friday afternoon. They weren’t bad kids, not at all. They reminded me of my three younger brothers, who had that same “I’m cool, really I am” attitude. It’s kind of cute in a pathetic way.

But it stops being cute when you are an adult making millions of dollars mocking people you don’t like. That is not even funny. It is certainly not satire of the classic model, the kind that such disparate but brilliant practitioners like Jack Parr, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Tom Snyder, Charlie Rose, Joan Rivers, Larry King, or even the more caustic David Letterman practiced like Michelangelo behind a mic. The closest we have today to anything approaching that, and he is more Lenny Bruce than Carson, is Bill Maher, who has become my favorite host ever since he realized that he, like so many of us, is a man without a country.

As far as Kimmel and the other youngsters out there, and I am being kind in calling them youngsters because some of them are almost as old as me, they lack the one thing that separated the people I just mentioned from the updated versions: Class.

Class is a difficult thing to define, and it probably has different connotations for different people. But to me, it implies the perfect balance of intelligence, skepticism, humility and fearlessness. Add a dash of self-deprecating humor and the ability to be surprised, and you have a classy person. That’s why I think Maher is classy. Conservatives like Greg Gutfeld, but he reminds me of a conservative Kimmel, much too eager to be liked. I don’t watch many of the late-night shows now, and in fact, I spend most of my time watching old YouTube videos of Johnny and Dick, and sometimes even Merv Griffin. The past was better.

Unfortunately, we have to deal with the present, and the present is all about Jimmy and the fact that he was “suspended” indefinitely, which to me sounds like fired, definitely. His contract is up fairly soon, so you have to think that his employer, ABC, is just getting the paperwork prepared for the final adieu. And I am not weeping, nor should you be.

I have seen the tearing of clothes and the pulling out of hair on the left, and even among some on the right who have a more libertarian bent and think that people should be able to act as obnoxiously as possible and not suffer the consequences of their actions. I am actually surprised at the number of friends on the right who have a rather absolutist idea of free speech. It’s as if they are saying, “I have to be able to say whatever I want, and not only that, you have to listen to me.” No, my friends, I do not have to listen to people I do not like, and neither do the rest of us who think that joking about the assassination of a young father and husband is disgusting.

We can turn off the TV, true. We can change the channel. We can write letters of protest. But we can also do something else, and that is create a society where people become accountable for their words and their actions. I will explain exactly what I mean.

This week, I attended an asylum interview for a client at the Newark Asylum Office. Without divulging too many details, suffice it to say that my client had almost been killed because he spoke out against a totalitarian regime. Not fired. Not mocked on social media.

Almost killed.

We do not live in a society, or at least we did not used to until Charlie Kirk fell, where our words are used as bullets against us. We are not in danger of being killed or jailed. At most, we lose jobs.

I myself have been fired from a job I loved as a columnist with a newspaper that concluded that my conservative, pro-life views, mixed with my rather feisty way of responding to readers, were not good for their business. And they let me go. I was not happy, and as I mentioned on a radio program about free speech this week, I wish they had given me a little more rope with which to hang myself.

But I understand that they had the right to do what they wanted, because they were a private company. Had they been a public or governmental entity, that’s a different story. The First Amendment protects employees at public institutions.

On the other hand, the government cannot force a private institution to do anything against its will, because that amounts to unconstitutional encroachment on the right to free speech. Some of the people who are apoplectic about Kimmel’s suspension are convinced that this is what is happening, but they haven’t come up with any direct proof. The argument that ABC caved because of licensing issues is a nice plot twist, but there hasn’t been any confirmation from the network or the FCC. Chairman Brendan Carr has referenced the fact that Kimmel lied about the Kirk assassin’s ties to MAGA, but ABC acted on its own.

Couldn’t it just be that ABC didn’t want him around anymore, just as CBS had a problem with Colbert? Is everything a right-wing conspiracy these days?

Even so, the loss of Kimmel is hardly tragic. Someone else, someone equally vapid, will fill the void.

And ponder this: Jimmy Kimmel can always find another job. Charlie Kirk’s daughter and son will never be able to find another father.

Christine Flowers can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.

This article was originally published at the Delco Times.