To no one’s surprise, when Jimmy Kimmel came back on air after his brief suspension at the end of September, his late-night show achieved much higher ratings than previously. Before the controversy over his Charlie Kirk assassination comments, Jimmy Kimmel Live! garnered 1.4 million viewers nightly. For his first episode back, 6.26 million tuned in. Polls showed 24% of Democrats believed the shooter to be a Republican supporter, even though all available evidence pointed the other way, and Kimmel had opted to indulge this delusion. It had paid off, and for many on the left, the comic emerged as an avatar of free speech.
ABC’s handling of the affair, and that handling’s perverse but predictable outcome, remind me of Sidney Lumet’s cult satire Network (1976). Of course, Kimmel is hardly a Howard Beale for our times: where Network’s protagonist caused an uproar by blurting out uncomfortable truths, Kimmel did the same with a falsehood. But in both cases, the presenter’s employer behaved with extraordinary cynicism and the instigator of the controversy was, for many, elevated to the rank of hero …
