Having taken a Jimmy Kimmel joke about Melania Trump out of context to falsely accuse him of joking about an assassination attempt, the Media Research Center got back to more typical complaints from its chief comedy cop, Alex Christy. He groused in a May 1 post:
The notion that late night comedy shows have turned into late night liberal group therapy was on full display on Thursday’s taping of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! After the eponymous host alleged Republicans’ goal is to see to it that only white people get elected, actress Meryl Streep stopped by to tell Kimmel that he is the global leader in defending a free press. Later, The Daily Show correspondent and occasional host Desi Lydic swung by to add that he literally “cannot ignore” politics in the current climate given his recent controversies.
Once Kimmel and Streep finished their mutual greetings, Streep launched straight into her ode to her host, “You’re a prince. You are a Knight Templar.”
After Kimmel thanked Streep for her remarks, she continued, “You’re carrying the banner of freedom of the press.”
[…]Nowhere is it written that Kimmel had to do a fake White House Correspondents’ Dinner routine where he claimed Melania had the “glow like an expectant widow.” That does not make the audience smarter or more informed, nor did his remarks about the political identity of Charlie Kirk’s assassin make anyone smarter. Jimmy Kimmel is not a global free speech leader, but he is the poster child for a guy who gets to paid to say dumb stuff on TV.
And Christy is not the poster child for a guy who gets paid to write dumb and biased stuff on the internet?
Christy whined further in a May 12 post:
CBS’s Stephen Colbert kicked off the penultimate week of The Late Show on Monday by reassembling his Strike Force Five colleagues and fellow late night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver. The quintet discussed several things, including the future of late night and their battles with President Trump, and the consensus was that fights with Trump prove that late night is still viable, with Kimmel going so far as to include his suspension.
[…]As for his own suspension, Kimmel continued, “People canceled Disney+. Why is it—why aren’t you people canceling Paramount+? Because you didn’t have it in the first place?”
Because Paramount is currently try to acquire Warner Bros., which is HBO’s parent company, Oliver added, “Well, Jimmy, until the deal goes through, if I could just do a counter. Paramount+ might have some good programming. Unless it’s not going through, in which case they can go [bleep] itself now and forever.”
Kimmel was also offended at the question itself, “Why should you have to defend late night? Why should that question be asked? You don’t hear—Like, Ryan Seacrest doesn’t get asked that question about the Wheel of Fortune or whatever the hell he’s hosting.”
Because Wheel of Fortune has not turned itself into a partisan therapy session and is still highly profitable.
As if the MRC is not a partisan therapy session of its own. Christy concluded his post with more whining:
Late night matters in the sense that liberals think it matters and therefore turn the hosts into their therapists and thought leaders. If the argument is that late night matters because it is necessary to preserve democracy or free speech, then that would be ridiculous. The country does not need more quips about the first lady looking forward to her husband’s death.
Christy was silent about how the MRC has repeatedly taken Kimmel’s joke out of context. He kept up the whining in a May 20 post:
Comedian Wanda Sykes joined ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel on his Tuesday show to look back and blame President Trump for Kimmel’s September suspension, and claim the thing that worries her most about Trump is “everything.”
Kimmel brought up his suspension when he recalled, “You were our scheduled guest on the night our show got pulled off the air in September, and then you weren’t on the show because I wasn’t on the show and the show wasn’t on the show… At what time did you get the word? Do you recall?”
Christy then had yet another meltdown over Kimmel:
In the grand scheme of history, September was not that long ago. Yet, liberals keep trying to rewrite why Kimmel was suspended. Kimmel was widely condemned for his remarks about conservatives in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination when he said they spent the weekend trying to convince people the shooter “wasn’t one of them.” This was as liberals—not just internet weirdos, but prominent and respected ones—were claiming that the assassin was a right-winger despite all evidence to the contrary.
ABC suspended Kimmel because he failed to see what he did wrong and was going to come out and give a hot response to his critics, but ABC didn’t want to inflame the situation, so it suspended him in order to give him time to cool down.
Christy doesn’t mention the fact that he and the MRC have been desperate to get Kimmel fired for years, and his quip about Kirk was just a convenient excuse to indulge in that agenda.