Late night TV will not save you from Ted Cruz
Jimmy Kimmel has always presented himself as the Good Liberal of late night talk shows. He’s constantly weeping about affordable healthcare, telling us some heart wrenching story about his kids, and pleading for all of us to be better, as a country.
That’s good, right? Well actually it’s not.
Because what did Jimmy do, when he had the chance to actually make a difference?
Let’s go back a few years, back to 2018, when the execrable Republican Ted Cruz — who represents everything that Kimmel presumably stands against — was locked in a tight re-election campaign against Beto O’Rourke.
(And while Beto certainly has many, many issues, he still would have been a big step up for Ted Cruz.)
So what did Kimmel do? He played Ted Cruz in a charity basketball game, of course!
Now you’re probably thinking, “Ok, but what’s the big deal?” The big deal is that Cruz ultimately won by just a few percentage points, in a Senate race that could have had profound implications for the rest of the country (oh, and especially for those of us in Texas who have to live with Ted Cruz).
But to Jimmy, it was just another segment. Sure, he tried to compensate with a tweetstorm in support of Beto afterwards, but it was too late — the damage had been done. Ted Cruz had been humanized, thanks to his buddy Jimmy Kimmel.
Now Jimmy has apparently seen the light — he thinks Ted Cruz is bad! Earlier this month he did another one of his patented heartfelt segments, accusing Ted Cruz of being “hungry for political power” and being “willing to roll the dice on a civil war.” Because Ted Cruz openly supported Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the results of the presidential election.
But if Cruz is “hungry for political power,” then what does that make Jimmy Kimmel? What is he hungry for?
Because honestly, the answer seems to be ratings and relevancy. Why else would Kimmel have had Ted Cruz on his show and made nice with a guy who has been a complete piece of shit his whole political career?
But I’m not just trying to beat up on Jimmy Kimmel — there’s a long line of late night celebrities who are happy to pal around with assholes (and their enablers), in order to pop a rating.
Here’s James Corden and Sean Spicer! Hey, it’s all good that you were Trump’s mouthpiece, the important thing is that we’re both trying to get more famous!
Or when Jimmy Fallon tousled Trump’s hair during the 2016 campaign. See, he’s cuddly and fun, there’s no way he’d lock kids in cages!
And here’s Pete Davidson, giving right-wing piece of shit Dan Crenshaw the biggest boost of his career! Crenshaw became a national figure because of this spot on Saturday Night Live. See, even people on “opposite” ends of the political spectrum can be friends!
SNL also let Trump guest host in the runup to the 2016 election. Sure they aired a million anti-Trump skits after he got elected, but they were more than happy to give him a platform when it mattered!
Oh, and I almost forgot how happy Samantha Bee was to help Glenn Beck on his rehabilitation tour a few years ago! Look how funny their sweaters are! (No matter that Beck immediately returned to being a garbage spewing asshole when he realized that his whole audience was deserting him for Trump.)
Of course, all of these guys — like Kimmel — have gone back and tried to distance themselves. For the last four years, their shows have been sustained assaults on Trump and his politics.
But it’s too late. The damage is done.
Why did they do it in the first place? Because as CBS President Les Moonves said about Trump during the 2016 campaign, “It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS.”
And ultimately, that’s what it’s all about. Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden and Lorne Michaels don’t care if the minimum wage gets raised or not. It doesn’t matter to them if Medicaid gets expanded to more states. They’ve already got their money. They live in bubbles of wealth and privilege. And now they’re just trying to protect their (very easy) jobs.
Most importantly: whoever wins, they’ll be fine either way.
And that’s the main point — it’s all fake. Talk show hosts aren’t going to save us from the right wing. We’re honestly not that far off from Kimmel having the Q Shaman on his show.
Once again, it all comes back to pro wrestling. Back in the 80s, the Iron Sheik (a hated foreign heel) and Hacksaw Jim Duggan (the ultimate pro-USA good guy) were arrested together in a car, on cocaine possession charges.
This was a massive scandal in wrestling, because it was a breach of kayfabe — aka, pretending that the good wrestlers and the bad wrestlers hated each other. Good guys and bad guys did not travel together — and they certainly didn’t do coke together.
That’s why the Kimmel/Cruz basketball game was such a watershed moment. It pulled back the curtain to reveal that politics is just a show.
You hate minorities and poor people? Hey, nothing personal — let’s give the marks a good show.
There are only elites and the rest of us. There is no shared system of morality — there is only one true dividing line: class.