The job of a late night talk show host is to be entertaining. The formats of the various shows that come on after the local news vary to some degree, but boil down to the host doing an opening monologue and then engaging in light banter with celebrity guests. Sometimes a musical number or a comedy skit occurs.
Jimmy Kimmel, on the other hand, believes that his primary job has come to be a shill for the Democratic Party. The Daily Beast, which is somewhat sympathetic toward the former entertainer turned warrior against reforming health care reform, admits that Kimmel colluded with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to read talking points to his audience.
Where did Kimmel go wrong?
One has to have a certain degree of empathy with Kimmel. His child was born with a congenital heart defect and has needed surgery to survive. However, this fact is not sufficient to make a man whose job it is to tell jokes an instant expert in the politics of Health Care Policy. It makes one emotionally involved and prone to error, especially if one already carries a boatload of political biases common with the entertainment industry.
Kimmel has become unhinged
In some ways, the former entertainer turned political warrior has become off-putting in some of his public rhetoric. At one point he offered to assault Fox News “Fox and Friends” co-host, Brian Kilmeade. He has accused the president of the United States of being so stupid that he doesn’t know the difference between his wife and his daughter.
He has called Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, a co-sponsor of the current Repeal and Replace bill, a liar. Cassidy is a medical doctor, steeped in the ins and outs of health care policy, as well as a senator. Cassidy has reacted to Kimmel’s smears more in sorrow than in anger, suggesting that the former entertainer should talk to him first before bloviating about subjects he knows nothing of.
Oddly, Sen John McCain, R-Arizona has come into some strange new respect from Kimmel, who praised the senator from Arizona for knifing Obamacare repeal and replace again, calling him a “hero.” One doubts that the former funnyman voted for McCain for president, however.
The upshot of the matter is that Jimmy Kimmel has a new job, which is making sure that Obamacare continues its death spiral.
He is rich enough to pay for his, and his family’s medical needs and likely lacks understanding about what it is like to have live under the Obamacare exchanges. Kimmel, in his own mind, may have puffed himself as a social justice warrior, but in reality, he is just another out of touch, bubble-dwelling Hollywood liberal.
