MRC Buried Kimmel Fighting Back Against Aaron Rodgers’ Smear — Then Attacked Kimmel

The Media Research Center’s comedy cop, Alex Christy, complained in a Jan. 11 post: “When it comes to Republican battles with Hunter Biden, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel knows which side he’s on. As Hunter showed up at his contempt vote at the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Kimmel claimed that the stunt showed that it was Republicans who ‘were the ones on crack.’” He complained further in a Jan. 12 post:

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel is a strange person. The latest evidence being his Thursday monologue where he pondered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s sex life, specifically his supposed lack of skill in that area of his life.

The context for Kimmel’s musings was one overzealous school district’s interpretation of the state’s law against providing sexualized reading material to students, “The Escambia County Public School District in Florida, as part of their state’s ongoing war against reading, is now considering — and this is not a joke — is now considering a ban of the dictionary because it includes a definition of the word ‘sex.’”

The way these things have happened in the past is the school district goes beyond common sense, does their review, and then reinstates books that clearly didn’t need to be reviewed in the first place.

Of course, he refused to accuse right-wing activists of lacking common sense in pushing for books to ban. But Christy was silent about what Kimmel did a couple days earlier: forced football player Aaron Rodgers to walk back a nasty smear of him.

Rodgers had said on a sports talk show that Kimmel is among the people who were “really hoping” that a list of alleged clients of Jeffrey Epstein doesn’t get released — insinuating that Kimmel as a pedophile-leaning sex criminal. Kimmel didn’t take that well, as people falsely accused of being pedophiles are prone to do, so he went on the attack in his Jan. 8 monologue, pointing out that Rodgers likely doesn’t believe that but is probably “mad at me for making fun of his topknot and his lies about being vaccinated” and demanded an apology, adding, “”Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court.” In response, Rodgers refused to actually apologize to Kimmel, but he claimed that “there should be an investigation” of people involved with Epstein and added, “I’m glad that Jimmy is not on the list. I really am.” 

The whole kerfuffle didn’t get mentioned at all by the MRC until days later in Tim Graham’s Jan. 19 column, in which he dismissively claimed that Rodgers merely “mocked” Kimmel, then attacked Kimmel for fighting back:

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel freaked out last week when legendary quarterback Aaron Rodgers mocked him on ESPN about new documents coming out in the teenager-sexploiting Jeffrey Epstein case. “A lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, are hoping that doesn’t come out.” Kimmel used his platform to rip Rodgers as an idiot jock who never graduated from college. (It didn’t matter that Kimmel himself quickly washed out of college.)

It was eyebrow-raising when Kimmel argued Rodgers “has a very high opinion of himself. Because he had success on the football field, he believes himself to be an extraordinary being” who thinks “he’s smarter than everyone else.” Look in the mirror? Zero introspection from the national jokester.

Kimmel pompously proclaimed in that lecture, “We say a lot of things on this show — we don’t make up lies. In fact, we have a team of people who work very hard to sift through the facts and reputable sources before I make a joke, and that’s an important distinction.”

Seriously?? Let’s take a brief look at Kimmel’s poisonous oeuvre, just since his “reputable sources” boast:

One example he cited was a picayune complaint about grocery stores:

Kimmel suggested the caucuses were loaded with election-denying white morons: “The same people who are screaming about the Dominion voting machines are digging through a brown paper sack from Stop & Shop to decide who will be president. Then they drop all the names into a popcorn bucket. They find the baldest guy they can to count them aloud.” 

There are no “Stop & Shop” supermarkets in Iowa (it’s New England-based). Hy-Vee is the big supermarket chain in Iowa. Only the lamest chuckleheads make chucklehead claims about their “factual” insults and “research-based” snark. 

He also repeated a complaint Christy had made a couple days earlier about Kimmel saying that Congress had “produced more photos of Hunter Biden’s penis than actual legislation.” Christy grumbled in response: “Yes, there have been some X-rated pictures of Hunter Biden shown by members of Congress, but the influence peddling is why he is at the center of their investigation.” Graham merely huffed, “Factual?” while not admitting that members of Congress did, in fact, display pictures of Hunter’s junk for seemingly prurient reasons, while Christy didn’t explain how they were relevant to Republican’s witch hunt against Hunter.

Christy had previously defended a dubious comment made by DeSantis as an alleged joke that shouldn’t be held to factual scrutiny. And Graham was definitely not holding Rodgers to the same factual standard he was imposing on Kimmel. Meanwhile, Rodgers has been a longtime MRC favorite for spreading COVID vaccine conspiracy theories.