Jimmy Kimmel isn’t the first late-night host to get caught on the media griddle.
Kimmel is the latest in a short line of wee-hours personalities to spark controversies with jokes that offended as many as they tickled — perhaps more. On Monday night, the ABC personality walked a tightrope with a joke tied to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist whose September 10 assassination has spurred a wave of “cancel culture” moves by the right.
Undaunted, Kimmel poked fun at President Trump’s odd reaction to being asked how he was holding up after the death of an ally (Trump pivoted to talking about his new White house ballroom). And Kimmel provoked conservative watchdogs by saying that “the MAGA gang” was “trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”
Now the host — and Walt Disney Co., owner of ABC — find themselves in an impossible position. After FCC Chair Brendan Carr told a conservative podcaster that “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” two prominent owners of TV stations, Nexstar Media and Sinclair Broadcasting, said they would pre-empt ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” for the foreseeable future. Their decision leaves ABC struggling to beam Kimmel’s show to a good chunk of the nation — though, presumably, Disney could use its Hulu and Disney+ streaming services to get around the station owners’ blockade. Disney said earlier this week it was taking “Jimmy Kimmel Live” off the air indefinitely.
Johnny Carson rarely had to deal with such stuff, but his progeny have grappled with it with increasing frequency. Chalk the dynamic up to the fact that TV has in recent years fielded a wider number of late-night hosts, each of them eager to not only win TV ratings, but also viral pass-along on social media. Nabbing that last prize requires more hot talk, sharply pointed commentary and treading territory Carson usually avoided.
Kimmel does have a way back. In most cases — not all — sounding a note of apology helped.
David Letterman found himself under scrutiny in 2009 after making a joke about the daughter of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” The line was a reference to Bristol, who at the time was an unwed mother. But a younger daughter, Willow, had attended a Yankee game in New York with Palin and her husband. The incident became a public-relations hot potato for Letterman, then hosting “The Late Show” for CBS.
Eventually, Letterman acknowledged the riposte was not his best work. ““I told a bad joke,” he said during a 2009 broadcast. “I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future.”
Bill Maher in 2017 used a racial slur on live TV during a telecast of HBO’s “Real Time” during a conversation with Ben Sasse, then a U.S. Senator from Nebraska. Within hours, the comedian faced backlash from viewers and became the subject of very difficult conversations among senior executives at HBO’s then-owner, Time Warner. One day following the show’s Friday-night telecast, Maher apologized. “Last night was a particularly long night as I regret the word I used in the banter of a live moment. The word was offensive, and I regret saying it and am very sorry.”
But there was more to come. On his next broadcast, Maher convened guests like Ice Cube and Michael Eric Dyson to call him to task for using the epithet and to explore the issues about its us. Joy Reid, in 2018 a weekend host for MSNBC, relied on a similar concept after coming under fire following the discovery of old blog posts authored by her that contained homophobic remarks. Reid apologized and suggested the old pieces of digital content had been manipulated without her knowledge. On her program, “A.M. Joy,” she engaged in conversation with then-columnist Jonathan Capehart and Zeke Stokes, vice president of programs for GLAAD, to discuss the issues around the remarks.
Reid was able to remain at MSNBC until earlier this year and was promoted to a weekday host in a coveted early-evening slot.
Maher, of course, has been through similar stuff. He once held down a late-night host job on ABC, at the helm of a roundtable program called “Politically Incorrect. In September of 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, that America had been “cowardly” in dealing with the rest of the world, unlike the criminals who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center.
“We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away,” he said. “That’s cowardly.” Two large advertisers, Sears and FedEx, pulled commercials from the show.
Within a day, Maher apologized. His view, he said, “should have been expressed differently.” He added: “In no way was I intending to say, nor have I ever thought, that the men and women who defend our nation in uniform are anything but courageous and valiant, and I offer my apologies to anyone who took it wrong,” ABC kept the show on the air, but advertisers continued to balk. “Politically Incorrect” was cancelled in June 2002.
Samantha Bee, who launched a critically acclaimed program called “Full Frontal” on Warner’s TBS in 2016, sparked controversy after she used a charged epithet that refers to a part of the female anatomy to insult President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka. The result? After Bee delivered the remark in a 2018 broadcast, TBS lost ads from most sponsors, except movie studios, and had to fill the space with promos for its own properties. Bee offered an apology. “I crossed the line. I regret it and I do apologize for that,” she s said, noting: “The problem is, that many of women have heard that word at the worst moments in their lives. A lot of women don’t want to reclaim that word. They want it gone, and I don’t blame them. I don’t want to inflict more pain on them.” “Full Frontal” continued to run until 2022.
In some cases, the producers of late-night programs manage to return a response to self-generated controversy to a new reason to watch their shows. During an appearance on the “Weekend Update” segment of “Saturday Night Live” in 2018, cast member Pete Davidson spurred backlash by mocking Dan Crenshaw, then a congressional candidate in Texas, who had lost his right eye while serving as a Navy SEAL. “You may be surprised to hear he’s a congressional candidate from Texas, and not a hit man in a porno movie,” Davidson said on the program. “I’m sorry, I know he lost his eye in war, or whatever. Whatever.”
Davidson apologized to an in-person Crenshaw on the next episode of the program. The “SNL” comedian acknowledged his joke represented “a poor choice of words.” Crenshaw made fun of Davidson’s gawky stature and then called for respect for all veterans as well as first responders in the 9/11 attacks — one of whom was Davidson’s father.
Kimmel may not feel a need to apologize. His audience knows to expect such stuff from him on a regular basis, and surely ABC executives had time after his Monday taping to confer on the suitability of his monologue for that evening. As other people who have walked in similar shoes can attest, however, apologizing can help a situation — and more people remember the hosts for the shows they created then the glitches that may have occurred along the way.